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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper.

Our summary today works with the article titled Smart cities of tomorrow from 2013 by Paul Budde, published in the Cities for smart environment and energy futures book. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how technological advancements enhance smart, citizen-centric applications, which with the right building blocks, lead to smart cities.

Paul Budde starts with the acknowledgement that the future of our cities will be the product of today’s dreams, and the measures, actions and non-actions we take regarding the challenges we face shape the future and our success in urban life. Increasing urbanisation requires such an action, and he sees some encouraging signs in public transport becoming more efficient, autonomous and electric cars, and houses becoming more energy-efficient, for example. The application of such smarts seems boundless and ubiquitous in connections, governance, health care, education and many other areas. These all help the urban collaboration, which, in Budde’s account, is what the city is: a form of collaboration. As cities are such collaborative efforts, the actions of the inhabitants happen not in isolation and together, he argues, we can do, make and accomplish anything.

However, cities are challenged by stresses and their communities being threatened by the changing environment. The infrastructure is faltering, and cities pollute the vast bulk of CO2 emissions. Despite these challenges, cities are the centres of knowledge, innovation, social and economic interactions. This vast pool of human capital can be put to work to find solutions to such challenges. Cities, therefore, are in a great position to start the grassroot movement of smart cities and investigate the opportunities of collaborations across sectors, governmental departments and other human capital. According to Budde: the building of smart cities in a greenfield environment will be difficult enough; managing the transformation of a brownfield environment is a much more difficult problem, and unless the cities and their citizens become directly involved in working on solutions, there is not much hope for success. Solving these problems also requires cities to operate effectively and efficiently, which they do not currently.

Budde continues with his understanding of smart cities built on three pillars:

1. To make quality of life an excellence hub to deliver services tailors to the citizen
2. To promote sustainable development through harmonised management of public services, which will increase productivity and generate savings on energy, and
3. To work on economic development so that the city remains an essential lever in the development of new services and the creation of innovative businesses and activities

Therefore, the smart city relies on cohesive and open telecom and software architecture which is the foundation for developing citizen-oriented applications. In particular, this includes: access to superfast fixed and wireless broadband networks, a network based on machine-to-machine sensors and data collection and storage devices, harmonised and open management of big data and access via service platforms, and a cohesive citizen-centric information system. With these applications, long, short and medium-term initiatives become possible.

Budde also states what cities need to be especially vigilant about integrating into their plans: the conviction that the smart city is geared to a close understanding of its residents and customising services; the understanding that the interplay between private and public initiatives in the areas of both networks and applications, incorporate open innovation as a central tenet, the systematic review of those elements that are managed internally and those that are outsourced and this for all layers of the architecture, and the integration of new business models which consider public information as an essential resource in drawing the maximum benefit from a city’s actions.

Additionally, smart cities have key components: smart energy, next generation of telecoms and national broadband networks, smart government, smart buildings and homes, and smart transport.

Smart energy comes into place with regards to sustainability, renewable energy, energy efficiency and industrial transformation, among others. Transforming the energy industry is crucial towards more sustainable options to reduce CO2 emissions, but there is not much hope for significant change unless the developing countries have cheap, sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels for developing properly and not emitting catastrophic amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere. Renewable energy technologies, at the time of writing, however, were not encouraging as proper substitutes to the unsustainable options. Additionally, the current infrastructure is not set up to intelligently handle the energy, and for this, smart grids can be very beneficial to manage energy better, more efficiently and effectively. Smart grids can also create savings for the residents of cities, which also enhances the need to develop the infrastructure grid. This evolution means that the business model for grid operators will evolve from simply selling and delivering energy to the more sophisticated role of managing energy, which can be seen in various developments around the world, like in Germany, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries

Global telecom networks are undergoing extraordinary changes, like implementing fibre, in order to meet the increasing consumer demand for high-bandwidth applications, in addition to e-health, education, media and sustainability requirements. A proper inventory of national infrastructure assets is required to establish an efficient and economically viable broadband structure for these services. The most critical element to the success of such national broadbands will be the infrastructure company that will run the network without becoming another telco company. They will have to make decisions for the future based on governmental visions for the multiple uses of the networks. Creating such networks can have multiplier effects as these networks can be used for many other applications. Australia, the USA, the Netherlands and New Zealand were on track to create such broadbands at the time of writing.

To properly modernise the infrastructure, governments need to have a smart approach to the future, also known as smart government. Economic and trans-sector innovations are now key items on the political agendas, and each area needs to find their own solutions. The vision provided by the government gives rise to social and economic strategies, which also influences the design and architecture of the infrastructure. Furthermore, there are smart government technologies appearing in government, and big data is becoming a key focus for governments.

As cities are places with higher density, technology that can make living more sustainable is crucial in the housing sector, including water harvesting and reuse, solar collection and energy-efficient appliances, including heating and cooling. Smart homes and their networks are equipped with devices the possess an amount of integrated intelligence required to manage and exchange data. Smart homes also start to include zero-energy and net-energy emissions, while carbon emissions are compensated with the renewable energy produced on site.

Finally, smart or intelligent transport systems encompass a range of wireless and wired communication-based information technologies that can be integrated into transportation infrastructure and vehicles. Traditionally, road network has been built and then maintained with little active management. Intelligent transport systems allow road managers to become more aware of how the network is being used and how it can be used more efficiently. Smart vehicles will increase the efficiency and effectiveness of transport itself as they will be able to communicate with each other and the infrastructure.

These key elements need to be embodied into strategies and initiatives together and developed parallel. Like, smart infrastructure is needed for communications, energy, transport, and the data gathered need to be analysed, and it could provide intelligent feedback. However, without sound government policies to actually direct the various sectors to share utilities-based infrastructure, nothing smart will happen in the near future. Therefore, leadership from the top is needed to direct the sectors to work together, share infrastructure and provide seamless service for the customers. Currently, the collected data is stored in siloes without opportunities for interoperability. Only a leader at the top can provide the overall leadership that is needed to create a trans-sector policy that will bring together the various infrastructure and application policies, and then industry will jump on board. The culmination of trans-sector thinking will be the evolution of smart connected communities.

Interestingly, people seem to create demands for better solutions due to the confrontation of urban challenges. The key problem associated with these challenges is a lack of smart government policies based on integrated solutions that cross-sector boundaries. Political leadership is needed to address these issues. Over the last few years, citizens worldwide have indicated that they are ready for change. The challenges can be solved, but we need to do things differently; lateral solutions are needed. The created siloes need to be torn down, and collaborations need to be established across disciplines. What is needed is useful data that can be analysed in real-time, allowing people and machines to make instant decisions in relation to energy efficiency, traffic situations and so on. These are the cornerstone of the smart developments of the future.

As the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. Cross-sector industry collaboration is needed for smart future to be established.
2. Leadership is needed for this cross-sector collaboration to happen
3. Parts of the smart future is here, but there is so much more to go and look forward to.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. Why is government leadership required? Leadership is really required; that is out of the question, but why does the government have to lead? Aren’t the people setting up the demand to change the current course of action?
2. How can the industry help better to create a vision for the future of cities and then projects which fit into that vision?
3. How can people, the citizens express their demands even more significantly for a greater or faster change? How can you express your demands better through the tools and opportunities you have at hand?

What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up questions? Let me know on Twitter @WTF4Cities or on the website where the transcripts and show notes are available! I hope this was an interesting research for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

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