What Came Before Smart Cities?
By: Reid Belew
Note: This post is adapted from a UTC/CUIP position paper. Some portions of copy within will be found in both places.
Cities force us to examine how to live together — something we still have not mastered. Managing and regulating traffic, pollution, zoning and development, the local economy, and how all of this interacts with the environment is a never-ending task. How are the matters of the present juggled with preparation for the future? Throughout history, cities have recognized their place upon a precipice of a new future and have acted accordingly.
Haussman
From 1831 to 1846, Paris, France grew from 759,000 people to over a million. This rapid population increase brought with it overcrowding, and overcrowding birthed widespread disease, killing tens of thousands of people. Roads and avenues were barely wide enough for a horse and carriage to pass. French social reformer Victor Considerant once said: “Paris is an immense workshop of putrefaction, where misery, pestilence and sickness work in concert, where sunlight and air rarely penetrate. Paris is a terrible place where plants shrivel and perish, and where, of seven small infants, four die during the course of the year.”
French emperor Napoleon III ruled appointed Georges-Eugene Haussman to rebuild the city in the summer of 1853. France and its capital, Paris, were in the middle of their industrial revolution. New technologies and capabilities were allowing France and the world to progress faster — and in new ways — than ever before. Thus, here sat Paris: a city with potential that was worth the revitalization effort, and if not pursued, could fall into total disarray.
Haussman began working. To date, it is still the most expensive, voluntary, European city revitalization effort, totaling 2.5B francs, around 83.4B US dollars today. Haussman cleared over 12,000 buildings, built the National Paris Opera, built the Les Halles marketplace, designed a new train station, rebuilt the city road layout, designed and installed a new sewage system, installed gas lamps on avenues, and designed everything from park benches to sidewalks and newsstands. For 17 years, Paris was an all-consuming construction site.
To this day, Haussman is criticized by those who thought his revitalization was too brutal, too fast, and too much. Others regale him as the precursor to modern urban planners. Regardless of how history views him, the conditions surrounding Haussman and his forward-thinking are clear: Paris was faced with rapid growth and new technologies, and they responded accordingly to build the future proactively.
Paris Today
Present day Paris continues its rich tradition of urban renewal and proactivity. In preparation for the city’s hosting of the 2024 Olympics, Paris has begun a new urban revival titled “Reinventing Paris.” Under this plan, which is focused on inclusivity and reducing gentrification, the city plans to use eco-friendly, innovative, and creative methods to clean up the city, starting with the river Seine. Along the river will sit urban beaches, attracting locals and tourists alike. Perhaps most importantly, the river will be cleaned so that it can host the Olympic triathlon.
Important Parisian landmarks will not be left out of Reinventing Paris. The Eifel Tower will be turned into the “lungs” of Paris, an urban park that prizes families and accessibility. Additionally, Paris seeks to build the world’s largest urban farm. Atop the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles sit over 150,000 sq. ft of rooftop. Architects and planners estimate that using this space for a sprawling urban farm will produce over 1,000 fruits and vegetables every day.
Included in Reinventing Paris are plans to revitalize old building and locales in the city, repurposing them into hotels, food courts, or even fine dining destinations.
Curitiba
A more modern example of innovative urban renewal is that of Curitiba, Brazil. In the European migration to South America in the 1800s, Curitiba was an attractive destination: a calm, agricultural town, reminiscent of the same agrarian living immigrants were accustomed to. Over 100 years, Curitiba’s growth became a liability, not an asset. Soybean production became much more efficient, requiring fewer workers, and people migrated deeper into the city center. Between 1940 and 1960, the city’s population more than doubled. Traffic, crime, and pollution skyrocketed.
After a decade of Brazilian military coups, Curitiba mayor Jaime Lerner began implementing the Curitiba Research and Urban Planning Institute’s (IPPUC) master plan for the city. He began by converting city shopping center roads from automobile roadways to an exclusively pedestrian mall. Once Lerner gained approval from the affected shop owners, he told his public works director to complete the conversion in 48 hours. It was complete in 72 hours and precedence was set: Curitiba was going to be changing drastically and rapidly.
To handle growing traffic problems, Lerner and the IPPUC built an express lane for city buses, allowing them to travel unencumbered throughout the city. Bus ridership grew, becoming the fastest and cheapest mode of transportation, but time spent loading and unloading the buses hindered the buses from being even more efficient. Lerner and his team build raised loading bays that served as bus stops and allowed passengers to unload and load in 10 seconds. As of 2010, Curitiba buses transport 2.7M riders daily, more than the entire population of the city.
To tackle the inherent waste problems of a city as large as Curitiba, the city implemented as token-for-trash program. 4 pounds of recycling given to the city, and the citizen receives 1 pound of produce. Now, 70% of Curitiba’s waste is recycled.
Curitiba, like Paris of the Industrial Revolution, is a great example of cities responding to their challenges in a proactive, big, bold way by thoughtful planning and preparation.
The Modern Smart City
Smart cities heavily rely on two key ingredients: big data and the internet. Many experts consider the first inklings of the modern smart city to pre-internet big data efforts by the city of Los Angeles in the 1970s. Taking the spirit and goals of city planning like those of Curitiba and Paris, Los Angeles city planners used computers to organize the city into “zones.”
In the mid 90s, the city of Amsterdam created a digital version of its city to promote internet usage. Shortly thereafter, IBM pledged many millions of dollars to smart city research.
The early 2000s, congruent with exponential growth in technology and the internet, saw a boom in smart city research. Private and public organizations poured huge amounts of money into global smart city research, and cities across the globe became “smart”, with features such as smart grids, fiber-optic internet, digital twins, public wifi, shared electric vehicles, highly optimized and efficient public transit, and so much more, all understood and made efficient through data and the IoT.
Conclusion
Smart cities are the latest iteration of urban planning that is focused on increasing quality of life. Technologies now look drastically different, but the sentiment behind those changes remains squarely in the vein of previous city planning. Paris and Curitiba are great lessons in thoughtful planning that researchers still look to today.
The Center for Urban Informatics and Progress is a smart city research center at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. CUIP is committed to applied smart city research that betters the lives of citizens every day. For more on the work we’re doing and our mission, visit www.utc.edu/cuip.
