Smart Cities 🧠

The term “smart city” has been tossed around for a while now and went through different definitions all having their own perception over what exactly makes a city “smart”. Nowadays, the European Commission defines a smart city as “a place where traditional networks and services are made more efficient with the use of digital and telecommunication technologies for the benefit of its inhabitants and business.” When hearing the words “smart city” most people think of futuristic ICT tweaks to a city’s infrastructure. And although that is a big part of it, having just one app that will serve as the key to the city is not the purpose of this concept.

The idealized picture of a smart city is a city where every part of the machine that runs the city is working in the most effective, efficient and sustainable way. This can be achieved through a participatory government that invests in human and social capital through the help of modern ICT communication infrastructure that can lead to a high quality of life, with a wise management of natural resources.

Let’s look as an example at Amsterdam’s “Smart City Initiative” which activated hundreds of collaborative projects including the government, businesses and local residents in an attempt to “reduce traffic, save energy and improve public safety”. All of it is done using an interconnected wireless platform. Although not perfect, Amsterdam is trying to be “smarter”. The city has a crowd monitoring practice that can give the city an overview of Amsterdam's flow of people and give insights on how to decongest an overly crowded area. Then there's this cute app called “Mijnbuur” that is basically a neighborly relationship building app. It’s really common in the Netherlands that you share your apartment with other people or just have next-door neighbors in the apartment complex. Every apartment in the Netherlands can apply for the app and it helps you better manage cohabitation with other citizens. The goal of the app is to “cooperate to maintain, clean and ensure the structure as a whole.” If a neighbor busted a water pipe and it damaged your ceiling? Just request remuneration from the common pot.

This direction towards a more interconnected system has resulted in a lot of different experiments, one of the most successful one being a Chinese app called “WeChat”. What WeChat did is implemented multiple functionalities in one app. So Imagine you live in China… You order a cab, in the cab, you order an online ticket to the cinema later today. You let your friend know that you’ll be a bit late because there's traffic. Being stuck in traffic you order some groceries online and complete the order just in time for your arrival. You rate the driver 5 stars because he was nice and took a shortcut towards the end. And you did all of this using just one app. But that’s not even all. WeChat also offers you the possibility to pay your bills, call and message anyone for free and do online investments… all in one app.

So there we go … Bob’s your uncle. Of course, we are still in the trial and error stage of building smart cities but it’s nice to see how each country tries it’s best to connect its people with the city’s economy in hopes of bringing the idea of a complete smart city to fruition.