Our Role in the Future of Smart Cities

+SocialGood
4 min readFeb 10, 2020

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By +SocialGood Connector Federico Restrepo Sierra

Cities are part of my day to day life.

I live in the city, work in the city, and spend around 95% of my year in cities.

Cities are so important, in fact, that we have a Sustainable Development Goal just for them: SDG #11 — Sustainable Cities and Communities. It makes sense, as most of the world’s population lives in urban areas. Here is some data regarding cities:

Population

  • By 2030, 4.7 billion people will be living in cities across the globe
  • Currently, 3.5 billion people live in cities. This number is growing by 1.5 million people each week.

Economy

  • The world’s 50 largest cities have a combined GDP of $9.6 trillion USD
  • By 2025, 40% of global GDP growth will be generated by cities in emerging markets

Environment

  • Cities use around 80% of the world’s energy
  • Cities use around 60% of the world’s drinking water
  • Cities generate more than 70% of the world’s CO₂ emissions
Photo by Jens Johnsson on Unsplash

A city is made up of different infrastructure verticals forming a system of systems: mobility, connectivity, sustainability, infrastructure, communication, and energy.

However, infrastructure elements typically operate in silos, making cities chaotic and reducing the quality of life for their populations. The latest urban solution is the “smart city” concept. You’ve probably heard about it, but do you know what that means?

Welcome to the Smart City

A smart city is a developed urban area that creates sustainable economic development and high quality of life by excelling in the verticals mentioned above. This is done through strong human capital, social capital, and/or information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure.

Many cities are being labeled as “smart,” meaning city authority has a strategic approach for meeting the key challenges associated with the urban environment and its development.

Photo by Andrea Cau on Unsplash

Cities, just like private sector businesses, face competition from one another. Today’s cities are constantly competing for innovation, jobs, corporate headquarters, and increased citizen satisfaction and services. These traits attract new residents and commerce, allowing cities to achieve additional revenues from rising property values and a deeper tax base. Cities that recognize the need to integrate new technologies into existing infrastructures separate themselves from the competition. The challenges these forward-thinking cities face challenges such as include the enormous scale of the change needed, the technological complexity, and the continuous costs associated with such projects.

One of the main factors to consider is commuting time. Cities shouldn’t face this issue alone but in partnership with corporations and everyday citizens. For example, here is the math for commuting in my city, Medellin, as an example:

An average person may “waste” one hour going to work and one hour coming home, meaning they spend two hours a day commuting.

2 hours per day x 5 days a week = 10 hours a week

52 weeks in a year — 4 weeks of holidays = 48 weeks

48 week a year x 10 hours a week = 480 hours per years

480 hours / 24 = 20 days

Do you know what that means? People commuting to Medellin waste an average of 20 days a year commuting to and from work. Imagine what they could do if they did not spend 20 days a year commuting.

This happens mainly because of traffic, a result of the number of cars on the roads. So, here we can see one impact of each of us owning cars in our daily life (apart from the environmental impact of owning an oil-powered combustion car, but that is a story for another day).

Photo by Hobi industri on Unsplash

What do I recommend?

I bike to work, which takes me 15 minutes each way (30 minutes total per day), reducing my time commuting per year to just 5 days.

I also use the bus sometimes, but it increases my commuting time to 45 minutes (90 total, so 15 days per year) because it uses the same roads as other vehicles.

Public transport is a promising alternative. If more commuters rode buses to work, there would be far fewer vehicles on the roads, and buses could go faster. Public transport also generates fewer emissions per capita.

Becoming a smart city not only requires an adjustment to public policy, but also behavioral changes, starting with the individual. Change requires us to consider the well-being of people and planet, and how we impact them with our decisions. As we move towards 2030, with the rapid pace of city growth and increasing demands on infrastructure, the need for investment in smart city solutions has never been greater. Public budgets, changing demographics, and aging city infrastructure add to the complexities of achieving prosperous, sustainable, resilient, and inclusive cities. This complex environment drives the need for consolidated city performance data, including smart analytics. In this age of digitalization, cities can use data to become more efficient, offer simplified city services, and evolve.

Sources: The World’s Cities in 2018. United Nations.

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Written by +SocialGood

A global community of changemakers united around a shared vision for a better world in 2030. A project of the UN Foundation in support of the United Nations.

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