As suggested in the entry “The paradise of the Smart Cities”, the adoption of a strategy to become an intelligent city is very promising to promote cities in the global competing world. The label of a Smart City would surely help positioning the city at international level and thus attracting talent and investment. Recognising this, municipalities all around the globe have started allocating considerable amounts of budget to conceptualise a Smart City strategy for their cities and start developing immediately the projects that will make their cities stand out from the rest. In this sphere, with the money and the political commitment assured, local decision-makers face the following question, where do I start? Answering this question implies a deep knowledge of what is the future scenario that the city wants to attain, in other words, it implies having a clear view of what a Smart City should be.But, what is a Smart City? The label of the Smart City is still a blurry concept. Some definitions are as old as one decade. In 2000 the paper “The Vision of a Smart City”[1] expounded that the vision of “smart cities” is the urban centre of the future, made safe, secure environmentally green, and efficient because all structures – whether for power, water, transportation, etc. – are designed, constructed and maintained making use of advanced, integrated materials, sensors, electronics, and networks which are interfaced with computerized systems comprised of databases, tracking, and decision-making algorithms".
More recently, the working paper “Smart Cities in Europe”[2] offers another approximation to the idea explaining that any city can be defined as “smart” when investments in human and social capital and traditional (transport) and modern (ICT) communication infrastructure fuel sustainable economic growth and a high quality of life, with a wise management of natural resources, through participatory governance”. This definition is also presented in the Wikipedia and you might recall it from many other posts.
What about the fields of action? It seems quite accepted that the main traditional components of a Smart City are (Wikipedia):
- Smart Economy
- Smart Mobility
- Smart Environment
- Smart Governance
- Smart Living
- Smart People
However, the components of a Smart City are as open as its own definition. It is the city’s own priorities who decide which should be the field of action to start with. And there is no mandatory requirement that says that an intelligent city must develop actions in each of the mentioned fields. The important thing is not to take them just as words put together but thinking what might be inside. For instance, what is the meaning of Smart People and how does it fit in a Smart City?
A Smart City project should be much more than just a project using IT. Technology should serve to urbanise, should be born from a urban need and not otherwise. Moreover, it should include their end-users in the whole creation process, from the first steps towards the concretion of the urban problem till the piloting testing phase, to assure their ultimate successful adoption. This is the place for the Smart People!
Going back to the title of this entry “Investing in a Smart City, where to start?”, city decision-makers with economical possibilities to run Smart City projects might well be receiving tons of invitations by private stakeholders with a folder under their arms containing the ultimate Smart City solutions. These last would be extremely happy to have the opportunity of showing which are the steps to take and where to invest the money. City leaders should be aware that it is the citizen’s worries and concerns who should guide and legitimate the investment process. Smart people should have a voice to decide which is the path that OUR cities should follow to become smart. As recognised by Rob Goodspeed in this post: “Only a democratically legitimate government can determine whether money is well spent on a food or crime tracking systems, versus other pressing concerns like education, health care, and infrastructure”. And it shouldn’t be forgotten that it is us, the citizeneers, who ultimately decide and legitimate governments.
“I have a queue of enterprises in front of my office waiting to sell their Smart City solutions. I argue them that it is me who has to tell them what do we want and not the other way”. I heard these words last Friday. They were pronounced by one top political leader of Barcelona. I just hope that the “it is me” also means “it is me and all the citizens who have chosen me to represent them who will tell what to do”. This is the path to follow. And I am happy to be able to see this project closely.
Where to start a Smart City project? Taking Smart People on board first.
[1] “The Vision of a Smart City”, Robert E. Hall (Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA), 2nd International Life Extension Technology Workshop, Paris, 28th September 2000
[2] "Smart cities in Europe", Andrea Caragliu (Politecnico di Milano), Chiara del Bo (Università degli Studi di Milano) and Peter Nijkamp (VU University), Research Memorandum 2009-48
Photo by CubaGallery (Flickr)
Nice blog.
ReplyDeleteI like the way you fit the Smart People variable into the Smart City equation.
Being a techie as I am, I tend to understimate the opinion of end-users in my development process. And I think most techies do to some degree.
Having the whole knowledge on the matter is usually not enough. In order to be successful, the tools that we create must be born from real needs and cope with the expectations of our end-users: the Smart People.
Therefore I am happy that you heard those words from a top political leader of Barcelona if they imply he's going to listen to the citizeneers' voice.
One of the main problems I have found during the last 8 years working with technologies in cities is knowldege. An smart city approach requieres people from realizing how new IT and processes would improve the whole community and based on what I have seen, this is, sometimes, very hard
ReplyDeleteFor instance, we have developed an state-of-the-art city wiki that today has more than 14.200 local articles (cordobapedia.es) which is visited by almost 4.000 people everyday. This wiki has evolved into an open content platform for developers to acces the content and use it freely in their apps.; we have also promoted an open data portal (www.opendatacordoba.com) for the city hall that includes decision making tools for business owners regarding where to better open a business based on people and traffic flow.
Besides, we have created one of the first real-time maps on how people move in Cordoba (www.mapaturistico.es) thanks to 40 beacons distributed thru the historical downtown.
As in any other project, one of the keys is the person to lead whatever implementations and changes in the organization are needed to implement this. If not, the project will fail. Out of those 3, the second one which needed city hall implication, is the worst of the 3. Nobody within the local government wanted to lead such a great project. Unfortunately, there are other priorities :(
In the other 2, we took another approach. We lead our own projects with almost no help from government, and later on, we will approach them with the results. Sometimes, this method is much more succeessful than others.
Regards, and hope to see you in the Smart City Expo
Alfredo Romeo
www.ciudad2020.com
Joanidis,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment! I really appreciate the remarks from people like you who are in charge of the service development process. I think that new technologies have served to empower people and give them the appropriate tools to easily raise their voice and concerns, thus giving birth to a more participative citizenry. It is our duty to express our voice as frontrunner citizeneers and also to demand more attention to our power to legitimate what is done in our cities (we should be more than just a vote every 4 years)
From my (I think privileged) point of view as a local public worker I am seeing some slight changes in this direction in the heart of my municipality. Let's cross fingers than this is not just void words.
Regards,
Júlia
http://citizeneer.blogspot.com
Alfredo,
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot for your comment, it is a pleasure receiving feedback from someone like you! Your projects and initiatives are born from admirable entrepreneur adventures and that's what is needed in our socialeconomical context.
I fully agree with you that without the proper political commitment and support no Smart City project (or any other project) will reach a good end. And that is specially true when talking about IT projects where local decision-makers lack the proper knowledge to make good decisions. I can tell you that, in the case of Barcelona, the Open Data portal (www.bcn.cat/opendata), even though having top thinkers among our colleagues who bet for it (http://broucasola.blogspot.com, in Catalan and Spanish) wouldn't have been a reality without a strong political support for these issues (coinciding with a rise in the popularity of open data, surely, but that's another point).
Regarding Smart City push, as I previously said in my previous comment above, I am quite happy to see that there is special interest among our political leaders. If this interest is well managed it could end up being a strong competitive advantage. What do we need to convince? Pedagogy, more pedagogy and an open mind able to realise the social impact of new technologies. Let's see how it ends :)
Finally, I find particularly interesting the approach taken in cordobapedia and mapaturistico. Have you managed to convince your municipality with the results?
Best,
Júlia
http://citizeneer.blogspot.com