Smart Living in Smart Cities: Leading Cities Into the Future
- The GFCC
- Jun 8, 2017
- 7 min read
By Deborah Wince-Smith - Cities are the world’s centers for creativity and its economic engines. They are places where people, infrastructure, institutions, innovation assets, policies and regulations come together, and create an environment that attracts or discourages global investment, business activities and jobs creation. These elements also form the platforms from which cities compete and create economic opportunity for its citizens.
We want to live in cities that are smart, safe, clean, healthy, inclusive and resilient; cities that provide economic opportunity and a high quality of life; and cities that are crossroads for the most creative and innovative minds.
Reaching for these goals offers tremendous opportunities, but also difficult challenges. We live in an era of turbulence and transformation. In the midst of such transformations and uncertainties, practitioners from around the world are exploring how we can continue to grow, develop, innovate, and compete.
These were the themes of last month’s Smart Cities conference, the first of its kind to curate the intersection of technology and urban life. There I had the privilege of moderating a panel with leading experts on how we can lead cities into the future — not just making cities smarter through advanced technology, but being innovative about how we use that technology and build on its possibilities.
The Growth of Cities
There has never been a more urgent need for this discussion. We are seeing and living through the largest wave of urban growth in history. Urban dwelling is expected to increase by 60% by 2050, from 4 billion people to 6.3 billion people — two-thirds of the world’s population.
Today, there are 28 mega cities with more than 10 million inhabitants. By 2030, we could have as many as 41 of these urban giants.
We will have to feed the world’s urban centers with fewer and fewer rural farmers; provide clean water; power cities with cleaner energy; provide energy efficient mobility; deal with waste in a sustainable way; and create platforms for economic opportunity for a population of socio-economic diversity.
Moreover, about 1.8 billion people today are middle class. By 2030, the middle class is projected to grow to about 5 billion. These new middle class consumers will raise demands on all sorts of city-centric infrastructure. Cities need to be prepared to meet that challenge.
In contrast, there are places in the world where modern infrastructure has yet to reach. For example, 15% of the world’s population does not have access to electricity, a fundamental barrier to economic development. Electricity improves quality of life from education to health care and raises the standard of living all around.
But we have new technologies, and new models to help us meet challenges like this one. For example:
· New materials allow architects to design structures — and engineers to build systems — never before dreamed possible. Some materials will have properties so unique they offer previously unimaginable applications such as self-healing materials for roads and bridges, or smart materials that sense and react to changes in their environment.
· Smart grids are improving grid reach, reliability, security, and resilience; easing the incorporation of renewable energy into the grid; and providing for better energy demand management.
· Autonomous vehicles are finding their way into mass transportation.
· Intelligent highways and vehicles promise to reduce congestion, reduce accidents, and allow us to get more capacity out of the roads and highways we already have.
But the biggest game changer is the convergence of the physical world and the virtual world across numerous dimensions through sensors, networks and a data tsunami, with vast implications for cities.
This new system of sensors, networks and the Internet of Things is emerging as a major innovation infrastructure that will be deeply embedded in all aspects of the city, its functions and society at large.
At the end of the day, we must both make our cities smart and be smart about the way we make our cities.
Cities and Competitiveness
Last November, the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils hosted a Global Innovation Summit to discuss these and related issues. We approached the conversation by examining the four kinds of cities that are growing around us:
The Seamless City — How different stakeholders and technology come together in cities to improve urban living, and how cities are connected with their surrounding regions;
The Evolving City — How cities are transformative entities that change continuously, creating resilience to external and internal pressures, adapting and leveraging the power of innovation;
The Well City — How sustainability in cities and new models for production-distribution-consumption play an active role in public health, well-being and competitiveness;
The Free City — How freedom of expression, diversity and global connections play a role in city growth and development.
This is the current landscape, and these are the elements we are working with as we seek to confront the challenges before us. From last year’s Global Innovation Summit to last month’s Smart Cities conference, the question is, how can we actually build capacities around the globe for cities to innovate, adopt new technology solutions, provide better services and, ultimately, make a positive impact on the lives of their citizens?
