SMART CITY STRATEGY | All Articles

Do cities always have to have cars, streets, and carbon emissions? Do they even need to have a roughly circular layout? Saudi Arabia’s future city “The Line” suggests a different approach.

To celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8^th, we are taking a closer look at what smart cities mean for women. Because one thing is clear: Cities are still not designed for women. Most planners and architects are male with a target group of men in mind. What does that mean for women? What could a more gender-inclusive city look like? And how can we get there?

Smart cities must collect plenty of data as a means to analyse urban problems and support participatory governance. Fortunately, the modern world generates plenty of data. More than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is a staggering estimate of the volume of data created each day in the global economy, governments, universities and think tanks.

Jane Jacobs — journalist, urban theorist and critic — dared to ask in the 20^th century why cities were built for cars. While aggressively challenging car-centric urban planning, she wrote that affordable, convenient public transport is vital. Once again, she took a critical stance when she described the urban mobility status quo as “predicated on inconvenient, deteriorating, obsolete public transit” — and blamed transit authorities for “ignoring common-sense alternatives and neglecting innovative thinking.”

In many ways, schools are microcosms of our cities. Although often segregated by class, municipal public schools see nearly every type of student, representing nearly every type of family. While the possibilities for ed-tech— or educational technology— are vast and varied in higher education, this essay will primarily focus on primary education, those bellwethers of mass-scale governmental and societal change.   

Smart Mobility is one of the most talked about dimensions in smart city development. A strong and innovative mobility sector is the heart of any city. If citizens can’t travel around a district, city, or region with ease, it stifles business, curtails expansion, and makes life difficult for all urban stakeholders, from citizens to politicians.

Without smart mobility solutions, a city can suffer from social inequity, it can fail to empower entrepreneurs, and of course, it can cause harm to our environment.

We were lucky enough to listen to an exciting talk by Carlos Moreno at an event in Poznan in October 2022. After the event, we managed to have a quick chat with Carlos and discuss the 15-minute city concept and the future of smart and sustainable cities.

The Smart City Expo World Congress (#SCEWC22) in Barcelona is breaking all records, even before it begins! In its 11th edition, more than 24,000 visitors are expected to attend between November 15 and 17, 2022. More than 1,000 exhibitors will invite visitors to their booths and more than 400 experts will share their knowledge in an exciting lecture program. Under the motto "Cities inspired by people," the trade fair and the congress will be spread over two halls at the Fira Barcelona.

The digital association BITKOM has presented the results of the Smart City Index 2022. The Smart City Index highlights the progress of major German cities in terms of digitization. This makes it the most comprehensive digital ranking of German cities.

Once again, all German cities with 100,000 or more inhabitants were under the microscope for this year's Index. A total of approximately 11,000 data points from 81 major cities were collected, reviewed, and analyzed.

The main evaluation process focused on five key urban categories: Administration, IT and Communication, Society, Mobility, and Energy and Environment. Each category included 36 indicators, which in turn were subdivided and categorized by 133 parameters.

As 2019 drew to a close, the travel and tourism industry had reasons to celebrate. The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), IBTM Events, and the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) all announced the good news. But then the Covid-19 pandemic dealt a serious blow to the tourism sector.

As part of the BBSR-funded project #connectedinEurope, six smart city peer-learning partnerships between German and European cities are being set up to promote knowledge transfer in smart city development and digital urban development to foster peer-to-peer learning. European and German cities can express their interest until 25 February 2022.

“Interoperability” is a popular buzzword in the innovation space. But what does it really mean, and why is it particularly important in the world of innovation procurement? To help separate the fact from the fiction and bring some clarity to the process, we spoke to innovation procurement specialist Olaf-Gerd Gemein, to learn more about this important but also challenging topic. 

Today, terms such as “open source” and “open data” are becoming used in everyday conversations, but what do these words really mean? The right open source definition is really hard to find. We caught up with the FIWARE Foundation’s CEO, Ulrich Ahle, at the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona to find out more about FIWARE, open-source technologies, and the future of urban data.

