How to re-think the idea of a smart city

Have you ever considered what makes a city a smart city? By now you’ve heard from politicians and technology companies that eventually you will live in a smart city — if we just install enough sensors, if we control everything through technology, that’ll be a truly smart city.

So much talk around smart cities involves installing expensive sensors and software to track citizens, invading their privacy in exchange for some incremental improvement in efficiency — — usually around bus routes and garbage collection. Instead, let’s look at what a smart city can really be, with citizens opting into a system that maximizes their utility.

An example. Say you wake up in the morning and you know you have to go to the office. On your mobile device you have an app and you can tell it, “Today I’d like to take the scenic route. It’s beautiful weather, I’m in no rush. What’s the best, fastest way to get to the office right now?” And you get the answer.

What if a smart city is not one which controls your life, but provides all the necessary data, the information you need to make smart decisions, better decisions, in your day-to-day life?

We try to bring technology to make decisions for us. But what we use technology to create the information on which to base our own decisions — far better decisions? Then we can be…