Follow up post: Smart Cities -2019
Questions, thoughts, reflections
Thank you to all who attended the second Digital Society lecture yesterday on the topic of smart cities. James covered a lot of ground in this fascinating session leaving us with plenty to think about . Here are a few questions that came up during the lecture which had me thinking afterwards and reflecting on our relationship with the cities that we live in and how they need to be more sustainable and people friendly in the future.
Is the “Tin Can” (University Place) a smart building?
From the heat of the room I would say no as it felt too warm but yes it was a Smart Building with every aspect theoretically regulated through a smart system to make it great to work in.
You can’t open any windows as the building is supposed to monitor and change the temperature when its too hot or cold. In my experience the rooms are always too hot in the Tin Can so is the smart system working here?
Digital transformation
Digital technology is transforming the world we live in whilst we live in it and the pace of change is so fast society sometimes seems unable to catch up. To avoid getting lost in the process we need to consider what we are trying to achieve in cities? What end result do we want?
James pointed to this excellent quote in his presentation, which really struck a chord:
Cedric Price — “Technology is the answer but what is the question?”
Here, Cedric Price cleverly highlights the way technology is sometimes held up as a “silver bullet”, expected to provide the solution to every problem. Technology is neither fundamentally good nor bad and, in order to achieve great things with technology you have to first know what you want to achieve or need to have identified the problem you want to solve.
Parking in the city
How can we design smart cities to reduce the impact we have on the environment? How can we be more sustainable in our actions?
As James said around 10% of carbon emissions are the result of people driving around in their cars trying to find a parking space One possible solution to this problem would be to set up an app linked to a city wide network, which could notify you of empty spaces and allow you to pre-book them. A scheme like this has the potential to save a huge amount of resources and energy.
Combine this with how much time your car is standing still and not being used (98%) what are the options for the future?
Would you give up your car to save the planet?
We will build the cities and the people will want to live in them.
Attempts at Smart Cities haven’t necessarily worked so far for a number of reasons.
Songdo is a great example of a Smart City that no-one wants to live in. Everything has a sensor in it but the people are not sure if its “smart” enough to do what its supposed to do.
Would you want to live in Songdo?
So overall a thought provoking session which raised many questions in my head.
What do you think about the ideas that were raised?
Please comment below with your own thoughts and reflections.
Please email digisoc@manchester.ac.uk with any questions or problems.
