1. Defining the Smart City
No one seems to agree with what a smart actually is. Defining smart cities is not an easy task. Different people have different perspectives on smart cities. Smart cities are a difficult concept to define as a lot of factors govern it from technology to social policies like infrastructure. They are also a reason for uneven development. The issue is identifying the problem is more difficult than it is thought to be. Other issues with the development of smart cities are geographical and social uneven distribution, political inertia, not scalable, economy, regulatory barriers, large suck costs, lost competition among technology providers, slow adoption rate, and urban problems.
Smart cities don’t have a clear definition. Different terms such as cyber, digital, wired, knowledge cities, etc over the years have been used based on the progress (Hollands, Robert G.). Over the years emphasis is given to information and communication technologies. Smart cities around the globe assume automatically a positive impact on IT. Human capital, social learning, and smart communities are also major pillars of a progressive smart city. Public-private partnerships and investments might not always succeed and thus dealing with such issues need to be handled. There is a strong influence of neo-liberalism in the smart cities, the cities and governing bodies must embrace urban policies and urban entrepreneurialism. On the other hand, smart cities are based on the driving force (Cohen, Boyd). He classified them into technology companies driven, government-driven, and citizen-driven but finally, many smart cities are mostly a mixture of a few or all three. Although this classification sounds good this doesn’t give clear picture issues such as market acceptance, economy, market failures, etc also need to be considered. Other points to be considered are whether and to what extent cites are service providers, are the services provided more efficiently.
Smart Urbanism takes into account the infrastructure, technology, and other aspects. It addresses the challenges with urban growth, climate change, social implications, etc keeping the limitations and challenges in check (Luque-Ayala, Andrés and Marvin, Simon). A discussion with a wider community involving research, climate experts, technologists, social scientists, etc is needed to bridge the gap between what is academically taught and what the reality is. Involving a cohort of citizens and residents in civic engagement such as public meetings and zoning hearings will also be useful. This is very important because different groups have different ideologies and approaches to solve the same problem. The potential benefits, profitability, impact on climate, sustainability, etc are some that need to be addressed. There is also an issue with contrasting geographies thus different policies might be required at different places. But in general, we are sold is the idea of a smart city (Rogan, Kevin) from examples like Deloitte’s graph and Sidewalk’s streetscape. They bear little to no resemblance to the real world. The interaction between technologies is not clear unless we start from the ground up. Sometimes solutions can be solved without the use of technology. These ideas don’t portrait how the smart cities run in the future, who pays for them, who benefits from them.
Cities are hard to classify as smart. Multiple factors affect the process and progress of a smart city. A different approach that is quantified, has well-defined guidelines and is a universally agreed measure to categorize cities into different levels of smartness is required. A standard approach is not possible to encourage smart city development but steps to ensure removing pain points like improving policy, regulatory, and standardization approvals, must be taken to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of smart cities.
References:
- CLARK, J. (2020). Uneven Innovation: The Work of Smart Cities. New York: Columbia University Press. doi:10.7312/clar18496
- Hollands, Robert. (2008). Will the Real Smart City Please Stand Up?. City. 12. 303–320. 10.1080/13604810802479126.
- Luque, Andres & Marvin, Simon. (2015). Developing a critical understanding of smart urbanism?. Urban Studies. 52. 10.1177/0042098015577319.
- https://www.fastcompany.com/3047795/the-3-generations-of-smart-cities
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-27/what-s-a-smart-city-supposed-to-look-like