When someone uses the term smart city, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Self-driving cars? Robots? High-tech infrastructure? I noticed my answer usually has some elements from the episodes of Black Mirror. The sanguine cynic in me sees technological dystopia as a genuine possibility. But, keeping aside the extreme scenarios, the term smart city can be used for any city that is using creative ways to solve its own problems (of course, making the most of technological advancements).
Let’s take a recent example. Saudi Arabia has unveiled an ambitious smart city project — The Line. This city would be developed as a straight line, of around 170 km, with no cars or streets. They are aiming to make it carbon positive with 100% clean energy, where everything will be available at 5-minute walking distance.
How are they going to do it? Well, the city aims to harness 90% of the available data to make this possible. The layers below the ground level will have AI-enabled services and high-speed transit facilities. Take a look
Now, Saudi Arabia’s economy is largely dependent on oil and it is also among the top 10 countries that emit the most carbon dioxide in the world. This city is among its efforts to diversify its economy to non-oil resources and a step towards a greener, smarter future.
The idea of a smart city differs from country to country. It depends on the development stage of a country and also the availability of its resources in proportion to its people. Many smart cities across the world are making the most of cutting-edge technologies to solve their citizens’ problems. I have compiled a list of five innovative smart cities in the graphic below using Google Earth. Check it out:
Reading about the above-mentioned cities, I thought what a holistic smart city could look like. In my view, if a city is making a progress in the following three areas, it is moving towards becoming a smarter city:
Making sustainability a priority
According to the United Nations, about 70 per cent of the world population is expected to live in urban areas (55.3 per cent currently). This is going to alter the way we consume resources at the moment drastically.
Problems like environmental degradation and pollution are very real now and concern cities both in developing and developed nations. Moreover, most of the big cities around the world are vulnerable to at least one type of natural disaster.
It is inevitable to invest in technologies that smartly conserve resources and make the cities dynamic. You can see some of the examples in the above graphic.
The relationship we are going to establish with the environment in the next 10-15 years is going to define the course of life for our next generation. (Unless they decided to take the road companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX is building towards multi-planetary living.)
Investing in tomorrow
Smart solutions require investment in the areas that yield results. Some of these may seem costly in the beginning but in the long-term, they prove to be fruitful in terms of generating more economic opportunities.
For example, for developing countries, investment in improving the access to digital technologies may ultimately result in the promotion of new ideas and entrepreneurship, which is likely to generate more employment opportunities.
According to Research and Markets, the global smart cities market size is expected to grow from USD 410.8 billion in 2020 to USD 820.7 billion by 2025. Most of these investments will naturally be in technological development. But the direction of this investment also needs to be in the principle of sustainability.
Oxford economist Kate Raworth came up with a concept called doughnut economy. The goal is to meet the needs of people within the means of the planet. Amsterdam has become the first city to adopt this model to overcome the effects of COVID-19 pandemic.
You can watch the below video to understand the concept.
Banking on the social capital
We are living in a time when the divide between the haves and have nots is wider than ever. For developing countries (Including India), infrastructure and access to new technologies remain a big challenge. In an ideal case, these cities should be able to narrow this gap through equitable access to resources and technologies.
One of the biggest challenges before the AI-powered cities of tomorrow would be to deal with the problems that arise with human biases. If the biases of the makers are programmed into the technologies, the results will be disastrous. Policies should drive technology towards inclusiveness and social tolerance.
Most of the technologies of the future will largely depend on the data from the people. While the European Union are taking strict measures about the usage of the people’s data — through the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — other countries are still in process of evaluating the impact preparing the policies.
Chinese smart cities like Shenzhen present an example. They have a system of surveillance enforcing good behaviour on people. The systems are AI-enabled and data collected by its super apps, which have now become a part of people’s lives. This is the technological dystopia which was being discussed in George Orwell’s writings. So, the decisions nations take on this aspect will deeply affect the quality of life of their citizens.
In the best-case scenario, a holistic smart city would enhance the quality of life of its citizens by enabling them to be the best version of themselves. In the worst case, the technological dystopia of Black Mirror would become a reality. In both cases, one thing is certain, it would be dependent on the decisions people and the policymakers take today.
I like Elon Musk’s attitude towards the future. The tech czar, who is betting big on all sorts of futuristic technologies, from 3D tunnel network (The Boring Company) to implantable brain-machine interface (Neuralink) said in one of his interviews: “I’m not trying to be anyone’s saviour. I’m just trying to think about the future and not to be sad.”
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What about India?
India still has a really long way to go towards developing smart cities. The goal here is simple: providing core infrastructure and give a decent quality of life to the citizens through clean and sustainable environment by application of smart solutions.
The smart city project, with Rs. 2.05 trillion cost for developing 100 cities, aims to leverage the internet of things (IoT) for these smart solutions but it is at a very nascent stage. Yet, it is making gradual progress. The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that one of the biggest problems that the cities of tomorrow are going to face is being adaptive and finding solutions.
A recent report by the World Economic Forum appreciated the efforts of Indian cities in tackling such challenges. It showed how Bengaluru, Surat, and Pimpri Chinchwad leveraged technology to coordinate between different city-level agencies to plan and monitor their COVID-19 emergency response.
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