Surviving in the Smartest Cities
Smart cities are the world-wide newest craze, shaped by experts, developers, as well as the cities own citizens. The innovative ideas of citizens and the rise of new technologies are now shaping our cities, making them much more accessible for the majority of lifestyles. The world is now driven by technology, controlling everything around us, as ‘digital technology is embedded across all city functions’ (Smart City Council, 2017), but will this go too far? I question this a lot.
Companionless Cities
Smart cities are all about increasing effectiveness and efficiency. So much so that human interaction is barely needed. Take Uber Eats or Deliveroo for example, you can simply order what ever food you like from your phone to your home without any interaction. Cities used to thrive from bustling food markets, like Camden Town in London, and traditional food stores, with an exciting buzz in the air, everyone celebrating many different cultures together, meeting many new people from different backgrounds. As useful and effective as these apps are, I still wonder how straining they are for our physical and mental well being. Will we forget how to socially interact with each other? Will we even need to build social relations?
The pace of change in the digital world is so fast that society can barely keep up. If people using technology everyday struggle to understand- how possibly can the elderly generation keep up? It seems unfair that you need a phone to access many kinds of information and services. People from low income backgrounds, the elderly people with disabilities and homeless people are just a few groups that may not able to have access to these technologies. It seems unfair that smart cities could make life harder for a group of people in favor of other groups. For smart cities to be properly effective, technology must be accessible and easy to use for everyone.
The main concern for me about smart cities is the lack of privacy citizens now get, and the lack of citizens that know about it. Sensor boxes collect data on everything around them and are often hidden on lampposts or buildings, equipped with hard drive, enabling it to track noise, pollution and traffic congestion. These are starting to appear in major cities all around the world, gathering a huge amount of data about their residents and their activities. Although they promise to help make cities more sustainable and efficient, it scares me that every citizen will be forced into sharing personal data. Hacking into these systems would also cause a huge safety problem, resulting in the security of the citizens being jeopardized.
The only way the world will survive
However, many people argue every city worldwide should become smarter due to the huge problem with pollution and resources future generations face.
In just 30 years, the UN predicts the world’s population will reach more than 9 billion, with two-thirds of them living in cities. This is lead to a huge influx of wealth and jobs, but we can’t forget about the huge problems this may cause. There will be a pressure on schools, shops, transport systems, hospitals, water supply, transport systems, waste management, agriculture. And this is just naming a few of them! The only way to cope with this ongoing pressure is to utilize technology into each of these fields to create efficient processes within every aspect of the city.
A great example is the transport industry. Transport technology is in the midst of a revolution, improving efficiency of existing methods, as well as creating new solutions of transportation. Even in our day to day lives, technology helps us increase efficiency of our transport methods, one example is route planning, and another is Uber. Sensors in a vehicle communicate with GPS services to determine the best route, being displayed on a head-up display that physically directs the driver along route. This results in getting to work or school quicker, or just speeds up the pace of our daily lives, all increasing productivity. With Uber, you can get picked up from your exact location any time you want to be driven anywhere you want, leading to greater flexibility and safer roads, appealing to riders hugely.
One aspect of smart cities is sustainability. They are beginning to be designed to limit the impact we have on the environment.
As said by James,
10% of carbon emissions are the result of people driving around in their cars trying to find a parking space.
Innovative digital ideas includes ground censoring. In Bad Hersfeld, Germany, they installed an integrated intelligent parking management system. Sensors were installed above parking spaces, identifying whether spaces were occupied. Drivers could then be directed to open spots, reducing emissions and congestion at busy periods. SmartCitiesWorld (2018) now report that 11% of all global parking spaces are now smart, which in the long run could significantly reduce pollution in cities, an important global goal.
Digital technology is helping to drive cities climate positive strategies. Liverpool is hoping advanced technology will re-balance more than 110% of the authority’s fuel and energy emissions. This means they are aiming to become the world’s first climate positive city by the end of 2020 (Business Green, 2018). This is going to be done by installing 15,000 energy saving LED streetlights, that will reduce energy consumption by 82%. Needless to say, there is no doubt this can only influence the world positively and every city globally should strive for this.
Unnecessary?
As efficient as digital technology is making our cities, there is still the question of if it is all necessary. People worry that it will effect traditions, as people are more worried about their phones than their surroundings. People are starting to be connected through technology more than their social surroundings. They are drifting apart from social relations. We must ask ourselves if smart cities are really worth loosing this.
Reflection on Digital Society
Throughout this course I have definitely become more and more aware of my digital surroundings. I have realized social media is not the biggest part of digital technology like I had once thought. I have just started to realize how much it can make a difference worldwide and where the world is headed. I first discovered this during the Pecha Kucha presentation, when I researched how digital technology can help solve food shortages and I quickly realized I could easily relate what I had learnt in Digital Society to my work placement at Syngenta, an agricultural business. It was then that I realized I could apply digital technology pretty much all aspects of my life. I saw how it shaped and influenced my life and decisions- from my food choices to travel plans to my own health.
My favourite topic was smart cites and learning how society has come and how far it may go in the future. It made me very thankful for the creation of smart cities. I enjoy being able to travel throughout Manchester quickly and affordably. I enjoy that I can use apps on my phone to pay for everything. I had never really thought just how much the planet can benefit from these technology advancements, even through the smallest of things like parking. It therefore gave me a bit more hope that we can reserve the effects we have had on the environment, looking at the case studies on Liverpool and Vienna.
The course has taught me to value my privacy. After the session on the digital engagement, I changed all my privacy settings on my social media as I realized it was unnecessary to share some aspects of my life with everyone, as it could be seen by future employers. Learning that Siri or Amazon Alexa may be listening into my conversations was definitely shocking for me! In the future I would definitely be more careful about talking about sensitive information like card details.
Digital Society has also made me value my social relations. As much as smartphones link communities together, through sites such as Facebook and Snapchat, I am beginning to question the implications of living in a digital society. I have realized how easy it is to get caught up in technology and forget what it can do to my physical and mental well being.
I have never been confident about writing blog posts but doing the Digital Society unit has definitely helped me improve hugely throughout the course. I now understand how and how important it is to use free images on the Internet, so I will be a lot more wary of this in the future. I enjoy writing assignments in a blog post format as it has allowed me to express my personal opinions more. I found learning about presentations with a Pecha Kucha format particularly useful as I believe it is a great way to present ideas in a short and engaging way. I will definitely be using this style whilst at University and future interviews.
