The concept of smart cities has emerged with the process of harnessing new technologies to improve everyday urban life. In smart cities, “information technology is combined with infrastructure, architecture, everyday objects and our own bodies in order to address social, economic and environmental problems” (Townsend 2013). In this scenario, the Internet of Things constitutes the main driver of this revolution, allowing cities to become more efficient in their usage of resources and more effective in their response to citizens’ needs. This optimistic view can be seen as a solution to the increasing urbanization rate, given the challenges that this phenomenon poses on cities’ infrastructure, population wellbeing and natural resources. However, we should be cautions in considering smart cities as the ultimate solution of looming societal and ecological problems, as its implementation raises important questions on matters of equality and security.
This paper analyses the role of the Internet of Things on making cities ‘Smart’, pointing at the main benefits in terms of a) efficiency b) social inclusion and c) sustainability. Critics’ voice is also taken into account, addressing potential concerns on the increasing inequality driven by the digital divide and security. The paper will conclude by looking at how some real-world examples have solved such problems and benefitted from the data-driven and knowledge-based economy.
Throughout the past decades, two important trends emerged. One is Moore’s Law, the principle of a continuously ‘faster’ and ‘cheaper’ computing technology (Gallaugher 2016). The implication of this law is a new social and economic scenario, where cheap and fast technology can be embedded in all sorts of products, creating new services. More specifically, sensors and processors can be distributed across a vast network of small devices, allowing a) the collection and analysis of data from a myriad of communication endpoints and b) the coordination of a collective action, thanks to the interconnectedness of these devices (Gallaugher 2016). This vision is commonly referred to as the Internet of Things.
A second important trend is represented by the increasing urbanization rate. According to the World Urbanization Prospect issued by the United Nations (2014), 54% of the global population is living in urban areas. In 1950, this figure was a mere 30%, and by 2050 it is projected to reach 66%. These numbers clearly indicate an increasingly number of people who leave rural areas to settle in cities. This puts a great pressure on the urban environment, in terms of utilization of resources and infrastructures.
The challenges brought by a rising urban population can be addressed by harnessing the potential of information technologies in two main ways: 1) a more efficient usage of resources and infrastructure 2) a more expeditious response to the city’s fast-changing environment and 2) an effective system that engages residents in the municipal decision-making process.
When Internet of Things is embedded in the city assets, these can be utilized more efficiently. A straightforward application of on is mobility. Smart traffic lights are connected to public transport, and coordinate schedules and routes with the green lights. A successful example can be found in Barcelona, where the traffic system is linked to emergencies vehicles, so that in case of emergency the time to get to the accident site is reduced by turning the traffic lights on the route to green (Bond 2017).
Smart Cities have also the potential to integrate public and private assets and needs, maximizing and enlarging the benefits of the collaborative consumption. When the public sector has not enough resources to provide services to its citizens, the private sector should be eager to fill the gap if it sees profit potential. Education, child and elderly care, assistance to people with disabilities, maintenance to public premises are all activities that could be fulfilled by a pool of citizen suppliers who may be willing to carry out this activities for a small fee. The concept of sharing economy can help in creating a viable business model that connects different players in these highly-fragmented sectors, where the public sphere can take an active role in promoting, coordinating and subsidizing these activities. By outsourcing these social tasks to the ‘crowd’ while ensuring quality and trust among users, public institution may be able to offer greater service to a larger number of people while decreasing costs. After all, as the Metcalfe’s Law suggests, the value of a service that relies on a network increases as the number of users expands (Gallaugher 2016). Technology not only can help in identifying needs (and demand) among the crowd and potential citizens suppliers, but also enable a fast and reliable coordination across them. For example, in Amsterdam holders of a private parking slot can use the app ‘Mobypark’ to rent out their space to drivers looking for a spot (Bond 2017). By integrating this feature with public parking facilities, and equipping them with sensors that capture the flow of vehicles, a Smart City could provide its citizens with a real-time overview of available spaces and relative prices. A further development may include the option to book a specific parking slot for a predetermined time, paying via the online platform. This service would iron out the unnecessary congestion of people driving around the city struggling to finding a parking slots, with positive repercussion on traffic and pollution.
Smart Cities also try to minimize energy consumption, in order to reduce their carbon footprint. Devices such as smart meters monitor energy usage and when this data is collected and aggregated on a large scale, analytics can recognize patterns in order to plan a more efficient energy usage. An application of this technology is smart lighting, a system made up of control devices capable of adjusting the lightening level depending on real-time conditions such as daylight condition and occupancy (Betters 2018). In Amsterdam, this concept has been applied to street lighting, enabling the municipality to adjust the brightness and save energy (Bond 2017). When a city applies smart energy control devices on all of its public infrastructures and incentives companies and individuals to follow, the cuts on consumption and related pollution are huge.
Smart Cities can actively promote the development of services that leverage on the Internet of Things embedded throughout the territory. A key example is the city of Barcelona, which sponsored the project ‘Sentilo’, an open sensor platform that shares an API to any application or service provider who could benefit from it. Sensors can capture noise, air quality, traffic and waste management (Joinup 2018). The rationale behind this project is that a city to become smart needs to break organizational silos and allow a free flow of data that can be used to create smart solutions. This approach goes against the conventional status quo of municipalities to rely on proprietary sensors and data that makes cities’ solutions dependent to a specific, isolated provider. When this occurs, it usually leads to the creation of multiple data-collecting infrastructures, incurring set-up costs and maintenance expenses that could be rationalized. Sentilo was designed to enable information sharing between compatible systems that adopt open source components that fosters the creation of applications that bring benefits to the community (Joinup 2018).
Information technologies can also be adopted to improve community engagement toward local governance and decision-making. Smart cities can achieve this thanks to the application of e-governance and e-participation.
E-governance streamlines the delivery of municipality and government services to the citizens, making them available in a convenient, transparent and timely manner (Oakley (2018). This is mainly achieved by making many services available online, so that citizens no longer need to complete tasks such as address change or certificate request face-to-face with a city employee. This could also be extended to electronic voting. Overall, e-governance makes the administration more citizen-focused and allows cost-reduction while improving the quality and speed of the public services.
E-participation enhances access to information and public services and enables participation in policy-making. Not only does this empower city residents, but also benefit the community as a whole by developing prompt solutions that clearly tackles societal needs (United Nations 2018). This has been done so far thanks to the so-called METEP ToolKit, a measurement and evaluation tool that relies on discussion, experience sharing and online questionnaire that collects data from citizens needs (United Nations 2018). Local government could then rely on business intelligence analytics tool in order to spot trends, analyze inputs and perform sensitivity analysis in order to come up with new, more effective strategies. E-participation should emphasize the idea that people are interdependent components of a community with similar interests, such as sustainable growth and social wellbeing (Coe et al 2011). Therefore, Smart Cities have the potential to go beyond the focus on economic and efficiency benefits arising from Information Technologies. They can develop systems that promote citizens’ engagement and harness this opportunity to develop plans that best address societal problems. Smart cities could then be transformed into Smart Communities, where the whole community benefits from a data-driven and knowledge-based economy (Coe et al 2011).