The Potentiality of Smart Cities
Dissecting the features of a smart city, and imagining Seattle as a connected, All-American utopia.
The Future, Directed by Spike Jonze
In the 2013 film Her written and directed by Spike Jonze, Joaquin Phoenix’s character falls in love with a self-aware operating system voiced by Scarlett Johansson, and the plot is pushed by the complicated progressions of their relationship. As compelling as this plot is, the physical setting of the film is the aspect that was most immersive and well thought-out.
Set in a futuristic, fictional Los Angeles, Jonze and his team combined aspects of current day Los Angeles and Shanghai to develop an evolved, condensed, and connected urban utopia. It is clear the structural and technological components of the city are connected and communicate with one another, and everything from transit design to walkways and living spaces are interacting in a spacial harmony.
The sprawling, future metropolis might be fictional, but it is playing on a concept not far from reality. Smart cities are urbanized areas that use information technology and sensors that collect data to communicate with the people, devices, and structures that comprise it.
What exactly is a Smart City?
The concept combines information and communication technology (ICT), and the network of physical devices referred to as the Internet of things (IoT) to make city operations, commuting, quality of life, and sustainability as optimal as can be.
To simplify, smart cities to have 3 main focuses:
- Infrastructure — Utilize artificial intelligence and data analysis to streamline transit, roads, and the physical environment to support economic, social, and cultural development.
- E-governance — Use surveillance, open innovation concepts and civilian support to improve the quality and accountability standards of institutional organizations such as policing and government.
- Connectivity — Amalgamate data in previously siloed systems to have public objects and devices communicate with one another in real time.
Why are Smart Cities important?
This is far from Spike Jonze’s fictional dreamworld — it’s a reality that will likely be one of the most challenging transitions humanity faces in the next ten years. With IoT making everything a data source, the insights from aggregated, unsiloed data are becoming more powerful and useful to the infrastructure of some of the world’s most prominent cities.
While cities are growing in sheer size and bustling with people, even more so, they are becoming brim filled with devices that can receive and transmit data. This includes everything from phones, tablets and laptops, but also public objects that are fixtures in cityscapes such as traffic lights, lamp posts and garbage bins. Through the sensors and transmitters in these objects, smart cities will be able to locate people, know what they are doing, and who they are with.
Dubai, Amsterdam, Singapore, New York, Stockholm and Madrid are all major cities that have begun implementing programs and funding to transition into a new era of connectivity. These cities are already utilizing concepts like urban sensing and geotracking, both technologies being instruments to track the movement of people and how they interact with their environment.
These technologies are not being installed just to track people. The goal is to have urban areas manage energy better, conserve water supply, reduce traffic and contamination, and optimize accessibility for things like policing and garbage routes.
Seattle: A Case Study
One city that is ripe for this transition and a worthy candidate is Seattle. A sprawling metropolis fastened in the Northwest coast, Seattle finds itself not only in abundance of natural resources, but also a driving technological hub that prioritizes collaboration, data driven innovation and a growing environmental consciousness.
Seattle has even launched a District 2030 project that outlines the following goals for all new construction in their city centre:
- Within the commencement period, 70% energy efficiency will be attained with the target reaching carbon neutrality by 2030
- The stormwater peak discharge and potable water will be jointly managed and promptly reach a 50% efficiency
- Carbon emissions from heavy vehicles will witness 50% reduction below the current district average
The City of Seattle is transitioning to being a fully functioning smart city as we speak, and they have made it a priority to be transparent through the entire process regarding which specific technologies will be implemented. The city has also been using a new data centre since late 2016, and has committed to implementing 800 new body cameras and a new gunshot detection technology to increase accountability standards for police officers.
Moving Forward…Cautiously
Of course, it is impossible to consider the growth of the smart city concept without raising concerns about data and privacy. Following the news that Facebook breached the private data of 87 million people and used to influence voter behaviour, responsibility and transparency with data is becoming a growing concern in the public cultural consciousness.
Opening every device in our cities to sharing data constantly might be a groundbreaking innovation in one sense, but it’s also makes our cities more vulnerable to becoming compromised. As development for smart cities moves at light speed, it is important to understand that opting into the new standards of 21st Century life comes at a cost.
While our lives are being optimized socially, physically and technologically, the connected devices in our dense urbanized areas are dependant on the commercialization of personal data.
Next Time…
In Part 2 of the Smart Cities series, we will take a look at some of the companies that are on the front lines of the Smart Cities transitions worldwide. Stay tuned by following us on Medium here, or Twitter here.
