The smart city

As spaces that bring people and capital together in a critical mass, towns and cities often lie at the forefront of exploration into digital technologies. Cities face many unique challenges resulting from the confluence of high population density with urban poverty and inequality, traffic, crime, poor air quality, heat islands, waste disposal and more. Local authorities around the world are engaging in technological solutions to some of these most pressing challenges through the idea of the “smart city”.

A “smart city” is a place that is able to sense and respond to the needs of its citizens. It is a mindset, a set of tools and techniques, and an enabling environment, which local urban authorities are well-placed to drive and facilitate. More progressive city authorities that see themselves as a smart city will have in place a constant process of innovation, learning and adapting, that can address the constantly evolving needs of their citizens and will likely include an inclusive urban development strategy, delivered with digital technology.⁵ It is not a stage of development fixed in advance, rather a series of transitions: digital, economic, energy, societal, regulatory and legal. An evolving regulatory framework and consequently of partnership and governance models is necessary to keep pace with the challenges of technological acceleration.

And there is not just one model of the smart city. “Becoming” a smart city can be driven by any of the actors in the city ecosystem. For ASToN, the network’s thesis is that becoming a smart city will involve an effort by the local urban authority to build a coalition of actors across all sectors, who can improve the quality of life of the city’s citizens, by improving the digital capacity of the local authority, its ecosystem, and the territory it works within.

This digitalisation, however, depends on local context and needs. Urban areas around the world have different approaches, and varying levels of digital maturity, including financial and human resources to commit to digital projects. They also have different levels of sophistication when it comes to tools for mobilising the territory, co-creation capabilities, new ways of policy making and new ways of working.

A city’s different context and needs, and its responses to the ideal of a smart city, create various typologies of city optimization⁶ and approach⁷. They are many, and nuanced, but can be broadly characterised as⁸:
• Technology-centred and data-driven: with technology and infrastructure at its core, the smart city is a rationalisation of urban systems, flows, and resources (e.g. energy, information) and their management in real time
• Citizen-centred: enabling the connected urban user and reinforcing democracy via ‘civic tech’ which strengthens the democratic link between inhabitants and public authorities, and benefits from participatory methods made possible by digital tools
• Unlimited growth model: a more critical approach which suggests the smart city is the means to sustaining capitalism and ongoing global economic growth

Overall, we observe there are different approaches and definitions, and expect that each city in the ASToN network will find and define its own.
Local authorities have a responsibility for orienting the digital transformation in their territory, to make sure benefits are felt widely by citizens and local actors. Where certain groups may not be able to engage with digital content or capitalise on the opportunity digital technology presents, digital transformation can generate or accentuate existing economic and social inequalities.

“Local authorities should also be aware of the use of data, and encourage the good governance of digital procedures, uses and tools. This is the primary role of the authorities: defining the purposes for which the data will be used.”