 "How do smart cities stay smart?")
Smart cities use a mix of information, energy, and social technologies for environmental sustainability, economic prosperity, and livability. However, they need to be not just smart but agile, making technology choices that let citizens adapt and improve on solutions they implement today, according to Lux Research.
About two-thirds of the world population will live in urban centers by 2050, a migration of billions of people that will challenge today’s infrastructure and governments to maintain quality of air and water, health and safety, and economic and social prosperity. Top-down technological solutions cannot support the scale and diversity of changes that will happen in that time, and risk turning cities into environmental and social dystopias.
“Cities are under threat but they also remain nodes of innovation that will test, pilot and deploy technologies that address the biggest threats to humanity. The key to success will be a learning mindset that allows open technologies, allowing cities to embrace disruptive technologies of tomorrow,” said Alex Herceg, Lux Research analyst and lead author of the report titled, ‘Cities as technologies: Using data and analytics to grow from smart to brilliant’.
Public transit can alleviate pollution, congestion, parking, and a host of other environmental and practical ills. But the rise of ridesharing services like Uber, and Apple’s rumoured autonomous electric car, may be cheaper, better ways to move people and goods in city spaces.
Smart cities will also have to provide proper physical safety and security to dwellers. “Threats like earthquakes, snowstorms, crime, and terrorism all worry city dwellers, but they are concerned about pervasive surveillance from police drones and spyware too. Citizen-led hackathons can provide better technologies and a balance of power, as Nairobi’s Ushahidi shows,” said Lux Research in a report.
About two-thirds of the world population will live in urban centers by 2050, a migration of billions of people that will challenge today’s infrastructure and governments to maintain quality of air and water, health and safety, and economic and social prosperity. Top-down technological solutions cannot support the scale and diversity of changes that will happen in that time, and risk turning cities into environmental and social dystopias.
“Cities are under threat but they also remain nodes of innovation that will test, pilot and deploy technologies that address the biggest threats to humanity. The key to success will be a learning mindset that allows open technologies, allowing cities to embrace disruptive technologies of tomorrow,” said Alex Herceg, Lux Research analyst and lead author of the report titled, ‘Cities as technologies: Using data and analytics to grow from smart to brilliant’.
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Smart cities will have to adopt technologies to solve issues pertaining to air, water and other natural resources. Beijing struggles with dismal air quality, while many other cities struggle with water or other natural resources. Analytics vendors are jumping in to help; IBM Smarter Water, for example, is developing networking solutions aimed at reducing water and energy use.
Public transit can alleviate pollution, congestion, parking, and a host of other environmental and practical ills. But the rise of ridesharing services like Uber, and Apple’s rumoured autonomous electric car, may be cheaper, better ways to move people and goods in city spaces.
Smart cities will also have to provide proper physical safety and security to dwellers. “Threats like earthquakes, snowstorms, crime, and terrorism all worry city dwellers, but they are concerned about pervasive surveillance from police drones and spyware too. Citizen-led hackathons can provide better technologies and a balance of power, as Nairobi’s Ushahidi shows,” said Lux Research in a report.