Cities need smart thinking

Today’s cities con­tain more than 50 per cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion, account for 75 per cent of glob­al ener­gy con­sump­tion and emit 70 per cent of green­house gas.

They face chal­lenges dri­ven by chang­ing demo­graph­ics, scarci­ty of resources, such as ener­gy and water, pol­lu­tion, over­loaded phys­i­cal and social infra­struc­ture, traf­fic con­ges­tion, and crime.

At the same time, cities need to com­pete for tal­ent, jobs and inward invest­ment, reduce their oper­at­ing costs in a time of aus­ter­i­ty, as well as man­age exist­ing debt.

Robin Daniels of Liv­ing Plan­IT says the key to becom­ing a smart city lies in increas­ing effi­cien­cy and through this enabling cit­i­zens and places to inter­act in a “liv­ing city” envi­ron­ment. “Being smart is about deploy­ing intel­li­gence to enhance val­ue,” he says.

Liv­ing Plan­IT works close­ly with Cis­co and a range of oth­er part­ners, and with McLaren have com­bined telem­at­ics, devel­oped for motor sport, with Cis­co routers to pro­vide high-vol­ume, real-time data man­age­ment, inte­grat­ed on to Liv­ing PlanIT’s urban oper­at­ing sys­tem.

There are numer­ous appli­ca­tions in health­care, edu­ca­tion, trans­port, retail and secu­ri­ty. In one Liv­ing Plan­IT demon­stra­tion, the fire ser­vice could max­imise the pres­sure of water, unlock build­ing doors, check on people’s loca­tion and sup­port the emer­gency ser­vices.

The long-term goal should be a regen­er­a­tive city which results in more ener­gy and clean water, but less car­bon

In an IBM project with Street­line and Citibank, it was dis­cov­ered that 50 per cent of traf­fic in Los Ange­les at any time was due to motorists search­ing for park­ing. This could be mas­sive­ly decreased through the deploy­ment of a smart park­ing app enabling peo­ple to book their park­ing before leav­ing home.

Pao­lo Stark, chief exec­u­tive of Siemens Brazil, says that, while smart cities pro­vide a step for­ward, the real issue is about mov­ing beyond imme­di­ate eco­nom­ic ques­tions, and look­ing more close­ly at the direct and indi­rect ben­e­fits of action.

He says that while “smart city” is an absolute term, being smarter means think­ing about how things work. “A smart city is one which looks at the strate­gic ben­e­fits of invest­ment from attract­ing inhab­i­tants and indus­try through clean­er water, effec­tive trans­porta­tion and effec­tive health­care – one where a process of sus­tain­able trans­for­ma­tion is tak­ing place,” says Mr Stark.

Accord­ing to Guy Bat­tle, head of Deloit­te’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty prac­tice, cities are where we’re going to solve the chal­lenges of pop­u­la­tion and inno­va­tion. In dense urban envi­ron­ments, the oppor­tu­ni­ty aris­es for “inte­grat­ed and closed-loop sys­tems”. One exam­ple of clos­ing that loop means putting waste water into an efflu­ent plant, where the gas gen­er­at­ed is used in a co-gen­er­a­tion plant to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty and hot water for the city.

He believes that, while the smart city is a nec­es­sary step in urban evo­lu­tion, the long-term goal should be a regen­er­a­tive city. This means one which results in a net-pos­i­tive ben­e­fit of more ener­gy, more clean water, less car­bon.

An approach could be to ensure that every build­ing must pro­duce more ener­gy than it needs or that it process­es waste water and feeds clean water back into the city sys­tem. Cur­rent­ly every busi­ness and every build­ing levies a social cost on its envi­ron­ment.

So a smart city is one which is trans­par­ent, shares infor­ma­tion to improve effi­cien­cy, and one which pro­tects and ben­e­fits its cit­i­zens. It’s worth point­ing out, says Mr Stark, that the major­i­ty of solu­tions for cli­mate change will also improve qual­i­ty of life; even increas­ing home pow­er con­sump­tion effi­cien­cies will cut pow­er bills.

There is a cor­re­la­tion between address­ing cli­mate change, and ben­e­fit to the city and its cit­i­zens.

Today’s cities contain more than 50 per cent of the world’s population, account for 75 per cent of global energy consumption and emit 70 per cent of greenhouse gas.