Rethinking the roadmap to building smart cities
Defining a smart city
A smart city is one that harnesses the most advanced technology to make the city more efficient and sustainable. Comprehensively, it is one that harnesses technology to make the city more efficient and sustainable for those running it and noticeably improves the lives of those using it, by being easily and effortlessly accessible to all.
A much-published statistic is that today, 50% of the world’s population occupy cities, which barely occupies 2.6% of the Earth’s crust and the UN estimates that approximately 66% of the global population will be living in urban areas by 2050. Since the race to smart cities is a major current trend, this raises 2 main questions to speculate about:
a) Will the urban areas be more densely populated to accommodate the additional global population or will a greater portion of the Earth’s crust be urbanised?
b) What is the roadmap to creating a smart world, assuming that smart and sustainable urbanisation is a priority for all future urban developments?
This article critically looks at the socio-economic aspect of the roadmap to becoming a smart world to flag-up, in its nascent stage, the trend of developing greenfield master planned smart cities.
PART I
THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC RISKS OF MASTERPLANNING A SMART CITY
Learning from Songdo district in Incheon (South Korea):
In March 2016, an article was published by a magazine online, which supported the idea of greenfield smart city master plans. It argued that ‘the challenges posed by legacy infrastructure, labyrinthine bureaucracies and, perhaps most importantly, altering the day-to-day processes that citizens rely on, can quickly scuttle grand smart city projects.’ Citing the example of the smart city development in Songdo district in Incheon, South Korea, it claimed that with smart devices in intelligent buildings that connect citizens with doctors, schools, tutors and other facilities, the city is beginning to look like a ‘high-tech urban utopia.’
Ironically, in October 2016, Ian James, in the Korea Exposé described the district as an ‘empty metropolis’, ‘silent and post-apocalyptic’. This, in spite of the 40 billion UDS invested in 1500 acres of reclaimed Yellow Sea Marsh land to create an ecosystem where 76% of the waste is recycled using a nearly automatic garbage-truck-less disposal system, 40% of the water is recycled and the apartments are equipped with digital control panels that allow inhabitants to view their energy use. Overall, the district uses 40% less energy than average, but there is also the stark reality that this smart city district was built by destroying the home of endangered species that lived in the marshy land.
Learning from Masdar City:
Conceived in 2006 to be the world’s first zero carbon footprint city, Masdar City was set to be completed in 2016. But only partially finished and home to a few thousand students studying at the Masdar University, the green city ghost town is now set to be completed in 2030. Here, the problem does not lie in using resources to build smart buildings and electric transport networks, because this is one way of applying the current technological innovations, but the problem lies in them remaining unused or catering to just a select few individuals and thus, reducing the net impact.
Stratford, a case in point:
Stratford, London is known for its Olympic Park built for the 2012 Olympics games. Like all other Olympic Parks around the world, after the games, London was left with a vast area of expensive, legacy architecture that literally, needed to be given a function. Soon to be home to a new university campus for University College London (UCL), University of the Arts London, and new spaces for the Victoria and Albert Museum and Sadler’s Wells, it is set to cater to a wealthier demographic. More so, as the offices and homes are fitted with ‘state-of-art smart technologies’ and Stratford serves as a bed for testing electric vehicles. But the reality is that the Olympic park development is still as inaccessible by road and to cyclists as ever and the ‘affordable houses’ are clustered across the bridge from the Olympic Park, thus, saving this gentrified area for posh apartments and Privately-Owned-Public-Spaces.
THE FLAW IN THE ROADMAP
The smart city developments in Songdo District, Masdar City and Stratford are indicative of a flaw in the roadmap to creating a smart world. By negating the socio-economic condition of the existing residents, the project is tipping in favour of developers and builders as they get on board with local authorities to invest in a smart city that is expensive, unsustainable, unaffordable and thus, under-utilised. Masdar city has not been able to achieve what it set out to achieve — a zero carbon footprint city, but it has been able to reduce it to 50%. This number is indeed valuable, but its value gets undermined when one looks at the demographics of the people it is catering to. Uber serves as an interesting analogy here. The idea of a ride-hailing app based on the sharing economy works, logically it reduces the number of private cars on roads and relieves individuals of the burden of paying for a personal vehicle. But the social aspect was ignored. And following safety complaints, Uber’s license may not be renewed in London. This indicates that it is imperative to understand the socio-economic and cultural aspect of a place and its people before master planning smart cities.
PART II
Smart city technology is not a feature but an essential part of the infrastructure.
A SMART WORLD IN INCREMENTS AND THROUGH TESTING
The shared economy and circular economy, along with technological innovations are set to change the way we work and live in the near future. Psychologically, the idea of working with legacy architecture may serve as a deterrent but we must now invest in an incremental approach in smartening the existing infrastructure.
LEARNING FROM INDIA
The challenge for India is, of course, space constraint due to its high population. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Smart Cities Mission in 2015, he laid the foundation of smartening the nation in increments. Using machine learning and Big Data for better metrics, the Indian government is collecting and analysing this data for rehabilitating slums, making intelligent streets and pedestrian walkways. According to a report, by August 2017, ’22 of the 60 cities have already initiated the smart roads and 18 cities have initiated integrated command and control projects. Additionally, 20 cities have initiated smart water projects and 26 cities have started implementing the solar rooftop projects. Architectural, place-making and city beautification projects have been initiated in 18 cities.’
The government also recently implemented the blockchain system to collect taxes, making the system transparent and more efficient. Deploying information and communication technologies (ICTs), analytics, and supporting organization structures in the realms of E-governance and citizen services, water management, urban mobility, energy management and waste management, the Indian government is looking at creating a smart nation in increments with constant testing and prototyping.
A BALANCE OF INVESTMENT AND INTERESTS
I recently participated in a Smarter Infrastructure Workshop, organised by the Future of London and my team tried to answer how local authorities could incentivise developers in investing in smart city infrastructure. A key insight was to have clarity of vision and share the expertise to create an inclusive roadmap.
As Carlo Ratti, director of MIT Senseable city Lab once said, ‘Technology is the answer but what is the question.’ The solution lies in framing the right question and authorities and developers collectively addressing them. We need questions like, ‘How will x technology solve y problem for z? Or ‘How will x technology enhance y for z?’ with x being the technology, y the challenge/opportunity and z being the unique people-place dynamic.
