What is a Smart City? Thanks for asking!

Nobody knows if the cities of the future will be full of robots and flying cars, but lots of engineers are working towards making them smart. Many dream of these connected cities becoming sustainable utopias, while others see them as the stuff of nightmares, with citizens under constant surveillance. The idea behind the smart city is to use state-of-the-art technologies to manage the usual resources and services that exist in urban areas. We’re talking transportation, drainage, lighting and policing for example. The end goal is to improve the quality of those services, and bring down the costs.

Interesting, but do we really need such developments?

We might not realise it at an individual level, but cities face a number of challenges. 50% of the global population lives in cities, a figure which is sure to increase further in coming years. All the city-dwellers out there use up resources, such as water and electricity, and create waste. Managing all this is complicated, which is where technology comes in to help. There are several examples of cities already using connected technology. In Barcelona, intelligent street lighting allows for energy saving. 10,000 LED lamps have been installed across the city, containing motion-detecting sensors. When no-one is around, the lights dim to reduce energy consumption. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, dumpsters are fitted with sensors to alert local authorities on their fill-level in real time. This prevents overfilling and means collection teams won’t need to make an unnecessary trip when the waste level is still low. Other examples of smart city technology include automated watering of plants according to ground dryness and police robots reminding people to respect social distancing rules. In San Francisco, there’s even an app which allows residents to send pictures of dog feces on pavements to the city’s Public Works Department. The name of the app? Snapcrap!

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