The Smart Cities Of The Future: 5 Ways Technology Is Transforming Our Cities

How smart is your home? If it’s anything like mine, it’s a heck of a lot smarter than it was 10 or even five years ago. That’s because our homes are now stocked with intelligent devices, like smart thermostats, smart speakers, and smart lightbulbs. But the trend for intelligent spaces extends far beyond our homes. All around the world, entire cities are also becoming smart. 

What are smart cities, and why do we need them?

A smart city is one that leverages technology to increase efficiencies and improve the quality of services and life for its residents. Smart city initiatives can cover anything from power distribution, transport systems, street lights, and even rubbish collection. The idea is to use data and technology to make everyday life easier and better for the people who live and work in the city, while maximizing the use of resources.

More and more of us are living in cities – the UN predicts that 68 percent of the world’s population will live in urban areas by 2050. And this means our cities are facing growing environmental, societal, and economic challenges. By making cities smarter, we can overcome some of these challenges and make cities better places to live. One report by McKinsey Global Institute found smart city technology can improve key quality of life indicators – such as the daily commute, health issues, or crime incidents – by 10 to 30 percent.

This is all possible thanks to a “perfect storm” of technology trends – trends that allow us to create spaces in which humans and technology interact in a more connected, intelligent, and automated way. Think of trends such as artificial intelligence, big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), and autonomous vehicles. Combined, advances like these are changing the world and how we live in it. Our cities are no exception.

I’ve written before about smart city initiatives in my home town of Milton Keynes, but let’s look at some other examples of cities getting smarter:

Traffic is the bane of many a city-dweller’s life, but technology offers some promising solutions. For example, public transport routes can be adjusted in real-time according to demand, and intelligent traffic light systems can be used to improve congestion. In the Chinese city of Hangzhou, an AI-based smart “City Brain” has helped to reduce traffic jams by 15 percent.