In part one of our two-part interview with LA CoMotion Chairman, John Rossant, we hear how the future of mobility is taking shape in cities around the world and right here in Southern California. Plus how Los Angeles is leading the revolution in transportation innovation. ***Transcript*** Recording date – November 19, 2017 John Rossant: It's a fact of life you have to get into a car to go places. So the needs are huge here to have better solutions to mobility, and then you have this critical mass of a market of 10 million, you know, auto mobility consumers in LA County which is enormous. But you have other things that I think will make it this sort of capital of transportation technology, It's not a coincidence that Elon Musk who's probably the one person in the entire world who is really thinking big things about how you move, whether it's underground, or to Mars, or across LA, or in a Hyperloop, or in a Tesla. He lives here, all of his activities are, if you think about it, are kind of about Los Angeles region. LA, of course, is a great tech startup center now. It's Silicon Beach. And you combine that with, you know, the big technology advances that are being developed in California, it makes this area incredibly exciting and the logical place to bring global leaders to talk about the future of mobility. Tom Smith: Welcome to iDrive SoCal, the podcast all about mobility in the automotive capital of the United States, Southern California. I'm your host, Tom Smith, and today I'm joined by John Rossant. John is the founder of New Cities, which is an organization that put on a first ever event here in Southern California, right here in LA, called LA CoMotion. John, thank you so much for joining me today. John: Hey, thanks a lot, Tom. Tom: So, let's start. Just highline. LA CoMotion is? John: LA CoMotion is a... it's actually global gathering of the movers and shakers driving the mobility revolution and we strongly believe that we are on the cusp, if not fully inside the vast mobility revolution, which will radically change how we human beings move around cities, move around countries, how goods get around, etc. We think it's going to be one of the big things impacting what cities look like over the next few decades, and will really, I think, change many of our lives. Tom: Well, we definitely need it here. John: I could say that I totally agree. Tom: It's pretty brutal getting around Southern California, LA especially. So, New Cities is the organization that put on LA CoMotion and from what I understand, there's other events that you've done through New Cities in other parts of the world. John: Well, New Cities Foundation, it's a nonprofit foundation we're actually headquartered in Montreal, Canada. And we look at the future of cities and how to make cities more dynamic, more connected, more healthy, more sustainable. We work with a large… very, very wide variety of global organizations both private sector like Google, Verizon, Ericsson, Cisco. So a lot of big technology companies, but also a lot of smaller startups, etc. We work with other nonprofit institutions and universities, whether it's MIT or NYU. And we believe that, you know, to advance the conversation, it's really good to bring the key stakeholders to the table. And the thing about cities, when you look at cities is no one really owns the city. You know it by definition it's a collaborative effort. And so we feel as a kind of nonprofit institution with really no skin in the game in a sense. You know we do have the ability to bring people who might not be talking to each other so naturally we bring them together. And so we have a big annual meeting called The New City Summit which gathers around a thousand city leaders. It's been in a different global city every year,
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