1. Introduction
For this topic, we are looking at smart cities. Digital technologies are having an increasing impact on determining our interactions with our environment and the places where we live, work and play. What will be the impact of technology on the future of our smart cities?
In this topic you will:
- Ask what a smart city is and what the applications are of smart city tech.
- Look at smart city phases 1.0, 2.0, and the emerging 3.0.
- Look critically at the relationship between the users (all of us) and the smart city.
- Ask how each of us as individuals, as members of different groups and as a part of the city, interact with the city both in terms of the technology we use and the data we share.
- Ask what the future holds for the smart city.
- Think and reflect on the relationship that you have with your city environment and what it means for you in the future.
2. What is a smart city and why do we need them?
With the number of people living in cities globally above 56% and predicted to rise to 68% by 2050, how we manage our cities is key to their ongoing success and our quality of life. Combined with the GDP creation provided by cities (over 80%), we have an environment where we have no choice but to use smart city technology to ensure that our cities work efficiently and will continue to work efficiently as the population and pressures on our environment increase. This is especially relevant to the issue of climate change, where smart cities can be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce energy consumption on a global scale. Cities are responsible for 70% of the world’s greenhouse gases!
So what is a smart city?
“A smart city is a designation given to a city that incorporates information and communication technologies (ICT) to enhance the quality and performance of urban services such as energy, transportation and utilities in order to reduce resource consumption, wastage and overall costs. The overarching aim of a smart city is to enhance the quality of living for its citizens through smart technology” (Techopedia).
or it could be….
“Essentially, a smart city is the re-development of an area or city using information and communication technologies (ICT) to enhance the performance and quality of urban services such as energy, connectivity, transportation, utilities and others.
A smart city when it is at its most basic level is developed when ‘smart’ technologies are deployed to change the nature and economics of the surrounding infrastructure” (Computerworld).
A useful way to look at the essence of a smart city is viewing it as the development and implementation of technologies across six interconnected areas: society, quality of life, environment, government, economy and mobility.
This model is taken from the Brussels Smart City project, an ongoing plan to improve the quality of life for citizens in Brussels via ‘smart solutions’. While the success of these initiatives has yet to be fully analysed, approaches trialled have included using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, to support the city’s police and fire services.
There are many different definitions and versions of what a smart city is and does.
💬 Contribute
Read the following prompt, then add your contribution in the box below. Responses from the same person are the same colour. All comments are anonymous.
What do you think makes up the essence of smart city? How is a smart city different from a non-smart city?
3. Smart cities 1.0: Technology-driven
The first phase of smart cities (1.0) was based around a top-down technologically driven programme of development. This approach used technology to solve a problem, but without necessarily understanding the longer term implications of how that technology would work in an urban environment and the impact it would have on the quality of life for its citizens.
There are numerous examples of 1.0 not working as it was expected to, with the city of Songdo being one of the more famous ones.
Smart city 1.0 — Songdo
Songdo in South Korea is a prime example of smart city 1.0 where everything was designed to be controlled by a city-wide network. It was constructed on reclaimed ‘land’ from the Yellow Sea with the intention of creating a utopian vision of a smart city. One of the main problems, though, was that businesses and people were reluctant to work or live there, with only a third of residential housing occupied. It is considered a lonely place where it is difficult to meet people.
Cities like Songdo have been built from scratch as a smart city, but it has been noted both by the researchers and the residents that one of the missing ingredients that affected Songdo’s success was the failure of the project to develop and nurture the relationship between the city and the citizens. If we don’t feel anything for where we live, there is something vital missing, and you won’t find that “something” in Songdo.
4. Smart Cities 2.0: Technology-enabled
If smart city 1.0 was a top-down approach, then 2.0 is the opposite; here a “bottom-up” approach is taken, with local government and citizens driving the Smart City agenda. This is where we currently are: a more people-centred approach where “smart technologies are employed as tools to tackle social problems”.
A number of factors have influenced the ongoing development of smart cities 2.0:
- World population — The majority of the world’s population (56%) live in urban areas and this will only increase over time.
- Ageing population — Our global populations are ageing and our cities have not been designed to support older populations.
- Pollution — Cities produce large amounts of pollution and we can see the direct consequences of pollution and poor air quality on the health of the population (see Greater Manchester “clean” air map).
- GDP — Cities also produce ⅘ (four fifths) of the world’s GDP, so changes in economies need to be centralised within cities to ensure that GDP is not negatively affected.
- Climate change and sustainable living — It is estimated that by 2050, 68% of the world’s population will live in a city. How our smart cities develop will have a direct impact on our ability to combat climate change.
- Poverty — Due to the historical development of urban areas, large numbers of people exist in poor living conditions, so there is a desire to make these areas better to live in and improve overall quality of life.
Could smart city technology and applications help solve many of these issues?
