Smart City: Disruptions and Predictions

Smart City: Disruptions and Predictions 

CommunicAsia2017
Summit speaker, Dr. Renato De Castro, Advisor of Leading Cities, World
e-Governments Organization of Cities & Local Governments shares three Smart
Cities predictions

By 2030, 70 percent of the world’s population will be concentrated in cities.
Today, we are seeing large scale rural to urban migration with an estimated of
370,000 people forecasted to migrate daily between 2015 and 2020. The massive
growth of urban populations has brought about a series of managerial challenges
in both the public and private sectors from resource limitations to the
constant need to adapt to consumer demands.

To be truly
Smart, cities must integrate and use ICT that is citizen centric to improve
quality of life, enable more positive economic outlook and ensure greater
economic resilience. Dr. Renato De Castro shares the three must-know
predictions to be brought about by Smart Cities:

The use of
artificial intelligence is no longer one of fictional storytelling but an
imminent trend strong push for artificial intelligence (AI) and deep-learning
to power cities of today. Deep understanding and analysis of data becomes an
increasingly powerful tool for governments and businesses to leverage – and
this is particularly so in ensuring data protection and security.

Cities in
Latin American and Africa are plagued by high crime rates, and the United
States and European cities continue its battle with terrorism. The marriage of
technology to security potentially can alleviate and help manage these issues.
Cities can consider adopting state-of-the-art high-definition surveillance
systems that across information networks like social media, where AI is able to
process the large amount of data not only shortens the required response time
in threatening situations, but can also predict crimes. Controversies of
monitoring and privacy aside, AI has the potential to improve the safety and
security of smart cities for the betterment of its citizens.

According
to the United Nations, a hypercity refers to massive sprawling conurbations of
more than 20 million people. Tokyo became the first hypercity in the mid-1960s
when it crossed the threshold[1]. By 2020, the very
near future, there will be numerous more hyper-cities to  boot, such as
Mumbai, Delhi, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, New York, Dhaka, Jakarta and Lagos.

The rise in
number of hypercities is likely to lead to the development of district
confederations as a result of steep inter-city competition. Even as of today,
large cities are already fighting for investments and talents to increase
competitiveness. This emerging trend among big cities is likely to become even
more pronounced in the near future. In the long run, cities will play a more
significant role in their own governance in response to the push to better
develop and enhance its attractiveness. This will lead to the development of
district confederations, where each district has their own rules, regulations,
and pilot projects.

40 years
from now, the quest towards smarter cities would bring forth another industrial
revolution. The fourth industrial revolution seeks to be the most disruptive
one yet, where transformation can be classified into four unique and
dramatically different dimensions, which are:

·         The Creative Economy. As the name suggests, is the use of creativity to
value-add to the local economy. The blossoming of the creative class has been
attributed by Richard Florida to the increasing prosperity of prosperous
high-tech clusters such as Silicon Valley in California, Austin Technology
Cluster in Texas and East London Tech City.

·         The Sharing Economy. The rise of services such Airbnb and Uber is
shocking the traditional market place and will affect the global production and
distribution chain and promote the rise of new business and innovation models,
specifically one that caters to the idea of “access over ownership”

·         The Circular Economy. An economy whereby there is no wastage, which is
obtained through the consciously reusing resources to ensure long-term
sustainability for our environment. This is in stark contrasts to our current
linear production models, which transforms raw materials into use, and
eventually waste.

·         Co-Creation. New start-ups are welcoming collaboration with all
stakeholders; employees, suppliers, customers and even competitors. This
concept can be developed to encompass the co-creation of citizens with public
management to raise the quality of life. 

These major
changes can be characterized by newfangled perspectives about the implications
of time and space due to technology bridging physical, digital and biological
domains.

In the face
of the impending change, one has to mindful that it is mind-sets and
perspectives that will steer the movement towards smarter cities and smarter
citizens. Technology is just a vessel for change. The embracement of technology
has to be thorough, inclusive and complete on all levels for the successful
implementation of Smart City projects.

For more
insights, join Dr. Renato De Castro, Advisor of Leading Cities, World
e-Governments Organisation of Cities & Local Governments at the CommunicAsia2017 Summit on Conference Day 2, 24 May 2017 speaking on the topic ‘City SMARTup:
New Tools to Build Wiser and More Competitive’.