Smart city is not a new concept, it exists for more than a decade now. Rather, I would say the definition of Smart city has changed over the time. During early 2000, definition of Smart City was more towards, connecting all disparate systems like land management system, traffic, telecommunication, electricity network, water supply, sewerage system; to operate the city in a seamless fashion. Focus was more on responding to crisis; either caused by nature or man-made, orchestrating various sub systems of a city to work in tandem and act in a wholistic manner. I call this as smart city 1.0. In the second wave, it was more towards deploying various types of technology methods, sensors devices to collect real-time data and use the Insights gained from those data to better manage the assets and resources. In this Smart City 2.0, focus was more on making city services more efficient by making sure bottlenecks in road infrastructure, energy distributions, sewerage network are identified and addressed before even they arise. Now we are in 3rd wave of Smart city which I termed as Smart City 3.0, where the focus is to address the human aspects, the community aspects, to drive economic growth and at the same time to improve the quality of life and improve collaboration among citizens. Extreme urbanization has got many challenges for the cities, either people have migrated from rural areas to the city centers or people live in city’s outskirts and drive to their work place as housing near city centers are not affordable. This housing crisis is due to Euclidean zoning where city divides land into residential, commercial, and industrial areas that resulted into road congestions as people travel long distance to work on daily basis.
Following are key characteristics of the smart city 3.0 where technology as enabler, is going to play major role in transforming it:
- Making city more liveable. More than 50% of city’s landscape is occupied by roads and parking lots (Gardner, 2011), cars on the road are oversized, no place for pedestrians, and not enough playgrounds for kids. Challenge is to plan/design our cities for people and not for machines.
- Affordable housing. Housing in cities became expensive for young professionals and lower income group citizens. Ideas and plan for affordable housing for all sections of people to be promoted.
- Reduced traffic congestion. City to offer workplaces closer to affordable housing and provide access to all the services like schools, restaurants, shopping and other within walking distance where they live. This will not only cut down traffic congestions but will promote collaborations among citizens.
- Ride sharing. Electric vehicles will solve the air pollution problem, but wouldn’t address the road congestion challenges that cities are facing today. Culture of ride sharing needs to be nurtured in the city. Research has shown that the risk of collision between pedestrians and motorised vehicles reduces when more number of people starts riding cycles (Elvik, 2009).
- Innovation Districts: Establishing innovation districts in city center with closer proximity to university will attract young talents into the city, will promote new and diverse ideas.
References:
- Gardner, Charlie: 2011. Old Urbanist: https://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/12/we-are-25-looking-at-street-area.html
- Elvik, Rune: 2016. Accident Analysis and Preventions: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001457509000876?via%3Dihub