Smartphones, smart homes, even, sometimes, smart people. These are all things that exist in the modern world. But what about cities?
As it turns out, they do exist! Fundamentally, a smart city is a place that uses modern technology to function more efficiently, from electric buses as major transport to gardens along the footpaths that are watered automatically. ‘Efficiently’ could mean many things. Economical, by using technology to make running the city cheaper; environmental, by using sustainable technologies instead of fossil fuels; or pleasant to live in, by reducing the difficulty of living in a city as a human with more green spaces and technology that actually works. That’s the idea, at least. But as anyone who has ever used a slow computer knows… technology isn’t perfect.
Fortunately, smart cities aren't quite set up like computers. They’re more like the internet itself. In fact, one of the major technologies used in modern smart cities is the ‘internet of things’, or IoT. This is just a big network of smart objects (phones, automatic doors, sensor-lights, etc) that ‘talk’ to each other, making sure the system as a whole runs smoothly. Maybe a sensor on the road sends a message to a bus saying, ‘slow down, it’s a busy road’. The bus not only slows down, but sends a message to other nearby vehicles to say, ‘I’m slowing down and you should too’. Then all the vehicles send a message to the maps app (or a futuristic equivalent) to let the humans know that this particular road will take 5 seconds longer. A machine learning system that monitors traffic patterns will see this, make a note of the data, and if the road continues to be overly busy will inform the relevant people that maybe the road needs another lane (which of course will be built by robots). All this data is transferred in milliseconds, and the result is no traffic jams or car accidents, and best of all no humans had to worry about it.
The main idea behind the IoT is using machines to do boring, dangerous or difficult jobs instead of people. A person couldn’t, and likely wouldn’t want to, monitor traffic all day and note 5-second differences in speed- but a machine could. A human doctor can’t keep an eye on changes to every one of a patient’s organs for hours at a time- but, again, a machine could. Smart machines like those wouldn’t be replacing human jobs, because they’re performing tasks that humans never do.
Besides the technology used, the main characteristic of a smart city is the idea behind it. This idea should be something like ‘to make a sustainable, eco-friendly place that is pleasant to live in and improves people’s quality of life’. Some will use the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals as a blueprint, while others might start from a financial perspective but still end up more human and nature friendly because it’s actually more economical. An entire city could be run on green energy, from solar panels on every roof to building bricks made of used plastic forming shelters at the bus stops. All the unpleasant jobs like maintaining the roads, toilets, and buildings, as well as monitoring changes in the environment and what they might cause, could be done by machines, leaving humans free to do things they’re actually passionate about.
Already there are some places that classify their cities as smart. Most notable is Singapore, which is using technology to sense how crowded certain areas are, to hold online medical consultations using wearable health-sensing devices, and even creating a brand new sustainable smart city in Tengeh. Oslo is another modern-day smart city, mainly focusing on electric vehicles replacing petrol ones, as well as optimising the city’s light with automatic brightening/dimming LEDs. Other big cities like London and New York are adopting IoT technologies too- using sensors throughout the city to better understand things like crime, traffic, and waste management. Even NZ cities like Auckland and Christchurch are catching on- automatic lighting, lime scooters, applications of 5G, all of these are building blocks for being a smart city.
And that’s what we want, right?
Well… mainly, yes, but there is a dark side. Technology is only as good as the ones who control it, and it’s entirely possible that someone with ill intent could gain access to the machines that make the habitat of thousands of people run smoothly. Those sensors that detect changes in traffic or how crowded a place is? They could easily monitor the exact movements of every person living there, and use that data to find people trying to escape, or attending protests, or anything else the people in charge might have deemed illegal. Terrorists could use the data to find the largest groups of people to target so they cause the most damage. The self-driving vehicles? Someone could hack into them and derail the whole system, crashing cars and buses full of innocent people. Certainly, that might not be likely, but it’s always a risk to have something so important managed only by technology.
The two solutions to that risk are human-proofing the technology, and technology-proofing the humans. The first involves creating so many failsafes in the tech that it would be almost impossible to use them for evil- setting up closed systems that only communicate with each other for things like self-driving vehicles, having so many layers of verification that hacking is extremely difficult, and ensuring the sensors cannot monitor individual people or share data with anyone or anything but the relevant people or machines.
That only works if the designers have good intentions, though- so tech-proofing the humans comes in. This means making it so that people who have power over the city’s planning and running are immune to the lure of all this technology and how it could be used for personal gain. Most likely it will involve societal changes; changing the systems that prioritise money and personal gain, and ensuring that leaders are always held accountable. That’s a difficult and time-consuming change to make, though, so in the meanwhile we mostly need to focus on making all new technologies unexploitable.
The main takeaways from this are that cities are changing, as is the world at large, because technology is growing at an exponential rate. As with most things humans create, these technologies can be used for good or evil, and it’s up to us to make sure all our new innovations go toward making the world better for people and the earth. Already some things exist that make life easier or more sustainable- the internet itself, complex machine learning systems, electric cars and plastic-eating bacteria, and the awareness that humans are beginning to have more and more, that we can and should improve this world. Personally, I hope this will create a future where the environment can heal, humans can live without working 8 hours a day, and our habitats are designed to suit us, rather than the other way around. Plus, you know, flying cars. It’ll happen eventually!