Globally, the Smart City market is growing at a rapid pace. Thanks to smart innovations and accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for smart and sustainable solutions to urban challenges has been pushed into the foreground, becoming building blocks of government policy all over the world. But what is the market situation in Germany? In short, the Smart City market is booming here in Germany, but that’s not a wild claim; it’s backed up with facts, figures, and well-researched forecasts from respected bodies.

Asia is one of the most exciting continents on the planet, with rapidly evolving economies, fertile economic ecosystems, and bold leadership from proactive governments. But which cities are the smartest in the region? To get an idea, we’ve ranked the top smart cities in Asia using metrics from the IMD Smart Cities Index Report.

On the 15^th of July, 2021, the German Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Home Affairs (BMI) announced the winning cities of the third season of German “Smart Cities Model Projects”. This exciting scheme provides funding to assist selected cities with their digital transformation strategies and smart city projects. The scheme first began in 2019, where 13 German cities were selected for funding. In 2020, the project expanded to provide funding to 32 selected cities, to a total of 820 million Euros.

Michal Lakomski is the Mayor's Proxy for Smart City in the city of Poznan in the Greater Poland region. As the Mayor’s Smart City Proxy, and as the Director of Digitalization and Cybersecurity Department for Poznan City Hall, his role involves supervising and overseeing the city’s digital transformation and overall evolution into a modern smart city.

Under his leadership, Poznan has already made an impression as one of the most exciting and dynamic cities in Europe, embracing new technologies, supporting innovation, and putting its citizens first.

If you plan on providing your services to a government agency, there are a number of things you need to know. Depending on the size, scale, and cost of the project, there are different routes that prospective companies will have to navigate.

Tendering is a form of government procurement or purchasing that involves an authority inviting bidders to submit applications to provide their services. It’s a bidding process that involves government decision-makers selecting the most appropriate bid that provides the best and most cost-effective solution to a problem.

Artificial intelligence (AI) promises huge advantages for smart data processing and automation, potentially affecting every area of our daily lives and influencing the planning and implementation of smart city projects across all six fields of action; however, the creation of AI also poses some important questions. If we relinquish the administrative control of certain processes and services to AI, how can we ensure that they will be inclusive? What will the future labor market look like, and what implications will machine intelligence have for education? Policymakers in particular need to keep ahead of the curve and form a standard legal framework in order for cities to make the most of what AI has to offer.

Urban data platforms (UDPs) are helping smart cities to evolve. These platforms serve as the supporting pillars for many smart city applications. They can map, combine, and store data from a wide range of sources, and process them to help form practical solutions to city-wide problems. Urban data platforms are an important part of any smart city ecosystem, taking data from government sources, private enterprises, NGOs, and members of the public, to help provide data-driven solutions that benefit everyone.

Jamie Cudden is the leader of Dublin City Council’s Smart City program. The Smart City program focuses on embracing new technologies to solve the many challenges that the city faces to make Dublin a more liveable city for all of its residents. Using pioneering ideas, involving 5G, Internet of Things, and Big Data, Dublin’s Smart City program has been able to develop and deploy a wide range of solutions for challenges such as citizen engagement, sustainable mobility, energy management, and more.

Since Dublin is a prime example of a smart city in action (read our Smart Dublin City Portrait for more information), we decided to get in touch with Jamie and find out how he helped to steer Dublin into a smarter future.

During the coronavirus outbreak in Amsterdam, city leaders took steps to help citizens at risk of isolation due to lockdown measures. As part of the city's "Everyone Connected" project, an ecosystem comprised of local technologists and civil society groups cooperated to deliver refurbished laptops with Internet connectivity to low-income, elderly and other citizens with below-average digital access. This is an example of a local ecosystem responding to an urgent situation that threatened to exacerbate digital and social exclusion. Smart city ecosystems are vital in implementing sustainable solutions and responding to a crisis.

