Smart cities: the future?
How can smart cities be implemented in a way that is beneficial for the many?
What is a smart city?
To put it simply, a smart city is one which uses technology to improve the quality of its services and the lives of those who live in the area. As of 2021, 56% of the global population resided in urban areas and with the challenges that come with this, smart cities can potentially resolve issues that are being and will be faced by urban dwellers.
Can you think of an example of technology being used within a city to achieve this aim?
Though we may not realise, examples such as contactless payments on public transport or London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) constitute what smart cities are all about. The ULEZ involves a camera network which links to driver data with the aim of reducing air pollution, given that this is the biggest environmental risk to the health of Londoner’s. In the first instance, technology is being used to reduce queues, increasing the flows of passengers — which is not only economically beneficial but improves the ease and experience of its users. New technologies are also being developed, such as the Critical Asset Monitoring System which involves using lidar to detect objects including cars, people etc who cross the railway intersection, warning train operators to slow down to therefore avoid fatal accidents.
The rollout of smart meters in Amsterdam demonstrate an intention to increase energy efficiency, whilst other similar systems use machine learning to distinguish between different appliances in the home to identify which can be unplugged in order to reduce energy consumption. Therefore, the use of smart city initiatives within transport infrastructure, as well as other areas like energy efficiency and safety demonstrates the extent to which innovative technologies can be implemented and experienced by the urban population — some of which have become so ubiquitous that you wouldn’t think they were smart city solutions!
The implications of living in a smart city
Challenges
There are however, concerns about the potential for the elite to sideline the needs of low tech users when implementing this vision. It is claimed that technology can be treated like a science project, rather than being utilised to address the needs of people themselves. The smart city of Songdo is a clear example of why a technology driven approach fails as it lacks an environment where the city and citizens could build a relationship, due to the lack of history and sense of place. Thus, people must be at the centre of these projects, not the extravagant visions of the elite.
Some of these challenges are laid out in the image above, ranging from economical operational cost concerns to information security, given the “parallel growth of technology and malicious threats.” An attack on the city’s system can have alarming wider knock on effects. Furthermore, smart cities must consider how to respond to system failures which can occur after natural disasters (the occurrence of which is only projected to increase due to climate change), whilst balancing issues of costs and efficiency.
In addition, there must be considerations for the confidentiality of data — if citizens are not persuaded that their sensitive data is being stored securely, these platforms will be avoided and unused. Some even argue that the concept of smart cities is a neoliberal project that involves power relations whereby the government and corporations “turn public space into private space and control technological advancements,” for their own “self preservation”. This links to ideas of surveillance capitalism with Zuboff describing it as the “unilateral claiming of private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioural data.” The idea that our experiences in more and more of our “offline” spaces are becoming “online” is something that is troubling to some. Smart cities are also seen as a top down approach in which the planning is centralised to those with most power, thus benefitting the corporations, technology providers and gated communities the most, whilst leaving the local communities with a loss of land and their livelihoods.
Opportunities
Instead, citizens should have the power to be actively engaged in the building and management of their own cities. A sustainable approach whereby grassroots initiatives and perspectives is prioritised can enable communities to innovate and implement technological fixes to improve their living experiences. This therefore goes back to the idea of centralising the needs of people when developing cities, and addressing their problems directly, rather than enforcing the visions that those at the top may have. This must be done in co-operation with the government and private sector, which can prove challenging when different demands are presented, where market interests conflict with the citizens’ needs for improved services and meaningful change.
Platforms such as Seoul’s mVoting app present a solution to this, as citizens are able to engage with policy making to influence action such as that around non-smoking areas or even significant budgetary decisions, in a way that avoids costly and inefficient traditional surveys (in terms of both time and human resources). In addition, there is potential for environmental concerns to be addressed using technology, with places like Amsterdam making big investments in expanding and managing the charging infrastructure for their e-bus plans.
The future
Smart cities therefore present both challenges and opportunities for change. Implementing effective initiatives can be complex given the variation in both interests and expectations of the different players involved. However, what is clear is that people must be at the centre of future development — it is their needs that must be addressed, and it is the local community which experiences the harsh consequences of unsuitable, unsustainable, top down driven proposals.
Reflections
During this course, I have been able to develop my blog writing skills. This is something I have never done before and contrasted with the formal essays we are normally set, and so it was interesting to experiment with the tone of my writing as well as the formatting. I also familiarised myself with Medium as a platform. I think over time I became better at writing for an online audience in a way that was succinct but also engaging, whilst ensuring that my referencing was correct, and that formatting was utilised in a way to aid the reader’s experience of engaging with the text. I therefore liked the ability to be more creative within the assessed tasks than what normal assignments would allow, and we were introduced to an interesting Japanese style of presentation (PechaKucha).
Previously, I have learned about technology through a geographical lens — for example, how technology has contributed to globalisation and therefore the increasing interconnectedness of the world, but also how this is unevenly experienced. I liked that I was able to continue this, as we were able to explore different topics such as the Internet or Chatbots through an ethical/human focused perspective. In addition, I enjoyed learning about the challenges faced by AI development and in particular the potential for inequalities (like racial or gender ones) present in real life can be reproduced within these systems, such as when being used within the recruitment process, and therefore the importance of ensuring that this does not happen. I was therefore introduced to the complexities of technological developments and the opposing but also overlapping perspectives surrounding this.
In addition, my critical thinking skills were developed too. Whilst normal assignments have allowed me to do this in the context of academic writing, this course has made me realise the extreme importance of critical thinking when consuming information online, especially given the increasing capability for misinformation to be spread so widely and so quickly across social media. Learning about issues of data privacy was also intriguing, especially because we are often unaware of the terms we agree to when we hand over our data to big companies. Investigating different perspectives around a topic area and weighing up the arguments for and against them is also something I enjoyed engaging with both when completing each week’s content and assignments.
I think I am therefore better equipped in my ability in adapting my written communication for different audiences following the completion of this course. It was also useful to learn more about technology’s role in recruitment which will affect us all in the future and also how we can position ourselves as employable in a society that is becoming increasingly digital.
