How Data And Connectivity Will Create A Smarter Future For Cities!

In recent years, the smart city has evolved from a commendable concept to a quickly manifesting reality. Information and communication technology (ICT) is now being widely used by cities all over the world to increase the operational effectiveness of the urban area, provide citizens with easy access to information, improve the quality of government services, and enhance the welfare of city residents as a whole.

There is a problem, though. Making a city "smart" has frequently been accomplished through dispersed, stand-alone efforts that don't necessarily link with one another and improve city planning overall. Additionally, these programs frequently only have a minor effect on a limited portion of the city rather than the whole. This absence of comprehensive planning has the result that while some residents profit and can accept digital and smart services as the norm, big sections of metropolitan populations are being left behind.

Causes of Slowing down of Advancement of the Smart City

Here are just a few instances of how the development of the smart city is being slowed by this fragmented strategy:

Exclusion of Individuals with Disabilities

Many services are inaccessible to seniors and people with disabilities, including the blind and the deaf. Additionally, many people live in modern cities who do not necessarily speak the local language and are thus unreachable by smart services.

Disjointed Services

Consider the smart parking app, which automatically locates parking and lets you pay with your smartphone but is not connected to any electric bike charging stations or public transportation to enable you to continue your journey inside the city.

Under-utilized Environmental Awareness

In a smart city, environmental awareness is an important tool to help residents reduce their carbon footprint and recycle waste. However, most electricity and water meters in the city are currently not linked to either the citizen’s global carbon footprint monitoring or tracking of waste usage.

This means that citizens are not able to take real action on reducing their carbon footprints and using less water. They do not know how much energy they use, or where the water comes from. This lack of information makes it difficult for them to make informed decisions about their energy and water use.

In addition, citizens are unaware of how much they use or where it comes from. This means that they do not have any way of tracking these resources. They cannot see how much energy they use or where their water comes from. These issues can be addressed by linking utility metering with other systems in a smart city so that citizens can gain more insight into how they are using energy and water resources within the city itself.

A more Comprehensive View

Against this context, a broader, more integrated view of how a smart city may benefit its residents is necessary. It is a vision of how smart cities can be designed holistically by tying together the many city domains and taking the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into account on a global scale. In this approach, human-centric services are provided continuously across all domains, including mobility, energy, the environment, health, education, and security.

Smart cities must do a much better job of establishing a public forum for discourse that is open to all residents. Through open data portals or mobile apps, they must be open and accessible to anyone. These enable homeowners to interact with a variety of data and carry out private chores like bill payment, efficient transportation, and home energy consumption assessment.

A Place that Makes you feel at Home

Social infrastructure, which creates a city's cultural fabric and gives citizens a feeling of belonging, must also be taken into consideration while designing smart cities. People frequently find that a city's social and cultural characteristics, such as its abundance of retail options, vibrant nightlife, and green open spaces, make it the most desirable place to live.  This is crucial for cities that are being built "from scratch" (as opposed to existing communities) and need to discover efficient strategies to draw citizens.

A Critical Collaboration between the Private and Public sectors

Private infrastructure is far too frequently allowed to develop naturally, unconnected from public planning, and this is especially true in the real estate, transportation, and commercial sectors. Compactness, or the availability of a high concentration of services and facilities, is essential in urban settings and can only be achieved via thoughtful, cooperative planning between the public and private sectors. This covers the reclamation of abandoned land.

Cities that are forward-thinking must cultivate a culture of planning that works closely with the business sector if they want to become smarter. Greater efforts must be taken to link these two dissimilar parts of a city, make sure they can coexist, and ensure that they can provide the right mix of services (as well as employment) for residents.

In general, smart cities should put their residents at the center of all they do. This objective is not being met by fragmented or occasional smart city services, which is why careful planning and collaboration between the public and private sectors are urgently needed to integrate everything and create truly smart cities.