What are Smart Cities?

In a world of continuous technological innovation, we have gotten used to the rise of smart devices like smartphones, smart refrigerators and smart cars. Overshadowed by its flashy counterparts, Smart Cities have quietly developed throughout the world. But what are they, exactly?

Smart Cities are not just world-class cities with booming technology industries. Smart Cities are cities that have developed through deep community participation, cautious and deliberate technological deployment and equitable planning. Smart Cities use state of the art technology as one arm of its approach to address current challenges and mitigate future challenges for all its cities residents, but most importantly its most vulnerable.

In 2015 the Obama Administration developed a Smart Cities initiative to create a network of resources among city governments, private businesses and academic institutions to tackle growing social, economic and environmental issues in cities across the United States. Some of these issues–poor traffic safety, low resilience to climate change, deteriorating economic conditions, and others–have been concentrated in low income neighborhoods for generations. Through a network of planners, community organizations, academic researchers and private sector stakeholders, Smart Cities aim to quickly share and distribute successful development insights and fast-track the implementation of positive, equitable change in partner cities.

Many cities in North America have explored and employed Smart City initiatives into their planning over the past 10+ years. Here is an overview of a few of those cities and what their approaches looked like.

Detroit:

The City of Detroit has started to "smarten'' their intersections. A city-wide high-speed internet service was developed and connected to sensors, traffic lights and cameras. Paired with AI, these intersections rapidly decrease traffic congestion and improve road-side safety for non-motorists by responding to pedestrians and emergency vehicles. When you step into an intersection, sensors detect the presence of a pedestrian and signals the light to change.

Since 2015, the University of Michigan has tested autonomous vehicles in Ann Arbor, and Motor City giants like Ford and GM have invested heavily in autonomous vehicle research in Downtown Detroit. Their hope is autonomous vehicles reduce the number of private vehicles on the road, decrease vehicle collisions and increase mobility access.

San Francisco:

Data privacy and security, start-up incubation and sustainable development have been of focus to San Francisco. The City developed and published an Open Data Release Toolkit to help cities release valuable data for AI applications without compromising citizen identification or security.

San Francisco’s attempt at employing autonomous vehicles throughout the city, like Detroit, has not been without controversy and tragedy. Recently the California Department of Motor Vehicles has forced GM’s Cruise to recall all vehicles until vital safety updates are performed and tested with human co-pilots.

During the pandemic, the City of San Francisco established a Slow Streets campaign - blocking car traffic on carefully selected residential streets, limiting these streets to pedestrians, cyclists and other micro-mobility users. These streets provide non-motorists safe and direct routes to navigate the city that often run parallel with wider, car-centric roads. The Slow Street initiative had a low startup cost compared to a dedicated bike path construction, its traffic blocking features could be installed almost overnight and vehicle emissions in Slow Streets neighborhood can be cut almost immediately.

New York City:

NYC has taken a wide approach to Smart Cities, focusing on sustainability, data safety and internet accessibility. The Mayor’s PlaNYC 2030 has lofty goals to combat the effects of climate change, improve the quality of life of citizens and move towards a green circular economy.

The city has provided free public Wi-Fi and cellular service at subway stations and train cars since 2015. Wi-Fi kiosks also contain public charging spaces which can be crucial for some of its city’s working class who deliver food and goods on mobile scooters and e-bikes.

A series of air-quality surveys throughout the city using deployable air-quality monitors found that buildings using heating oil contributed to more air pollution than local car traffic. These studies helped inform policy and push for a ban on certain heating oils in the city.

Portland:

Portland, OR is working with community members to ensure data is collected safely and used responsibly in technology throughout the city. Smart City PDX was formed to create guidelines and provide a framework for safe data use in community development projects.

The city's Traffic Safety Sensor Project gathers real time data from the city's most dangerous intersections to determine streetlight activity and inform future street design. Portland also created a Smart Cities Steering Committee to ensure the city uses such data to diminish inequality in its most vulnerable communities by offering resources to bolster sustainable development initiatives.

Conclusion & Topics of discussion:

• Smart Cities may be a way to improve the living conditions for millions of urban Americans. But as we admire the technological innovations of Smart Cities, It's important to remember that it isn't the technology that makes these cities "smart". Instead, cities become "smart" when they use technologies to reduce inequality and improve quality of life. This makes citizen participation and public input are the backbone of Smart Cities. Smart Cities are only effective when local stakeholders -- governments, business, and community members -- come together to determine what technological solutions will meet the needs of their diverse communities.

• If the future of our cities rely on the collection and analysis of public data, what data should be collected, and how will that data help us understand our community and create a better future?