For the past several years, advances in fields such as 5G, IoT, autonomous vehicles and AI processing have promised to unlock major new innovations for civic planning and public sector management. Technology vendors and local governments alike have laid out visions for glittering, high-tech utopias where next-generation systems manage everything from traffic flow to collecting the bins.

For the past year, however, COVID has reduced cities up and down the country to veritable ghost towns, stripped of their usual hustle and bustle. In a post-pandemic world, can the same ideas be turned to making COVID-safe cities, or is the dream of the smart city no longer feasible? This week we’re joined by staff writer Keumars Afifi-Sabet to talk about the future of smart cities.

For more information on the topics covered in this week's episode, head to http://bit.ly/ITPP-dream.