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Are you interested in why the smart city is complete rubbish?
Our summary today works with the presentation titled Smart City? Smarter City? Smarter Approach? The Smarter City Flywheel from 2023 by yours truly, Fanni Melles, presented at several companies as a result and evolution of my PhD research.
Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see how the smart city idea can be useful for practice. This presentation investigates the history of smart cities and the potential evolution from there.
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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 we will start the celebration of the podcast’s 2nd birthday. This episode is the presentation of a small segment of my PhD research and its further steps. And I apologise, it is a bit longer than usual – however, I hope that you still find it interesting. Stay tuned until because I will give you the 3 most important things and steps we could all take for a better future for our cities.
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What if I told you the term smart city is complete rubbish?
And what if I told you we can change the concept and the future of cities with just 2 letters.
It’s time to replace the term smart city with something more useful – the smarter city. Today we will talk about where the smart city came from and its different meanings. We will also challenge those meanings. We will investigate how we can use the challenges and improve the smart city concept. We will also discuss how the smart city concept can be useful for you specifically.
I promise you something.
At the end you will see that it’s time we replace the term smart city with something more useful – the smarter city.
So let’s jump in to the history of smart cities.
What do you think how old is the smart city idea? I would love to know your answer!
Interestingly, smart cities were born in the 1990s. The first mention of the concept was at a conference in 1990 where they talked about The Technopolis Phenomenon – Smart cities, fast systems, global networks. The conference presentations were collected into this book. It is a fascinating book, but it wasn’t too much use for me: none of the chapters gave any explanation what the smart city means. So even in its infancy, smart city was an ambiguous concept. The authors talk about smart buildings, technology, using the best solutions for sustainability, but just naming the smart city instead of giving it a definition. This ambiguity will continue in the concept’s future.
Smart cities started to pop up mainly in practice as cities tried to implement smart city initiatives. Then academia wanted to help and investigated those case studies in the 90s and early 2000s. In 2007 came the first smart phone, the Iphone and changed how we thought about smartness and smart cities. IBM started to talk about smart cities and smart planet, and more and more technology companies pushed for tool implementation, ICT and IoT. As we will see among the definitions, however, even from the 1990s many stakeholders started to campaign for implementing more than just technology, like governance, the environment, and even people – surprisingly.
And let’s just take a second to see how the smart city concept evolved in academia, because it is very informative how a concept can leave reality. As I mentioned, the first smart cities appeared in practice, as cities tried to establish smart city initiatives for themselves. Academia realised the need for helping out practice and investigated those examples, creating case studies. Researchers started to theorise on smart cities and created various definitions on what the smart city should be. Then, the theories have been applied to practice but with less success and then researchers conclude that what a smart city is even though reality does not agree.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb famously calls this trajectory the bird academy: academia investigates how birds fly, then create theories, then starts to teach birds how to fly and then concludes that birds fly because of academic teaching. Academic research and investigation are very important but we, researchers need to help practice instead of teaching it how to operate. Because professionals like you probably know better the practice than researchers. My participants highlighted this need with saying: “we don’t need academia to teach us how to do our job”. So with smart cities, it is a question, how academia can help practice to use it better, without trying to teach practice how to do their job. And this is what my PhD is trying to do as well.
But before we move on, I would like to clarify something. Since we are talking about smart cities, not just smartness, but also the city itself is in question. In my research, I heard many of your peers define the city in different ways, from the pure built environment, to network of networks and whole ecosystems. They even described cities as the manifestation of humanity.
When I talk about the cities, they are the emergent properties of their urban agents, like how bees create the swarm and its intelligence. Cities are the results of our actions, choices, movements, buildings, connections to each other and connections to our environment.
That is why cities differ from place to place based on people, values, actions, movements, geography, demographics, opportunities, strengths and weaknesses present at that place. So basically, we create the city on different scales. You might have bigger impact because of your jobs creating the city through architecture, interiors, landscape, master planning and urban design, but each and every one of us influences and thus creates the city.
Since we all create the city, I would love to know – Do you think there is THE smart city? And what does it mean to you?😊
Well, looking through the academic literature and practical case studies, the answer is no, and probably should be no, but I will get back to that.
So, there is no THE smart city definition, because there are so many different ones.
Smart city can mean only the technologically advanced city, with ICT and IoT all over the built environment, collecting data. A step above that is the use of such data for the betterment of the environment and possibly even the people. This use creates information, knowledge and insight from the pure technological approach.
Since this did not seem right to many stakeholders, they broadened the view on smart cities. Smart city can involve governance and urban control, better management of urban assets and resources. Leaving such an autocratic perspective behind, people can be also understood as the smart city. Citizen involvement is required for the smart city tapping into the social and intellectual capital of the residents. Their involvement creates an ownership in people thus making them more willing to go along with initiatives.
More complex approaches associate smart cities with sustainable outcomes, resilience, adaptability and many other fancy urban terms. The most complex understandings combine these and many more aspects and even compare cities based on their smartness which are investigated on a set of indicators.
However, I wasn’t satisfied with the theoretical answers, so I interviewed 43 Melbourne-based architects, urban planners and designers and engineers for my research about their understanding of smart cities and their operationalizability. It turns out that smart city has not really been used in their practices. They don’t really understand what smart city is. For the interviewed professionals, smartness is different than the literature says. For them, smartness is thinking ahead and preparing for the unforeseen challenges of urban life. They wanted to go back to the original meaning of smartness, meaning solving problems, innovation and evolution.
Now, the smart city concept naturally does not only have cheerleaders and fans, but critics and opponents. The sheer number of different definitions and the created ambiguity are something of an easy target if someone wants to target it. In 2015, 300-400 projects were named as smart city projects worldwide – we don’t even have an estimate how many are there now.
