West vs. East
Despite having many old cities with legacy infrastructure systems, Europe has long led the way in terms of Smart City projects, with its early adoption of a sustainable, environmentally friendly agenda and focus on public transport and urban infrastructure in general. A 2018 McKinsey report pointed out how intermodality, or combining different modes of public transport in a seamless travel experience, has been a focus of European transport strategy, and how electronic services such as ticketing systems have been driven by rapid technological development. From these, many Smart City applications have evolved.
A feature of Smart Cities in the West is that development is mainly bottom-up, with the private sector and citizens actively engaging in designing projects to improve the quality of life, drive economic growth, and safeguard the environment. For instance, in 2018 the Canadian federal government encouraged some 200 communities across the country to participate in a competition in which quality of life improvements could be leveraged through the use of technology. The Intelligent Cities program was then created with involvement from Rogers, one of Canada’s predominant cellular and cable providers, and Blue City, a Montreal-based software company that focuses on intelligent road traffic management solutions. Local resident workshops were conducted to pinpoint needs and provide city officials with a roadmap to develop future traffic and public transit infrastructure.
Beyond the input and involvement of city dwellers, there also needs to be a cultural shift in the way cities are governed and operated, as well as for citywide technology platforms to be more open and not housed in “silos” that are unconnected and incapable of collaboration. When Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti looked into implementing Smart City solutions, he found more than 40 city departments running on various disconnected technology platforms. GeoHub was created in 2016 to assemble more than 500 datasets from the city’s departments, as well as from the county, state, and federal governments, to form a centralized business intelligence system. Shortly after its launch GeoHub was able to unearth insights into Los Angeles’ public safety and infrastructure needs that allowed the city to manage resources and make better decisions.
In Barcelona, several silo-type models used by the city were dissolved: those where networks didn’t communicate, where consumers were tied to inflexible contracts, or where the provision of services was outsourced to large operators with no government oversight of how resident data was collected or used. The responsibility for such data has since been transferred to the government to ensure privacy. Moreover, procurement of services was made transparent with a focus on small local companies.
Meanwhile, Smart City projects have proliferated in recent years in Asia, which is experiencing urbanization and digitization simultaneously. In countries with a strong central government, such as China or Singapore, Smart City development is usually top-down with the authorities formulating policies and providing funding. The focus tends to be on building up infrastructure and improving urban governance capability.
In places where the public sector owns many of the services, Smart Cities are highly developed with services, such as transport, power, telecoms, water, and waste management, all communicating with each other and collaborating. Links to smart buildings—residential, commercial, or industrial—ensure that Smart Cities are fully integrated. This interoperability, the seamless flow of data and technology, is a key requirement of a full-fledged Smart City.
Singapore is a case in point, having been consistently one of the top investors in smart systems, according to the IDC Worldwide Smart Cities Spending Guide. That the city also owns in one way or another public transportation and housing undoubtedly has helped as it reduced the complexity of the task.
