Smart Cities - what is the problem?
When exploring or researching Smart Cities it is difficult to find much in the way of problem-solving solutions, of real-world problems, with backed up evidence of how these problems have been solved. Most of the information is from the tech companies providing the tools to measure the problem and ideas on what the solution may be without really solving anything.
The issue for me lies in the fact that tech companies are building products and then finding a problem it solves without really understanding if it is a problem in the first place. For example, when I worked at Peterborough City Council I was often ‘sold’ solutions to make traffic flow quicker. But as a city, Peterborough had the second fastest commuting time in the country. Peterborough’s issue was around Health and Social Care and that’s where we needed the technology companies to stand up and provide offerings.
Parking space occupancy sensors are all well and good, but is on street parking causing that much of a problem, is it causing more emissions, affecting people’s health? Once installed, how many cars are using the app, how many cars are going for the same space, how much emissions has it reduced and what long term difference does this really make? Surely the sensible ‘smart’ solution is not to have on street parking and have multi-storey car parks or park and rides where parking traffic is removed completely.
A problem, a tool to measure and a solution
The point being made here is that for smart or smarter cities to really have an impact then there needs to be three things; a problem, a tool to measure the problem and a solution. And it needs to happen in that order. What I would like to see is the technology companies working closer with the public sector to understand the unique difficulties of each city (there’s more cities in the UK than just London) and then look at the best way to use technology to measure the problem (there’s still a place for sensors) and then work with Urban Planners, Architects, Landscape Architects and Scientists etc. to actually provide plausible solutions that make a real difference.
I’d love to see some of the big tech companies that talk about their smart city platforms or technologies then introduce me to a range of non-technical staff who fully understand how cities are designed and built and what improvements we can make or retrofit to improve people’s lives. Being able to then measure these changes will provide the business case for more investment into the sector.
As with a lot of projects that I come across, especially digital transformation ones, the focus is on the technology and not the transformation. The transformation is the key element that digital supports or enables. The same is true of Smart Cities, it is about improving the quality of lives and the technology is part of what enables it but is not the starting point. In the same way that digital transformation should be called ‘enabling transformation through digital technology’ smart cities should also be ‘enabling the improvement of life quality through smart technology’.