Inclusive Growth
When we talk about building prosperity and making a positive impact on people’s lives, it’s critical to keep in mind that such impacts much touch all people — not a select privileged few. Being smarter about how we build our cities means working to make them more inclusive.
Cities attract both the rich and well-educated as well as the poor and unskilled. Around the world, parts of society enjoy an abundance of resources while, in the same city or village, other members of the community lack adequate food or access to clean water. Those living in abject poverty can be found in even the most affluent cities, adjacent to great institutions, academic campuses, and cutting-edge health centers, everywhere from London to Chicago to Rio de Janeiro.
In an earlier post in Competitive Edge, GFCC Distinguished Fellow Rogerio Studart defined inclusive economic growth as “development and achievement that is accessible to all.” In other words, if our smart cities only serve the affluent or the well-connected, our growth will be unsustainable and fail to reach its promise. This is but one of the many challenges our cities must address as they grow and develop and change.
Management and Civic Engagement
Big data and data analytics offer more insights into the atoms and physics of the city and its society, and the performance of city services, than has ever before been possible. When we combine data analytics with technologies like sensors and the Internet of Things, we have a tremendous opportunity to optimize the city’s performance. Yet we have only begun to exploit the potential.
Networks, digital platforms and social media provide new ways for the city to connect with its citizens. For example, citizens are the eyes and ears of the city, and we can use technology to harness the power of observation of millions living in the city, and use those observations for improving city services.
But the solution for citizen engagement and the improvement of city services is not just about technology. New engagement models are needed and can be turbocharged by technology.
Cities and metros are complex agglomerations of time, places, people, geographic boundaries, systems, public and private establishments, routine events such as commuter traffic and non-routine events such as major sports events, extreme weather or natural disasters — all connecting and interacting with each other in dynamic ways.
Yet these various converging, colliding and cascading elements are often analyzed, managed and operated in stovepipes, rather than in an integrated, seamless manner that recognizes their interdependencies and how they affect one another.
New models are underway to take on these issues. Practitioners focus on sharing data about cities, funding cross-jurisdictional and cross-functional projects, engaging new technologies that can reveal new views of cities, and using new technologies to help provide needed skills
The Role of Technology
Technology — and the use of it — is the fuel that will propel cities into the future. We are seeing massive digitization of physical infrastructure and the emergence of a new critical infrastructure in the form of sensors, networks and the Internet of Things.
The ongoing integration of new technologies offers cities new ways of doing things. However, the city must also accommodate others’ use of technology.
For example, there is a dynamic relationship between the number of electric vehicles in a city and the electricity supply, and we know that growing e-commerce is having an impact on traffic congestion and pollution due to more delivery vans moving through the city.
Now we have the prospect of driverless cars, drones and artificial intelligence — technologies that may get ahead of societal readiness and regulatory frameworks, causing new challenges and problems.
Looking Forward
Cities are constantly evolving — reacting to internal and external pressures, adopting and adapting new technologies, and responding to new challenges, needs, opportunities and societal patterns. And as cities grow in size and population, the need for such development will only grow as they experience increased strain on their systems and resources.
That’s why the role of technology, inclusive economic growth, and the other issues being addressed are so critical. This month’s first Smart Cities conference was only the beginning as we seek the most sustainable path forward with the highest chance of success for our cities and their inhabitants.
Further change is not just coming, it is already here. The challenges we face and the opportunities that arise will push us to greater innovation, greater competitiveness, and greater prosperity as smart living and smart cities lead us into the future.
Deborah Wince-Smith is the president & CEO of the Council on Competitiveness and an internationally renowned leading voice on competitiveness, innovation strategy, science and technology, and international economic policy. She has more than 20 years of experience as a senior U.S. government official, most notably as the first Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy in the administration of President George H.W. Bush, overseeing federal technology transfer policy, implementation of the Bayh-Dole Act, and the White House National Technology Initiative. She has served on several federal government advisory committees and currently serves on the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy.
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