Winning a smart city tender isn’t a matter of luck. It’s a matter of skilled planning, careful estimations, honest evaluations, a trustworthy relationship, and a solution that ultimately solves the city’s problem.

Government contracts are lucrative contracts, but they’re not easy to land. The competition can be fierce, and unless you’re armed with the proper knowledge, the right product, and a good strategy, your proposal will fall flat before the decision-makers have even had the time to look at it. It’s a sad reality, but it’s true.

Climate change is a very clear and present danger. Though the term usually conjures up images of melting ice sheets and dying forests, our cities are also particularly vulnerable to it too.

Currently, 50% of the world’s population lives in cities. That percentage is expected to rise to 70% by 2050. Cities are already struggling to mitigate the problems caused by increased population density, and these problems are expected to intensify as other variables such as climate change and extreme weather take hold. To prepare for the future, cities must improve their climate change resilience in order to improve the quality of life of its citizens.

As smart cities get smarter, citizens have begun to express concerns about the use of their data, and whether their privacy is being sacrificed for the benefit of big data.

Ever since the concept of a smart city first emerged, it has been clear that technological innovation, intelligent systems, and big data would be three key ingredients to a city’s success. While there’s no clear-cut definition of what a smart city is or has to include (see also our article Redefining the Smart City Concept: A New Smart City Definition), it has been universally acknowledged that the purpose of a smart city is to improve the lives of its residents.

In 2012, Austrian author Marc Elsberg released his best-selling novel Blackout: Tomorrow Will Be Too Late. It’s a disaster thriller that focuses on cyber-terrorism. A group of disenfranchised hackers manipulates a network of European power stations, destabilizing the grid, and plunging Europe into chaos.

The loss of power is a catalyst that leads to a domino effect of disasters, from food shortages and the devaluation of money to nuclear catastrophes and societal collapse. Elsberg was praised for his meticulous research and realism. Of course, Blackout takes the dangers of a cyber-attack to the extreme, but it’s all within the bounds of possibility.

Though the events that take place in Blackout are a work of fiction, as more cities embrace inter-connectivity and smart technology, the threat of serious cyber-attacks on digital infrastructure is very real. In 2015, a cyber-attack compromised Ukraine’s power grid, compromising corporate date, denying the distribution of energy, disabling IT infrastructure, and destroying countless data files.

As cities get smarter, it begs the question: if a power station can be hacked, what else can be?

According to statistics from the United Nations Population Fund, over half of the planet’s population lives in cities. By the year 2030, it’s expected that around 5 billion people will live in urban hubs. As cities grow larger and have a greater impact on the environment, local governments will have to adapt to ensure that the needs of their citizens are being met.

Civic engagement is a key part of a city’s evolution. Input from citizens can help define the dynamic of a city. Unfortunately, citizen participation rates are lower than ever. In the past, cities could use town hall meetings and surveys to connect with their residents, but due to a number of reasons, modern governments aren’t connecting with their citizens like they used to. This can have numerous negative effects on a city, from an alienated population to the implementation of unpopular policies.

Because of this, it’s necessary for city governments to embrace new methods of inspiring citizen engagement.

On the ­8^th of September 2020, Horst Seehofer, Federal Minister of the Interior, Building and Community, announced the decision that 32 Smart City Model Projects will be funded with around 350 million Euros in the second round of the national funding programme "Smart City Model Projects". In the first round of last year, 13 Smart Cities were selected and funded with the aim of accelerating urban digital transformation in Germany.

Urban public health is currently in the spotlight as city populations struggle to deal with the threat of COVID-19. As lockdown measures take their toll on urban communities, city dwellers have been forced to see their cities through new eyes, and the results have been worrying.

A study from the UN has found that 68% of the global population will be living in cities and metropolitan areas by 2050. However, many researchers believe that the stats will likely be far higher, and further estimates suggest that up to 90% of the planet’s population could be living in megacities within the next 30 years.

