Whenever we talk about smart cities it is normally inferred that a smart city involves adding technologies to the infrastructure of the city. The goal is to make it more efficient in a certain aspect be it traffic, processes with the city/government, city’s basic services, or access to information. In reality Smart Cities is a much broader topic that includes several key aspects. They can be separated into: Smart cities infrastructure, the power of the government with smart cities, the citizens abilities to use a smart city, and the ethics of smart cities.
Smart Cities Infrastructure
All cities need infrastructure in order to be able to adopt and develop a smart city. Most approaches to this topic need the implementation of some technology to make the transition into a more efficient evolution of whatever they are trying. Traffic is one common example that almost all cities try to make better. A very good insight in how smart traffic is moving foward can be found here.
Infrastructure not only involves physical advances but also logistical advances from governamental processes to services. With the use of new technologies it is possible to do smarter better portals for the citizens of a city. There is a current trend to move into this area and streamline most needs thorugh a web portal. This wouldnt be possible without adjustments to the logistic of current processes.
Ethics of Smart Cities
Smart cities involves gathering data from the city and the citizens that inhabit it, this obviously creates the issue of how to gather and what should we gather from the citizens as their data should be their own at the end of the day. I’ve talked a little about it in this blog post. With smart cities it is incredibly important to take in consideration how we use the data as it can easily be exploited for others advantage.
The Power of the Government with Smart Cities
Most of the initiatives that involve smart cities involve in some manner the government be it approvals or using resources from them. When we have a section of the city’s organization which is the one that decides most of it and oversees it, we can have an abuse of the information they are getting. They could use it for personal gain or to “automate” a process in which their eyes will make it easier but might be a very biased system, this has happened in china where the citizens are categorized base on their internet usage.
The Citizens Abilities to use a Smart City
Perhaps the most important reason why smart cities should be implemented and what should be at its core its that they should serve to empower and facilitate the life of a citizen. A citizen should be able to use or gain a benefit from the systems that are implemented into their city. One of the most important obstacles the topic of smart cities should address is how to teach their citizens to use this systems and get the most out of them. There is no benefit in creating a web portal to do all the processes for issuing guvernamental documents if only 5% of the population will use it, due to their knowledge of the platform or their ability to acess it. In order to develop a good Smart City it is necessary to first tackle the issues of accesibility the vast majority of the citizens will face when introducing new technologies to their ecosystem.
Sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5124065/
http://www.alearnedhand.com/smart-cities-big-data-where-is-ethical-framework/
Smart Cities 