The technologically advanced city misses people, and can easily become a dystopia with malevolent AI overlords. The data use is questionable because of privacy, ownership and maintenance reasons.
I think I don’t have to explain why the autocratic overregulated smart city is a terrible idea for many people. Community involvement is feared because we don’t believe others are able to see the bigger picture or sacrifice on the short term for the benefit of society on the long run.
Why do we even talk about smart cities if what we really want is sustainability? And the complex systems are great but comparing cities from all over the world based on 12 indicators is not really a smart move. For example, there is a famous smart city assessment with 12 indicators comparing cities worldwide, and one of the indicators is economy – naturally, New York and London are in the top 3 every year being the smartest cities – which is questionable.
The practical use of the smart city concept is also problematic. The term has been simply becoming a marketing slogan because which client doesn’t want to be smart or own something smart? Some of my participants admitted that even though the smart city term is great because it starts conversations, but they use it to lure in customers who want smartness – even though the practitioner and the client cannot have the same idea behind smartness since it means different to everyone. This also creates a suspicion in clients and the stakeholders when a project wants to create something smart – they don’t really believe in the promise. The current practical use of smart cities just enhances the ambiguity and distrust from the community.
Let’s come back to the city as the ‘emergent property of the urban agents’ aspect. The numerousness of the smart city definitions might be chaotic but probably necessary, as cities are different worldwide. The urban agents, people, environment, geography, weather, transport, opportunities and weaknesses differ from place to place.
Even though academics want to create THE smart city definition which would fit every city – that is almost impossible as cities are different. This contradiction was clear for my participants as they saw from their practice that each site needs different solutions. The professional wisdom was deeper because they knew that one definition that reduces cities to the same future is dangerous and not desirable. So one definition would not fit all of cities.
Additionally, smartness implies something finite, something which is reachable. However, there is no final destination because humans and with them cities are continuously evolving, not just differ from place to place.
Any urban future term needs to allow for worldwide differences and continuous evolution.
Which brings us to the smarter city approach.
The smart city gives the impression that it would mean the same for everybody, which we learned that smartness is everything but a term with an overall accepted definition. Smarter city means different to everybody, highlighting and allowing the needed differences among places.
The smart city term implies a final destination which cannot be achieved – in this, practice and theory agrees. Smarter city surpasses such problems, because it implies always a next step. We can always be smarter, right? Our cities can always become smarter.
So smarter city can be a progressive step from smart city because of its innate implications of continuous evolution and various meanings from place to place.
However, we can go even further to smarter approaches.
Since majority of our cities are already present, we can have a block to make them smarter. The first idea can be that we need to destroy everything or refurbished or technology applied to every inch. This might not be sustainable or resilient.
However, we can change our approaches to our environments, let it be built or natural or digital. We can approach the future of cities in smarter ways creating something better for our descendants.
Now, naturally the question emerges, what this means in practice. What can this mean for cities?
Cities need to establish their own smarter approaches and future directions, something like a long-term but loose vision. They need to express what smartness or however they call their vision means to them. This vision can guide the longer strategies, and the day-to-day projects, trials and tactics. These trials, tactics and strategies in turn need to inform the vision itself.
This whole mechanism can work like a flywheel: a strategic approach to create sustainable growth and changes by creating a self-reinforcing loop with small steps towards an established direction or vision. Each city could create their own smarter city flywheel, establishing what their direction is, what future or smartness means to all of their stakeholders, and then create strategies and tactics to start spinning that flywheel.
Amsterdam is a great example of this concept. Amsterdam Smart City started in 2009 with involving the citizens to create the better future for Amsterdam. The city invited the residents to identify problems in their urban areas, which led to specific targets and trials. Based on the experiments, the officials established some measures. Next year they asked again the citizens what problem should they tackle next – and since then they have been doing this together, gradually improving the city. Frans-Anton Vermast, the strategy advisor and International Smart City Ambassador at Amsterdam Smart City on the What is The Future for Cities? podcast’s 3rd episode explained that they are on the 8th version for their smart city definition. However, in his understanding that is a good thing, since the city is evolving, so the definition should too. And they don’t seem to stop.
What can this mean for you specifically? How can you become smarter in your practice? I am happy to help establish your own smarter flywheel.
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What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up question? Let me know on Twitter at WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the transcripts and show notes are available! Additionally, I will highly appreciate if you consider subscribing to the podcast or on the website. I hope this was an interesting paper for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!
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So what did we talk about today?
We discovered that there is no the smart city definition and shouldn’t be one. Smarter cities imply the always evolving nature of cities, while smarter approaches can be even more useful for practice. Since cities are already present, our approaches can be smarter, establishing a smarter approach or smarter city flywheel.
I share my knowledge because I think the best decisions can be made learning from the past and based on information and knowledge. From the history of smart cities and their critics, I think there are practical uses for them but we need to be, well, smarter about using them.
What can we do today toward the better and smarter future for our cities, and consequently our grandchildrens’ grandchildrens?
- Let’s help everyone understand that we don’t need THE smart city because cities are different in nature and one global idea cannot cover and assist cities in their quest to improve.
- Let’s expand our thinking from smart cities to smarter cities and smarter approaches which depend upon each location and direction – for example, extending our thinking from resilience to antifragility on that spectrum.
- Let’s help each city find its flywheel and smarter approaches. In this way, we can create the better future for our cities and humanity.
My name is Fanni Melles, and I would like to leave you with this final message:
If we surpass smart and become smarter, continuously and consciously evolving, we can create the better future which our descendants will be proud of and grateful for.
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