The current coronavirus pandemic has proven that cities will need to adapt if they want to nurture healthier, happier, and safer populations. Urban public health will need to evolve to cater for denser populations, and the potential hazards that go along with it.

The term “smart city” has a different meaning for different people. For most, it conjures up a vision of a technologically-advanced metropolis, where citizens rely on smart gadgets to go about their daily lives. For others, the smart city concept describes government initiatives based on big data, technology and intelligent processes that improve the quality of life of a city’s residents. These aren’t incorrect definitions, they’re just two sides of a multi-faceted approach to urban development.

Technology and data are essential building blocks for creating a smart city. But it’s the city’s residents that can help enact the biggest changes. By introducing projects that focus on improving the lives of individuals and communities, smart cities can begin to grow on their own.

One of the most talked-about methods of transforming a city into a smarter city is by introducing 15-minute neighbourhoods. More commonly known as a 15-minute city, or even a 20-minute city, these strategies focus on improving the lives of residents by making the city more accessible to everyone.

“There’s a positive aspect of this horror,”  the deputy mayor of Paris, Jean-Louis Missika, told the Washington Post. “Never has the city been less polluted. Parisians have much appreciated it, and I think there will be strong changes in the behaviour of people, in terms of movement.” This is a sentiment shared by many leaders across the globe.

Despite the hardships caused by the spread of Covid-19, the current situation presents a unique opportunity. Now is an ideal time to revolutionize the way we live in urban environments.

It’s a quiet revolution that has already begun.

In a 2018 report completed by the Eden Strategy Institute, 12 of the globe’s 20 smartest cities were located in the USA. Founded upon a spirit of innovation, it is perhaps no surprise that many of the country’s smart cities are so high-ranking, providing inspiration to other cities all over the world. Following our exploration of 4 up-and-coming North American Smart Cities in Part 1, we’ve chosen to take a brief look at 4 of the most prominent smart cities in the country in Part 2. From 2018’s highest ranking smart city worldwide, New York, to its start-up hub, San Francisco, we’ll take you through some of the smartest initiatives the US has to offer.

The US is, in many ways, the birthplace of innovation: it was there that Ford launched the first affordable car and there that Steve Jobs founded Apple Inc. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that the US has also produced some of the world’s most innovative smart cities. With so many to choose from, we’re going to dive right in and take a look at some of the less obvious smart urban centres to see how they’re changing their city’s physical and social landscape in order to improve the lives of their citizens.

Our current economic model - known as a linear economy - is not sustainable. This is the warning we hear from scientists, economists and other thought leaders who describe the linear model as a wasteful take-make-consume-dispose system, one that damages natural resources and the environment, generates excessive volumes of waste and dumps valuable materials into landfills. By comparison, the grand vision of a circular economy depicts a more resilient and sustainable model which yields responsible use and reuse of resources and raw materials, protection of the environment, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and innovation in waste management.

As we saw in our last article on Asian smart city stars, urban centers in Asia are facing mass urbanization on a much more significant scale than many other parts of the world. They are also often located in climate-vulnerable regions. For example, a World Bank research report assessing the possible consequences of continued sea-level rise on eighty-four developing countries found that the impact of sea-level rise will be particularly severe for the Asia-Pacific region. For this reason, becoming ‘smarter’ and more sustainable is a top priority for many of Asia’s cities. In this article, we will look at four more Asian metropolises that are pushing forward smart initiatives in order to tackle current and prepare for future challenges. If you have not read the first part of the Rising Asian Stars article, you can read it here Rising Asian Stars: Smart Cities to Watch in 2019 - Part 1.

Bob Bennett, the former Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) of Kansas City talked in our Smart City Leader Interview Series - while he still was the CIO of Kansas City - about the importance of smart cities and smart citizens. He emphasized the role of technology and the benefits for citizens.

