Smart cities can be described as the use of modern technology to improve urban space, as well as interacting with citizens to increase quality of life. It covers every aspect of society's and people's livelihoods, from monitoring of public space to public transport services, home automation, cloud storage, and electronic public and business services. The advancement and global practice of information and communication technology (ICT) have led to its fundamental consideration in the development and navigation of cities. This has called for the need to have innovations using technology to improve the quality of life and enhance natural environment. Therefore, this chapter is aiming to provide further understanding and clarity on smart cities with inclusion of several initiatives and examples already applied in practice within the UK and across other countries. The research is mainly including secondary sources from the literature to review smart cities. Key recommendations are provided for policy developers, local authorities, academics, and students interested in the field.
TopIntroduction And Background
Smart city has become a global trend in the development of advanced cities in the 1st century. The concept is a new concept, which is still in its infancy stage as the idea was first initiated by IMB in the USA in 2008 to study how the functions of a city could be optimised in order to promote development of talented-based economy as well as improve the quality of life.
There is currently no standard definition of smart city, although practitioners and researchers have made attempts to describe the concept. Whilst it has been described as a city smarter than traditional areas and capitalising on new technology and insights to transform and enhance its systems, operations and service delivery; other academicians have classified smart city by a vision that includes five key factors: digital technology, environmental sustainability, civic initiatives, mobility and businesses (IBM 2010; Cavada et al 2015).
Thus, smart city can also be described as the use of modern technology to improve urban space, as well as interacting with citizens to increase quality of life. It covers every aspect of society’s and people’s livelihood, from monitoring of public space to public transport services, home automation, cloud storage and electronic public and business services.
Cities like Singapore and Copenhagen are believed to be on top of their game in using technology to enable their citizens to enjoy a better quality of life. Whilst Singapore focuses on people using technology – wireless communications and energy efficient appliances or vehicles to help them reduce the need to move cleanly; Copenhagen concentrates on ‘green’ economy by engaging people, companies, and government top create a green economy and ensuring that urban planning enables the city to develop in a creative way that would improve the quality of life.
Prof Rogers in ‘Smart cities better defined by new research’, University of Birmingham (2016) stated that, “Singapore and Copenhagen demonstrate that each smart city adopts solutions that fit its own circumstances. It’s vital to learn from these global examples and understand how they became smart – understanding these key factors will help smart cities to fulfil their potential. Smartness is a complex and ever-changing concept, but can be expressed as ‘talent-green-technology’. It’s important to have talented people and a citizenry that is receptive to working towards all of the goals of a smart, sustainable and resilient city.
“This will involve innovative use of new technology, but it must equally support the delivery of smart low carbon dioxide initiatives that both improve the quality of life of citizens and enhance the natural environment.”
Smart cities are generally believed to share a common goal: the use of innovative ideas and methods or the application of ICT in various aspects of the city for better synergy as well as more efficient use of resources with a view to improving the management of city and impact on service delivery including the quality of life of the citizens. More so, there is the need to reduce environmental footprint to support innovative development and a low-carbon economy.