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Are you interested in synthetising a city’s intelligent to be smart?

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Our summary today works with the article titled What makes a city ‘smart’? from 2016 by Emine Mine Thompson, published in the International Journal of Architectural Computing. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see city governance using information and communication and sensing technologies. This article investigates the use of such tools by city governments and the shortcomings of such approaches.

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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. Stay tuned until because I will give you the 3 most important things and some questions which would be interesting to discuss.

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Cities are complex organic structures, they evolve and change constantly. Over their existence, cities have been the places of transport, communications media, processing information and creation of knowledge. Outside of academia, the ‘smart’ concept became a generic term fused with data collection, sensors and various monitoring technologies, big data and the IoT. Data collection using sensors and monitoring of every aspect of urban living is technologically possible and is being done across many communities and under smart city schemes. But what makes the city ‘smart’? This article looks into the technological aspects of the smart city and tries to classify elements of the future city which are smart in every sense.

City authorities across the world collect many different types of data, resulting in big data, and they sometimes try to share this with their citizens. Big data combines sources like sensors, social media sites, transactions or direct citizen communication. Authorities use IT not just to speed up data processing but also to improve delivery of services, aid citizen interaction and potentially increase political participation. Nowadays, not only sharing the data with the citizens, but also making sense of that data before sharing it becomes one of the most important new tools for city authorities.

Urban informatics combines the ways in which computers are embedded into cities so that routine functions can be made more efficient not only through automated responses but through the generated data. Urban informatics and analytics initially made the basis for the concept of a smart city. The smart city is without a clear definition, but evolving. There are three key players involved in the smart city concept: universities, industries and local governments. Scientific articles and professional reports focus more on this triple helix concept of the knowledge society, where the players are working together for a common goal. The cities which adapted this approach, have initiatives in digital infrastructure, data management, smart buildings, and smart transport with dedicated teams who have executive power. The next evolution in the smart city concept is the quadruple helix model involving not just academia, industry and government, but also civil society.

Data and information and communication technologies clearly play a big part in smart future urbanism. But equally, there are other major concepts which contribute towards the creation of smart cities. Cities, whether smart or not, exist for their citizens, thus citizen engagement should be a top priority. Public involvement is an important urban planning tool to consult and involve the public in the decision-making processes. There are Human smart cities which emerged from the softer features of smartness, more focused on the clarity of vision, citizen empowerment. This can complement the technological drive of the underlying urban infrastructure. A number of methodologies can be adopted for such human centred approaches, like participatory design, open innovation, living labs and design thinking – placing the user at the centre of the process.

Smart urbanism that shapes and manages complex and multidimensional places by engaging multiple stakeholders could overcome the shortcomings of other urban future approaches. Siloed governmental approaches and responses need to change due to global urban challenges and more towards smart solutions. While data analytics, administrative control centres, social media, city apps, and other tools offer insights to the city itself here and now, the solutions, visions, and predictions about the city should not only rely on the technology and the data, but also include all stakeholders from the city in order to achieve smart but also human-centred urbanism. Current pressing issues, such as ageing infrastructure, can lead us to new opportunities, like collaboration between cities to create integrated solutions. These new opportunities will help us redefine the future of cities.

The smart city concept is not only for creating new holistic systems without siloes but also about improving current systems with an appropriate level of technological interventions. Fundamentally, smartness should not be determined by how up-to-date or expensive the technology is, but by how we will improve citizens’ lives and how we can create better living spaces for all by utilising all available resources. Overall, smart city agenda should be based upon long-term vision, people and processes as the main drivers. Benefits from this new way of urbanism are diverse. Especially, governance cost will be reduced as the need to recollect and verify data is removed. There will be a common understanding of communities and shared objectives, citizens will engage more, decision-making processes will be more transparent. The next step would be to transform the ageing governance to real-time city governance which uses data in all of it processes.

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

1. While data analytics, administrative control centres, social media, city apps, and other tools offer insights to the city itself here and now, the solutions, visions, and predictions about the city should not only rely on the technology and the data, but also include all stakeholders from the city in order to achieve smart but also human-centred urbanism.
2. The smart city concept is not only for creating new holistic systems without siloes but also about improving current systems with an appropriate level of technological interventions.
3. Overall, smart city agenda should be based upon long-term vision, people and processes as the main drivers.

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

1. How smart is the urban governance of your city?
2. What do you think about the long-term vision of your city? Does it have one? How would you improve it?
3. How much are you part of the smartness of your city? Do you know what kind of data are you providing?
4. How could you improve your contribution to the smartness of your city knowing that what you do and provide as data matters?

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