There were an estimated 47 megacities in existence in 2017, and the majority were located in Asia. The region is facing urbanization on a scale far beyond that of other regions, with an estimated 1.1 billion moving into Asian cities in the next 20 years. Many Asian countries are also in areas that are prone to extreme weather patterns or natural disasters, and this is only becoming more of a problem with climate change. Cities across the continent urgently need to prepare for serious population growth, and the strain it will place on their public services, and the risks that environmental changes pose. For this reason, becoming more resilient and ‘smarter’ is inevitably at the top of most Asian cities’ political agendas. In this article we are going to explore some of the Asian cities investing in becoming smarter and more sustainable in order to make their citizens safer and happier.

Rob van Gijzel, the former Mayor of Eindhoven and current Chairman of the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) Foundation in New York and National Ambassador for the Blockchain Cities Coalition speaks about the importance of smart cities and smart citizens.

The importance of smart cities & smart citizens: In our interview series, smart city leaders comment on the future of smart cities, the role of technology, and the benefits for citizens. In our second interview of the series, we have asked urban strategist and smart city expert Boyd Cohen to share his expertise, thoughts and insights with us on a number of important smart city topics.

There was a time when bells in town squares warned citizens of impending danger. Today, the bells ring again in the form of studies and media reports with warnings about urban problems that plague modern cities and resist solutions. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of people move to cities in pursuit of a higher quality of life. This is the story of cities: Citizens with big expectations versus the endurance of big city problems. It is a still-unfolding story with numerous villains: social inequality, traffic congestion, pollution, crime, unemployment, lack of affordable housing, aging infrastructure, public service shortfalls.

In recent years, an increasing number of Spanish cities recognize the need for bold steps to confront an emerging urban crisis. A crisis with multiple dimensions including damage to quality of life caused by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, threats of climate change, and an urgency to develop policies that support green city innovation.

Global Perspective: Good Intentions, Complex Barriers

Since the concept of a green economy was forged in the 1990s, the ideas and strategies for green cities have evolved into a variety of urban development policies, smart city solutions and sustainability measures to protect the environment, enable economic development and ensure high quality of life.

What does it take to turn a national bureaucracy into a smart government? It’s not too often a country is given a clean slate from which to start. But for Estonia, a small nation on the Baltic Sea, that is exactly what happened.

A combination of pragmatism and instinct led Estonia to develop an e-government in the 1990s, soon after the country regained its independence from the Soviet Union. The Estonians didn’t pursue a digital future because they thought it would be cool or trendy. They followed their common sense, which told them it would be better to expend their limited resources on servers and networks, rather than on grand buildings and government palaces.

Law enforcement has been using technology to solve crimes for more than a century. Using technology to prevent crimes, however, is a relatively new idea. The movie Minority Report famously depicts a futuristic society in which police officers arrest people before they commit crimes. It’s a deeply disturbing movie with a not-too-subtle message about the danger of relying too heavily on technology.

Nevertheless, a small industry has emerged around the practice of predictive policing. New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans and other cities have experimented with predictive policing programs. The experiments have been inconclusive and controversial. 

What is a smart city and how is it different from our traditional notion of a city? There is no single definition for a smart city. The term itself is a moving target and every city is different.

That said, here are 10 ideas that can help us envision and define the smart city concept:

The importance of smart cities & smart citizens: In our new interview series, smart city leaders comment on the future of smart cities, the role of technology, and the benefits for citizens. In our first interview of the series, we have asked Jonathan Reichental, CIO of Palo Alto, California to share his expertise, thoughts and insights with us on a number of important smart city topics.

As we discussed in our previous article (Blockchain: The Next Frontier of Smart Cities - Part 1), blockchain has the potential to transform our communities, making the places we call home more collaborative, democratic and sustainable places. It is no surprise then, that a whole bunch of cities - from Santiago de Chile, Toronto, Tel Aviv, Oslo, and Milan, to London, and Stockholm - are already developing blockchain-based projects. Dubai is going even further, aiming to become the world’s first fully ‘blockchain-powered city’ by 2020. Lofty ideals aside, as we examined in part 1, blockchain does actually seem to offer some concrete benefits for communities, as we shall see below.

