More than half the population today lives in urban areas. The UN predicts with 80% confidence that the global population will get to between 9.6 billion and 12.3 billion people within the 21st century. Population increase leads to more people in the city. More people in the city translates to new challenges that need addressing. When addressing the new challenges, cities evolve by improving the efficiency of services. Eventually, cities change in both structure and composition. In helping show how the cities have changed, the authors utilized the industrial revolution theory which occurred in stages from the first industrial revolution to Industry 5.0. Just like the industrial revolution, cities evolve in stages with the latter stage using the success of the former stage as building blocks. Smart cities which are characterized by progressive city plans and state-of-the-art infrastructure act as a building block for cognitive cities which are characterized by the ability to have connectivity, and common data architecture for people to share and drive innovation.
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The 21st century is an era of daunting challenges including but not limited to population growth, climate change, urban densification, poverty, and inequality (Lomborg, 2020). According to the United Nations, for instance, the population will continue growing throughout the 21st century (Webb & Buratini, 2018). The UN predicts with 80% confidence that the global population will get to between 9.6 billion and 12.3 billion people within the 21st century (Webb & Buratini, 2018). The United Nations posit that population increase can exacerbate the challenge of ensuring sustainable and inclusive development in the future (Wilmoth et al., 2022). The beauty of society is that it never lacks challenges and therefore, people are always busy trying solve these problems (Norton, 2022). Norton (2022) notes that the ugly part of the society is that solutions to problems are not applied equitably. A section of the society benefits at the expense of others. An example of a solution created to solve society challenges is government (Gourevitch & Rousseau, 2018). Governments exist through a social contract where people delegate their sovereign rights to the government (Besley, 2020). The government is expected to conduct its business in accordance to the social contract and observing the rights of each individual (Besley, 2020). The government acting as a solution to societal challenges creates institutions that are meant to serve the people. In these institutions, bias decision making lead to unequal service delivery in society (Battaglio et al., 2019). Racism is also heavily embedded in these institutions, a testament of the unsustainability of institutionalism (Johnson, 2020).
The concept of smart cities was engineered to help solve some of the societal challenges facing the world today (Orlowski & Romanowska, 2019). Smart cities according to IBM is a city that utilizes interconnected information and communication that is made available in optimizing the limited resources at its disposal (Okai et al., 2018). Smart cities are characterized by infrastructural development that revolves around technology (Kasznar et al., 2021). An important concept of smart cities is the implementation of industry 5.0 (Sharma et al., 2020). Industry 5.0 involves the addition of a human touch to technological collaboration (Xu et al., 2021). Smart cities have, for instance, through electric vehicles helped promote sustainability in society (). As part of solutions to the societal challenges, the concept of cognitive cities has been created. Cognitive cities according to Professor Tadhg O’Donovan, Deputy Vice-Principal, Academic Leadership and the Head of the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences at Heriot-Watt University Dubai is the next phase of smart cities (Dcunha, 2022). According to Dcunha (2022), cognitive cities can be viewed as smart cities on steroids. While smart cities incorporate the use of data, the main concern is on how the data is used and not on how much data is utilized (LEAPandInnovate, 2022). Smart cities utilize 5% of available data while cognitive utilize over 95% of available data (LEAPandInnovate, 2022). Cognitive cities help solve the societal challenges through creating an environment that is highly efficient and technologically connected (TED Institute, 2014). Such an environment is able to predict demand and offer innovative and sustainable solutions (Haldorai et al., 2019). For instance, the electric vehicle as envisioned by smart cities solved some aspects in society and created new challenges. Communities dominated by people of color have, for instance, been turned to charging deserts (Zhou et al., 2022). The lack of charging stations means that people from these communities cannot enjoy the benefits associated with electric vehicles (Kuiper et al., 2022). This inequality is part of the problems that the society seeks to solve. Through cognitive cities, investors are able to predict the demand in a given area and provide the needed support-infrastructure creating a win-win situation for investors and the community (Oleksyk et al., 2020).