How to design smart cities that enable urban populations to thrive

Tech­nol­o­gy is rapid­ly trans­form­ing the way our cities oper­ate and how we live with­in them, with increas­ing­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed machines and algo­rithms adding lay­ers of intel­li­gence once only thought pos­si­ble in sci­ence fic­tion.

But smart cities are not about inno­vat­ing for the sake of inno­va­tion. They are about pro­vid­ing solu­tions to some of our biggest issues in soci­ety, from pub­lic health, safe­ty and well­be­ing to sus­tain­abil­i­ty, bio­di­ver­si­ty and social equi­ty. Fun­da­men­tal­ly, they are about improv­ing the qual­i­ty of life for all cit­i­zens and soci­eties as a whole.

With almost 70% of the glob­al pop­u­la­tion expect­ed to live in urban areas by 2050 and liv­ing for longer, smart cities must be designed to be inclu­sive, acces­si­ble and resilient to the myr­i­ad chal­lenges our plan­et faces.

Tech­nol­o­gy has an instru­men­tal role to play but a whole-sys­tem approach that also takes into account the built envi­ron­ment, nat­ur­al world and the diver­si­ty of city dwellers is need­ed for peo­ple, cities and soci­eties to thrive.

Faced with a poten­tial­ly tur­bu­lent future, urban plan­ners are increas­ing­ly advo­cat­ing a more sus­tain­able approach.

“That means the plan­ning of hous­ing, employ­ment and ser­vices address­es the need for net-zero devel­op­ment and resilience to cli­mate change, while deliv­er­ing qual­i­ty places and green spaces, com­mu­ni­ty infra­struc­ture and job oppor­tu­ni­ties where peo­ple live,” says Edin­burgh City Council’s head of place­mak­ing and mobil­i­ty, Daisy Narayanan.

This is the cor­ner­stone of the 20-minute neigh­bour­hood and 15-minute city approach­es, which are becom­ing a key focus area for gov­ern­ments, organ­i­sa­tions and com­mu­ni­ties across the world. The con­cept is that every­one can meet most of their dai­ly needs with­in a short walk, wheel or cycle from their home.

 “We need this lev­el of ambi­tion to achieve a sig­nif­i­cant shift away from longer jour­neys to active trav­el and meet our net-zero car­bon tar­get by 2030,” says Narayanan. “But it is also about cre­at­ing more social, inclu­sive and acces­si­ble places by improv­ing access to qual­i­ty ser­vices and empow­er­ing local com­mu­ni­ties.”

Can smart cities address the cost-of-living crisis?

Amid the glob­al cost of liv­ing cri­sis and like­ly post-Covid reces­sion, the afford­abil­i­ty of cities has become para­mount to their live­abil­i­ty. The lat­est glob­al Smart Cities Index cites access to afford­able hous­ing as the most urgent mat­ter for cities world­wide, with cit­i­zens rank­ing it above unem­ploy­ment, pub­lic trans­port and pol­lu­tion.

Active Build­ing Cen­tre increas­ing­ly works with social hous­ing providers to help them design build­ings that cre­ate ‘ener­gy-pos­i­tive’ com­mu­ni­ties. Its CEO, Dan Cook, thinks a wide range of hous­ing types is “fun­da­men­tal for all the crit­i­cal peo­ple you need to make a city func­tion”. 

Through the intel­li­gent inte­gra­tion of dif­fer­ent renew­able ener­gy tech­nolo­gies, ‘active build­ings’ can gen­er­ate and store renew­able elec­tric­i­ty to meet their own needs and redis­trib­ute the sur­plus to oth­er build­ings and back into the grid. Their abil­i­ty to reduce ener­gy con­sump­tion and low­er fuel bills, while sup­port­ing peo­ple to have more con­trol of their ener­gy sup­ply, is a tan­gi­ble solu­tion to reduc­ing cost-of-liv­ing pres­sures and improv­ing afford­abil­i­ty in the longer term. 

Many of these tech­nolo­gies already exist. Cook says the onus is on local gov­ern­ments and the build­ing sec­tor to make them main­stream and ensure that sup­ply chains are in place to scale up.

With urban­i­sa­tion increas­ing the diver­si­ty of city pop­u­la­tions and adding new com­plex­i­ties, smart cities need to be designed respon­si­bly to avoid embed­ding exist­ing inequal­i­ties and widen­ing divides.

Dr Jo Mor­ri­son is direc­tor of research and inno­va­tion at dig­i­tal agency Calvi­um. She thinks that a tru­ly acces­si­ble and inclu­sive smart city is one that “embraces a thought­ful, eth­i­cal and inter­sec­tion­al approach across the sys­tem”.

“We can’t cre­ate acces­si­ble smart cities just by rolling out the tech. We have to get to grips with the city as a whole – for exam­ple, its exist­ing struc­tures of dis­crim­i­na­tion,” she says, empha­sis­ing the impor­tance of build­ing smart sys­tems on “respon­si­ble data inputs” that min­imise the risk of caus­ing harm to cit­i­zens.

Creating more inclusive urban areas

While key fac­tors such as race, age and gen­der must be con­sid­ered, the design process must also seek to engage and empow­er dif­fi­cult-to-reach pop­u­la­tion groups such as dis­abled peo­ple, migrants and peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing pover­ty and social exclu­sion.

Cit­i­zens’ Assem­blies are inte­gral to the demo­c­ra­t­ic devel­op­ment of smart city solu­tions, ensur­ing a wide range of view­points in the deci­sion-mak­ing process. When Berlin recent­ly launched the selec­tion process for its first Cit­i­zens’ Assem­bly for cli­mate change, it used an algo­rithm to choose 100 cit­i­zens at ran­dom based on cri­te­ria includ­ing age, gen­der, edu­ca­tion and migra­tion expe­ri­ence to ensure the com­mit­tee mir­rored the city’s pop­u­la­tion as close­ly as pos­si­ble.

Work­ing with com­mu­ni­ties to help shape pro­pos­als through a robust engage­ment process is “absolute­ly key” to improv­ing the lives of all cit­i­zens, says Narayanan, with tech­nol­o­gy such as vir­tu­al real­i­ty play­ing a sig­nif­i­cant role in allow­ing com­mu­ni­ties to expe­ri­ence what enhanced areas might look like. 

“Build­ing these stronger rela­tion­ships to sup­port local economies and tar­get resources where they’re need­ed should empow­er com­mu­ni­ties, help­ing them to cre­ate their own solu­tions for the deliv­ery of the ser­vices they need and pro­mote com­mu­ni­ty wealth build­ing,” says Narayanan. 

“This will help to build a longer-term, self-sus­tain­ing lega­cy to ensure the right prin­ci­ples con­tin­ue at the core of local devel­op­ment for future gen­er­a­tions.”

Ulti­mate­ly, for smart cities to unlock their poten­tial to cre­ate more inclu­sive, equi­table and enjoy­able places for peo­ple to live, they must be built on foun­da­tions that place the needs of their cit­i­zens above every­thing else.