Blockchain is a hot topic. Until very recently, it was associated almost exclusively with cryptocurrency - bitcoin, ethereum etc. However, the power of blockchain to revolutionize the way we exchange goods and services, and transform how we govern - above and beyond the cryptocurrency hype - is increasingly being recognized. When it comes to cities, the transformative potential of this technology is enormous. From enabling P2P energy-sharing systems, as in New York’s ‘Transactive Grid’, which allows local residents to generate, buy and sell their own solar energy, to encouraging behavioral change - for instance through SocialCoin’s blockchain and AI-based ‘social good’ currency (see e.g. the Citibeats solution) - and much more - blockchain is offering new opportunities to create more economically, environmentally and socially sustainable communities. As such, blockchain is likely to be an increasingly central enabler of smart city innovation worldwide. In this article, we will explore the potential benefits of blockchain in an urban context.

Innovating urban planning to foster community-focused development is a critical element in the creation of smarter cities. More than half of the world’s population currently live in cities. The UN estimates that by 2050, this figure will have doubled. The “financialization” of housing, among other factors, has led to a situation where many of the world’s cities are now defined by a chronic shortage of housing for the least advantaged, and in many cases, for the working and middle classes as well. The local connection between the financial institutions funding housing development and the people buying them has long disappeared, replaced by a new international financial system where real estate is a major asset. Indeed, a recent UN report estimates that the total value of global real estate makes up 60 percent of all global assets, with a value of $217 trillion, three-quarters of which is housing.

So how do we make housing more accessible in cities the world over? The ‘smart city’ movement presents cities with the opportunity to build and plan ‘smarter’, developing citizen-centered, tech-enabled living, working and playing spaces that respond to people’s changing desires and needs - that are ‘future-proof’ and ‘user-centric’. Whether in Sao Paulo, Brasil, or Todmorden, UK, smart city innovation, and the ideas and funds it brings, should be capitalized upon to drive forward and finance smart development projects that help to relieve the global housing crisis that we are facing. In this week’s article, we will focus on some of the ways we can innovate planning in order to ‘redistribute’ housing stock (both existing and future) to create more equitable, just and sustainable urban communities.

The term ‘smart city’ is everywhere at the moment, but it is still mostly discussed in reference to familiar names - Amsterdam, Barcelona, Toronto, Vienna - the usual suspects. This overlooks the innovative projects and smart city solutions being implemented in less well-known cities across the globe, and suggests that the world’s major capitals are the only leaders in this space. In this article we are therefore going to take a brief look at the world’s smart cities that we believe deserve more attention in 2018. Some are big, others are small, but, regardless of their size and location, they’re all making themselves ‘smarter’ for the benefit of their citizens:

As John Friedmann highlights (2011), the household is just as much a socio-political space as the public realm: although it may be deemed ‘private’, the connections a household has to the outside world very often define its access to political empowerment, knowledge, jobs and, crucially, self-advancement. A home might be termed an ‘in-between’, or liminal, space: a place of family, domesticity and the everyday that is also the nucleus of its inhabitants’ connections to the outside world. As a zone which is supposedly hyperconnected (both internally and externally) the smart home should theoretically enhance its inhabitants’ connections to the wider community. As such, the smart home can be seen as a facilitator of community engagement, and in turn, civic involvement in smart city community initiatives.

