Smart Cities: The Race to Make Cities More Efficient

What do the following cities have in common:  Stockholm, Singapore, Rio de Janeiro, Malaga, Barcelona, ​​Santander, Madrid, Burgos, Buenos Aires, or Gijon?  All of these cities have begun implementing ‘smart city‘ technology.

Eedo Lifshitz, international business development and marketing executive, said that “smart cities use information and communication technologies (ICT) to become more intelligent and efficient in the use of resources, resulting in improved service delivery, personal security, quality of life, education, and economic growth, while at the same time reducing environmental footprint and enabling a sustainable low-carbon economy. Smart City projects are enabled by connecting municipal services such as smart traffic systems, street lights, public safety, electricity, gas and water services through a standard IP network.”

Lifshitz said that “multiple parties will benefit from the Smart City Big Data and Analytics solutions – the residents who will enjoy improved well-being and personal safety, businesses that will experience economic growth,  vendors that will be part of the new Smart City eco-system, and the mayor, who will increase his or her chances to be re-elected. It is the vendors that have both the clear business interest and available marketing budget to promote their solutions and therefore are likely to be a key driving force behind Smart City Big Data and Analytics solutions.”

Yiru Zhong, Frost & Sullivan Senior Industry Analyst, said that “the role of ICT in a multimodal electric urban transportation systems is defined by the building blocks of connectivity, big data, cloud and software, as well as digital identification and security solutions.”  Technology companies like IBM, Siemens, Microsoft, Intel and Cisco are selling software to solve city problems and to improve the efficiencies in the way that cities are run.  For example, IBM has more than 2500 “smarter city” projects in operation around the world.

Andrew Hudson-Smith, director of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, said that “there is a lot of buzz around smart cities but there is no technology out there that is actually changing people’s lives,” although Hudson-Smith thinks that within five years that “cities will become incredibly smart.”

Dr Lisa Amini, director of IBM Research, said that “we need to build cities that adapt to the needs of their citizens.  Previously that was not possible because there was not enough information.”  But some worry that big business rather than citizens will end up controlling data and the way that cities are run.

Nick Pickles, director of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, for example, said that “at present the control of information is being taken away from citizens, and companies providing services are rushing to find ways of generating revenue from the data they hold. The danger is that when smart cities become a reality, individuals will not be able to control the ways they are monitored or what happens to the information, which is exactly the opposite of how it should be.”

Anthony Townsend, director of the Institute of the Future, said that “some people want to fine tune a city like you do a race car but they are leaving citizens out of the process.”