Smart city 2.0 — Rio de Janeiro
An interesting example of 2.0 is the Rio de Janeiro operations centre (COR), which has numerous CCTV feeds from across the city. City-wide monitoring covers everything from the weather, traffic conditions, and disaster response to public utility issues and public order.
The CCTV infrastructure was put in place to address the safety concerns that arose from the city hosting both the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and the 2016 Olympic Games.
Not surprisingly, it isn’t viewed in a positive way by the population of Rio. The residents think of it as being a city-wide security system designed to control them rather than help them. What one report suggests is that although there were elements that worked with some degree of success, overall the focus on the technology failed to take into account the most important part: actually helping people.
How do we use smart city 2.0 tech in our cities?
In order to introduce these technologies, sensors are needed for the management and control of the city infrastructure. This is referred to as instrumenting a city, where sensors are placed on vehicles, water pipes, light poles and car parking spaces.
You drive into the city looking for somewhere to park. You use an app on your phone which gets information from the sensor in the parking space so you know it’s free; you don’t waste petrol driving around, create less pollution and save time.
In combination with instrumenting a city is the movement away from city governance control towards providing sharing services. We have seen the start of this process with Uber and Airbnb, and the concept of sharing services is thought to be a very powerful one.
“In 2022 I travelled to Prague for a weekend away and only used Uber to travel whilst I was there. The same service wherever you go, easy to use and convenient but…”
Increasingly, however, cities around the world are imposing restrictions on Airbnb due to its success, citing overtourism in historic areas and rising rents amid housing crises. From 2024, cities such as Vienna, Paris and Berlin will require hosts to have permits for short-term rentals, and a maximum number of days for tourist lets per year will be in place.
Uber has been the subject of controversy in many cities due to its disruptive effect on existing taxi services. How ride-sharing companies treat their staff has also earned them high-profile criticism; in late 2023, Uber and Lyft agreed to a historic settlement of $328 million after being accused of withholding pay and mandatory paid sick leave from drivers in New York.
On the other hand, Uber has made it easier for people to get around without having to own a car; this is more cost-effective than private car ownership, and it also saves a lot of space within a city. Uber has also argued that its ride-sharing model is eco-friendly, although research on Uber and Lyft use in the USA disputes this.
The issue with smart cities is that the place matters; as human beings, we want spaces with greenery and a welcoming atmosphere. Smart cities built with smart technology from the top down like Songdo are not loved or particularly liked, as they lack a deep sense of culture and history.
5. Challenges of smart cities 2.0
Digital divide
A significant challenge to the success of smart cities 2.0 is the existence of the digital divide across the world. Not everyone is online or even wants to be. People who are not accustomed to being online will struggle to use these sharing services. You might be surprised to know that within every city there are digital divide areas where poverty or poor city design has prevented people from accessing the benefits of the smart city. In the UK in 2022, 6% of houses still didn’t have access to the internet at home. This is concentrated across the older age groups and those from lower socioeconomic groups.
Bridging the digital divide in the UK and internationally is a significant challenge to the success of our smart cities. You can also read about the digital divide in Week 4 — the Internet.
💬 Contribute
Read the following prompt, then add your contribution in the box below. Responses from the same person are the same colour. All comments are anonymous.
How could we reduce the digital divide and ensure everyone benefits from the smart city?
Rebound effect
There is also a ‘rebound effect’ with the development of sharing services like Uber. If services are easier to use or are cheaper, people are more likely to use them; consequently, the expected gains from the service, such as reduction in pollution or energy savings, can be lost.
We often think that increases in efficiency will automatically end up saving energy and resources, but counter-intuitively it can have an adverse effect.
If more people are going to use Uber instead of public transport or walking then this could lead to an increase in pollution and energy use.
As mentioned earlier, companies such as Uber have also had problems and bad publicity around how they treat the people who work for them and their impact on existing businesses.
Should we ignore the problems with Uber just because it is a convenient service?
Automation
Another element of smart technology within cities which is in development across many different sectors is automation. This includes the recent evolution of the automated checkouts system across supermarkets, which was once predicted to be worth $4 billion by 2024. However, as with other aspects of smart cities, there has been a backlash against this automation on the grounds that it contributes to increasing loneliness. Dutch supermarkets are even introducing ‘chat check-outs’ to combat the lack of connection people feel as a result of these new technologies replacing human interaction.
Automated vehicles have been prominent in the news over the last couple of years and have the potential to reduce traffic accidents, which would in turn save money in emergency services, as well as improve efficiency on the roads and reduce the need for car parking spaces within a city. Trials of self-driving vehicles are ongoing and have begun in the UK, with an example being self-driving buses in the city of Milton Keynes.
A possible rebound effect of increasingly automated vehicles is the promotion of super commuting, which could in turn increase pollution. There would also be “induced demand”, as driving would be a lot easier; automated cars would also disrupt the driving industry, causing a great loss of jobs, such as those of lorry drivers and taxi drivers. The first ever inter-city flight by a flying car took place in 2021. Is this the future? What impact will this have on our smart cities?
