· What would a ‘smart city’ look like to you?

The image of a smart city that fills my mind is of pristine, white, contemporary buildings all identical with no character. All objects would have a small flashing glow of a sensor, connecting one to the other, and communicating through the atmosphere to the signal base. I picture inhabitants with their heads down, engrossed within their devices, where the only dialogue is robotic.

· Have you noticed any real-life examples of technology being used to make a city smarter?

When passing through Piccadilly, I noticed a Wi-Fi bus stop crowded with people searching their phones, not one appearing to be interested in catching a bus.

· Do you think we should embrace more technologies when improving our cities or do you think we can go too far?

I think smart cities and the internet of things has a lot to offer society. It provides opportunity for efficient living, making day to day running smoother, and more productive. Article 1 highlights everything “running as smooth as the latest iphone”. However, whilst I can appreciate how high-tech the iphone is, I am no stranger to its failures and quite often, poor running. This reflects on the controversy of smart cities. When they are performing well they provide users an invaluable service, but once their functioning fails they leave users panicked and at a loss with how to achieve their intended function. Resultantly, I believe whilst we should embrace the development of smart cities, we must not become dependent, and must stay informed on how to run services such as driving cars and emptying bins, manually.

· Are there areas and people within society that living in a smart city may affect negatively? Who and why?

As article 1 highlighted, driverless vehicles propose questions of the safety of cyclists and pedestrians, in judging the actions of the vehicle, as they are not offered signal of intention from the human face. The article also questioned whether workers whom perform ‘boring, repetitive’ jobs, which are threatened with replacement by robots, have the capability, time or desire to be trained for higher roles. Many people working these roles have choose such profession as it is something they enjoy or have skills within, thus to overturn them from such role and encourage them to take on a different task may cause outrage. The article further raises the concern of how many ‘more skilled’ roles will become available. It is presumed that if this role in essential in the work place, there is someone already employed in that sector. Thus, training employees for these roles may provide no further opportunities, but instead higher unemployment. It further must be acknowledged that as cities become more smart, the digital divide is ever increasing. Those whom have no access or funds for digital technology would become increasingly disengaged from the city and unable to use its services. Therefore, making a city smart can mean the gap between rich and poor widens. This can be widened to additional digitally isolated communities such as the elderly, digitally untrained, culturally unaware, and illiterate. Furthermore, there has been increasing reports of digital addicts whom feed on technology, thus making it increasingly accessible and prevalent proposes risks to this area of society. Citizens in general could also be affected negatively as article 1 highlights how smart cities overlook the value in personal communication, thus replacing this with machines can negatively impact on societies’ wellbeing and practice.