If the smart city is one that is hyperconnected, energy and cost-efficient, and sustainable, aiming to improve the lives of all by leveraging existing resources and infrastructure, then the smart home should theoretically be a microcosm of this. Like many emerging concepts in the smart cities sector, including the very ‘smart city’ itself, most official definitions of the ‘smart home’ tend to center around new technologies:

Many proponents of the smart city claim that it is by nature inclusive. However, like all other aspects of urban design and development, smart city initiatives frequently fail to fully prioritize inclusivity, often perpetuating the very issues that they aim to solve. As Gil Peñalosa, world-renowned urban designer, noted in a recent panel discussion on ‘The Invisible Smart City’: “we currently design our cities as though everyone is 30 and active”, leading to biased, inaccessible urban design that excludes what he calls the ‘silent majority’. Going one step further than this, Yves Raibaud, acclaimed sociologist and urban geographer, argues that cities are designed ‘by and for men’ (par et pour les hommes) - notably ‘western’, privileged men. This evidently leaves much to be desired in terms of diversity, and in turn inclusivity. Children, older people, women, ethnic minorities, the disabled, the mentally and physically ill, and people with low household incomes (and those who meet at the intersecting points between these groups) are frequently excluded by and from urban design, unable to fully enjoy or participate in civic urban life or the processes that shape it.

Although the quantity of people using technology in their everyday lives is constantly rising, a relatively high percentage of the world’s population remains digitally disengaged or even technologically illiterate. In the European Union alone, nearly a third of people don’t use the internet on a daily basis; only half of all Europeans aged 16 - 74 use social networks or e-government services, and in some European countries up to 25% of people don’t have access to a computer from home.

As smart cities render our world more and more digital, and Information and Communications Technology (ICTs) play an increasingly important role in our daily lives, the ‘digital exclusion’ of certain population groups - notably those from low-income backgrounds, the elderly, and the disabled - is morphing into total societal exclusion.

Around the world, cities are growing. Already, roughly 180,000 people move into cities every day. By 2015, the UN estimates that there will be 22 metropolitan areas with populations of more than 10 million people. Growing urban populations mean more costs for cities - from increasing energy use to overstrained public services - but they also provide a stimulus for innovation. After all, we can’t infinitely expand outwards and upwards. Instead, we need to find ways to be more ‘efficiently urban’: in other words, we need to be smarter with how we use our resources, time and capital.

By 2050, it is estimated that roughly 70% of the world’s population will live in cities. With more citizens to serve and a climate that is rapidly degrading, public service efficiency and effective resource usage are becoming pressing issues for cities.

Big tech companies talk a lot about how the solutions to these issues can be found through their innovative new technologies; however, while technical tools are indeed necessary, cities should ensure that their smart city strategy is holistic, multifaceted and, most importantly, citizen-centric, if they want their efforts to bring fruitful results. A contextually adapted and citizen-centric approach, using both human and technological resources, can bring multiple benefits for municipalities, particularly those that are struggling with specific problems - such as inefficient waste management systems, lack of civic participation, or traffic and congestion. In this article, we take a closer look at the advantages of smart city development and lay out the six core benefits of smart cities.

"Nothing in the world is more simple and more cheap than making cities that provide better for people" - Jan Gehl, founding partner of Gehl Architects, in an interview in 2013.

When we talk about smart cities, the technological terms dominate. We refer to how big data, the Internet of Things, sensors, and automation, among other things, will change and innovate our cities, making life better for urban citizens. As Ignasi Capdevila and Matías I. Zarlenga highlight, however, in their study 'Smart City or smart citizens? The Barcelona case', when we think of smart cities from the perspective of new technologies alone, ‘citizens are often considered as users, testers, or consumers rather than producers and sources of creativity and innovation’.

In early February 2018, the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) named the world’s Top7 Intelligent Communities of 2018. This is the think tank’s 16th annual Top7 list of regions, cities or towns that have gone, in ICF’s words, “from Smart City to Intelligent Community.” This year’s list includes communities from four nations, with Taiwan contributing three, Canada two communities and Australia and Finland one each. The seven will travel to London in June where one will go on to be named the Intelligent Community of the Year, succeeding Melbourne, Australia, the reigning community. The announcement will take place as the culminating event at the ICF Global Summit from 4-6 June at Siemens’ Crystal Facility and other sites around London.

