The secret to truly smart cities

Smart lights, smart water meters, smart waste disposal, even smart parking are great ideas, but if only a section of the community can use it, is it really as smart as we think? 

The roll-out of smart technology into local government areas around Australia is happening at speed, with the Federal Government offering millions of dollars in grants to get the technology and infrastructure in place to make our lives easier. Innovations like efficient buildings and public lighting; access to clean energy and water supplies; more efficient travelling both on public and private transport, as well as increased safety and security for the community.

If we believe the hype, all of these are essential now for modern cities to stay relevant, and provide quality living standards for all citizens. Although it sounds like a “smart city” can make life easier for everyone, in reality, it doesn’t. There are not just sectors of the community that are marginalised by new technology such as older citizens who may not have ready access to or understand how to use digital devices, but the solutions this new technology provides, are often not of any benefit to the general community. 

“The crux of it is that with the smart technology available at present, there is huge tendency for its application to be led by technology, rather than be problemdriven,” says Professor Pauline McGuirk, Professor of Human Geography at the University of Wollongong, School of Geography and Sustainable Communities. “The big tech corporates have the product to sell and have been approaching cities to market it, rather than the city deciding beforehand what technology is needed to best benefit its community. 

“The technology needs to be applied for a purpose, or to social issues that need to be addressed and to do that the community has to have input into prioritising that. There needs to be a process of saying we have the technical capacity to do it, but what problem is there that we can agree upon and prioritise to see what this technology can do for us.” 

Professor McGuirk says smart cities are the new Industrial Revolution, and it is only more recently that city authorities are getting better at recognising that the tech-driven approach does not always work and can in fact create issues in equity and accessibility. 

“In saying that however, cities are getting much better at recognising where technology can be and should be used,” she says. “For example, the City of Boston has been at the forefront of smart city thinking. It produced a document called the Smart City Playbook, which took the initiative of writing to the tech corporates and telling them what the city needed and inviting the corporates to come up with technology to suit. 

“The City of Boston was not interested in buying off-the-shelf platforms, but rather told the tech corporates they needed to understand the city’s issues and work in collaboration to find smart solutions.”

In Australia, Newcastle has been proactive in ensuring the technology it acquires is problem-specific, and has made the decision not to buy into a single platform from one corporation says Prof McGuirk. 

“Newcastle is vendor agnostic, and it identified the problems which could be solved through smart city technology via community consultation,” she says. “The city moved forward slowly and signed on with partners when it was appropriate, and only after ensuring these tech partners also have open standards so different technologies from different corporates can talk to each other. 

“The city has a series of issues but there is a flavour to them that reflects community proprietary.