The sudden movement of existing cities in a race for the “Smart” Revolution — Trump’s fallout!!

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Civic Analytics & Urban Intelligence

3 min readNov 13, 2016

Is a huge investment and headstrong start in the race to finish first as a smart city justified?

On a completely different note here, the president-elect of the United States like the idea for things to start working on the highest gear so that it employs more people in the workforce for present and future endeavors and so on and so forth — creating better lives for all Americans.

Providing infrastructure — A 216-acre business park, called Frisco Park 25, at the northwest corner of Preston Road and Rock-Hill Parkway (less than a half-mile away from the Dallas North Tollway) is zoned for industrial and office real estate. The new business park will join several other new construction projects in Frisco, which include the expansion of Hall Park, the development of Frisco Station and the ongoing work at Wade Park. At build out, Frisco EDC expects to have 2.2 million square feet of real estate valued at more than $300 million. The economic development agency plans to sell portions of the park off to companies wanting to purchase and own their own real estate.

Communication Infrastructure — Chattanooga, Tennessee — Known as a titan of industry that later fell on hard economic times, the city of Chattanooga has again become a hotbed of innovation, drawing a growing base of startup companies and even large companies to locate and retain businesses. Behind this revolution is the presence of gigabit services provided throughout the city by Electric Power Board (EPB), a municipal utility provider that delivers 1 and now 10 Gbps fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) services to the community.

Smart-Grid — It requires communication infrastructure; the Chattanooga gigabit is a branch of the smart-grid initiative. The Smart-Grid is the single largest boost of economic development for a smart city initiative today.

America’s infrastructure is the oldest on record and in desperate need of repair and new construction. What’s less obvious is whether President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to spend big will have as much ‘oomph’ for the economy.

Trump has discussed investment proposals, which include roads, bridges and airports, ranging from more than $500 billion — double what Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton sought — to $1 trillion over a decade. He said in his victory speech early Wednesday that he aims to make America’s infrastructure “second to none” while putting millions of people to work and doubling economic growth.

Infrastructure will most definitely help in a strong economic development, maybe not as a long-term solution but for the short run — it will indeed create an employment boost and rocket-launch the economy but is this a good solution to many of the “Smart Wants and Needs” problems?

It could even spark faster-than-desirable inflation. The economy is close to full employment, a whole generation of Baby Boomers is retiring, so millions of employable workers aren’t exactly sitting around idle. A big jobs-boosting program would drive down the unemployment rate further and “push wages up in a more aggressive fashion.” said David Kelly, chief global strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management.

“Due to the new absence in adequate provisions to pay for the infrastructure plan, the nation’s debt load would worsen — you’d end up with bigger deficits and higher inflation that could push up interest rates, which could make funding the deficit even more difficult. As it stands now, Trump’s proposal suggests “populism is without a doubt — good politics, but it’s not good economics.” — Kelly says.

Just as a side-note here — Trump has said his 10-year plan would be revenue neutral.

As an abrupt and unexpected end to this idea just like the results of the recent elections and leaving the reader with some food for thought as it were — “Will smart cities benefit the world long term or leave us stranded and forever in debt?”

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The sudden movement of existing cities in a race for the “Smart” Revolution — Trump’s fallout!!

Written by Vishwajeet Shelar