In this article, we look at some of the emerging and advancing options for finding money to invest in smart city solutions.

Across the world, cities are acutely aware that they need to upgrade their infrastructure and systems to improve life for citizens and residents. This is becoming more urgent as rapid urbanization continues – by 2050, 66 percent of the world’s population will live in cities, up from 54 percent in 2014, according to the United Nations. This could add 2.5 billion people to the world’s city-dwelling population, placing additional strain on city services.

In a US survey from the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) almost 40 percent of respondents claimed they needed additional money “to sustain infrastructure at a baseline level” and indicated that the current state of their infrastructure is hurting quality of life.

On October 23, Huawei and Navigant Consulting have released the 2nd "UK Smart Cities Index - Assessment of Strategy and Execution of UK’s leading Smart Cities". The report features an assessment of 20 UK cities in their efforts of utilizing technology to address urban challenges and to seize development opportunities.

Bristol and London are the UK's smartest cities

Surprisingly, Bristol has been announced as leading smart city in the UK, followed by London. The two cities are spearheading the movement, well ahead of the other 18 cities that were analyzed in the report. 

Over the past seven years, the smart city approach has changed fundamentally in terms of the strategies that cities and communities have chosen as a pathway for transformation. Driven by technology providers in the early years, governments as leaders of the smart city movement have later understood that technology is “only” the enabler for reaching governmental, economic and societal goals.

Today, smart city strategies still consider technology as an enabler, but governments have learned that top-down initiatives are not a prerequisite for success. Drivers for success are collaborative and participative human-centric approaches. If a city or community wants to become smarter, it should take the needs and problems of its customers – most of all their citizens – into account.

As expressed by a number of urban strategists in the past two years, we have witnessed a gradual shift towards citizen-centric smart city strategies. In an interesting article titled "Making cities smarter: How citizens' collective intelligence can guide better decision making" published by Deloitte University Press, the importance of citizen-centricity is presented clearly.

At bee smart city we completely agree with the authors and are convinced that collective intelligence is the key success factor for smart cities. Why? Because the acceptance and use of smart city solutions call for a user-centric approach that takes the needs and problems of citizens into account.

Over the past years, the smart city concept has reached a state of mainstream acknowledgment throughout the world. However, several important aspects are subject to constant debate:

• What is the best or a suitable smart city definition?
• Does the smart city concept apply to cities only, or does it include rural or smaller communities?
• Is the smart city concept technology- or human-centric?
• What are the key success factors of leading smart cities?
• What are the strategic governance approaches?
• What can be derived from best practices in smart cities development?

In our review on becoming a smart city, we will cover all of these topics that relate to the smart city evolution and defining the term smart city from a practical perspective.

Over the past seven years, the smart city concept has changed fundamentally in terms of the approaches that cities or communities have chosen for urban transformation. Driven by technology providers in the early years, governments as leaders of the smart city movement have later understood that technology is only the enabler for reaching governmental, economic and societal goals.

Today, smart city strategies still consider technology as an enabler, but governments have learned that top-down initiatives or a master planned approach are not the determinants of success. Drivers for success are collaborative and participative citizen- or human-centric approaches. If a city or community wants to become smarter, it should take the needs and problems of its customers – citizens, businesses, workforce/commuters, entrepreneurs, academia and non-profit organizations – into account.

Driven by urban strategists, scholars, companies and other institutions, we witness a constant debate on what a smart city is. There are so many existing definitions and synonyms such as "connected city", "resilient city", "senseable city", "intelligent community", "digital city", "digital community" or even "smart village". This debate poses the question on what exactly smart cities stand for.

Creating a unique identity and vision

While it is generally accepted that there are different generations of smart cities (as discussed in "TOWARDS A NEW PARADIGM OF THE SMART CITY"), we believe it is important for each city or community to create a unique identity of their smart city or smart community vision.