Big data and ubiquitous computing (also known as pervasive computing)
We have looked at the main challenges facing the successful application of smart city technology across our urban environments. In combination with these challenges is perhaps one of the biggest drawbacks: the amount of data that we are producing is increasing exponentially and our ability to manage that data is problematic.
Huge amounts of data are generated on a daily basis around pollution production, traffic management, use of sharing services, and so on, but most of the information is held by companies and is inaccessible.
Just think what positive improvements could be made if the data on a city was open. Changes could be put in place to reduce fuel poverty, make households more eco-friendly and ensure that everyone reaps the benefits of being a participant in the connected city.
Sensors could be added to street lights and CCTV cameras, which could allow for CO2 and weather conditions to be monitored; the street lighting could then be adjusted accordingly, saving energy. People could even look at where the best quality air was located and change their route accordingly to avoid the pollution if they had access to the data.
The problem is that the data is held by companies that have a focus on increasing profits and not contributing towards the empowerment of the city’s inhabitants.
6. Smart cities 3.0: Citizen co-creation
Recently, a different idea of what smart cities should be has been developing, known as Smart Cities 3.0. This type of smart city isn’t based on monitoring or services, but is based on empowering the people that live there and improving wellbeing and making the link between the citizen and the local government a more effective one.
Right now, people believe that the current approaches to smart cities are in the interests of privileged people and industry and that they don’t address problems such as poverty, health and unemployment. To address these problems, there has been considerable research around the development of “shareable cities”.
This wouldn’t mean using profitable platforms like Uber; instead, this approach is centred around community sharing and engagement, such as sharing skills and tools. This allows for a sense of community development and social inclusion which would contribute towards a more sustainable city, saving people money at the same time.
The city of Vienna has applied the 2.0 model across the city, but has now started to move towards the 3.0 model by engaging with the population in a number of partnerships around sustainable energy use. Some smart cities are often a combination of the different levels, 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0, and some cities are transforming from 1.0 straight to 3.0 and missing out phase 2.0 entirely.
Blindsquare is an interesting example, where an app uses crowdsourced information and GPS to make it easier for the blind to navigate a city.
Examples like this show that it’s not the technology that makes a city ‘smart’, it’s what it does with the technology, how it does it and why. Smart Cities Library summed it up nicely in this tweet.
Smart cities need to be inclusive and accessible to everyone!
- A number of cities have implemented a platform that allows opinions on city legislation to be accessed. The most popular ideas are then discussed by the council, in an example of “direct democracy”.
- In Manchester, there was a platform known as City Verve, which aimed to use the Internet of Things to tackle issues that face the population.
- Barcelona, a city which aims to be a “digital tech capital in southern Europe”, is a fantastic example of how 3.0 is starting to be implemented and is having visible benefits. Barcelona’s Superblocks project is an interesting use of a smart city 3.0 approach to reduce traffic and consequently pollution. This strategy changes the dynamics of urban spaces, giving them back to the local population and small businesses. In combination, local transport systems have been invested in to ensure that there are viable alternatives to using a car. This project is in the process of being expanded across the whole city.
Other smart city changes that have been considered so far include citizen sensing for people with chronic respiratory problems; talkative bus stops for the blind; bike sharing; and air-quality monitoring.
✅ Poll
Read the following prompt then vote below. All responses are anonymous.
Given everything you’ve learned so far, do you feel positive about Smart Cities?
Activity
In this final activity, we will be looking at how you think smart city tech could be applied in a specific geographical area.
Think about where you grew up, where you have lived, or where you are living now. It could be your home town, it could be somewhere you stayed on holiday, or where you are living now as a student.
💬 Contribute
Read the following prompt, then add your contribution in the box below. Responses from the same person are the same colour. All comments are anonymous.
How could smart city tech benefit a location that you are familiar with?
7. The future of smart cities
With the applications of technology in smart cities developing all the time, further innovations in smart cities are likely to continue emerging in the near future. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already playing a part in areas such as improving the energy efficiency of new buildings, and potential uses of AI have already been identified to improve sustainability and efficiency in areas such as construction, waste management, healthcare, and public safety. As major global cities experiment with these innovations, it will be crucial to continue critically assessing the benefits and drawbacks of smart city technologies and the impact they have on the lives of citizens.
8. Summary
How smart is your city? How connected is it? Does it make your life better?
In this topic we’ve looked at what smart cities are, what lessons we’ve learned from the successes and failures of early “top-down” Smart City 1.0 projects, how the widespread “instrumenting of cities” has been at the forefront of the development of Smart Cities 2.0, and how citizen-generated data is driving Smart Cities 3.0 projects.
We’ve also looked at some of the challenges posed by Smart Cities, such as how we bridge the digital divide and ensure equal access to the benefits of Smart Cities for all citizens.
