The Problem with Smart Cities
Beyond free Wi-Fi.
Background
Popularised by IBM, the term “Smart City” has been around since the 1990s, having evolved from “Digital City” prior. It was part of the broader internet and digital movement that has waxed and waned over the decades. So why am I suddenly writing about this? This article was inspired by a recent conversation with a data science friend where we discussed the state of digital and AI transformation within our country — Singapore.
Singapore is listed among the top 10 cities leading the way in Smart City initiatives. While it has several national agencies dedicated to overseeing how information & communication technology (ICT) can be leveraged to improve areas like public transport, healthcare, taxation, etc., it was unclear to us if there was a unifying framework underpinning these initiatives. In fact, it was unclear to us whether the term “Smart City” had any real meaning to it. The term is a catch-all for national ICT investments, many of which are poorly conceived and have failed. With the rise of AI, there is now interest to also incorporate it into Smart City initiatives, creating new recipes for disasters.
And so I dedicate my 101st article to revisiting the Smart City discussion through the lens of a data practitioner.
(I write a weekly series of articles where I call out bad thinking and bad practices in data analytics / data science which you can find here.)
What is so Smart about a City?
What exactly is meant by the term “Smart City”? Simply put, it is a city / town / community that relies heavily on the implementation of ICT (which includes AI & machine learning, and internet of things (IoT)) to improve the quality of life for its citizens and residents. The term “smart” is typically a shorthand for something that’s digital, interconnected, with some level of automated “intelligence”. The initial Smart City movement was all about digital connectivity. Digitisation and digitalisation of this and that. Remove analog friction. Pay your fines online. Book your medical appointment online. That’s just standard organisational digital “transformation” agenda writ large for the city. Concepts and constructs were shaped by global IT firms looking to offer platform-as-a-service or city-as-a-service solutions (e.g., GE’s CityIQ, Google Sidewalk Labs, Microsoft CityNext).
But just because a city provides free Wi-Fi doesn’t mean it’s smart. While governments have articulated that their Smart City initiatives are meant to increase efficiencies, deliver sustainability, and improve responsiveness of the needs of citizens / residents, there needs to be a broader unifying framework; otherwise it’s just a series of tactical solution that ultimately don’t play nice with each other.
What a City Needs
Efficiency, sustainability, and responsiveness are big words that make for great mission-vision statements. But what exactly are we solving for? Here’s my unpacking:
- Efficiency is about reducing friction and uncertainty.
- Sustainability is about reducing wastage in time and resources.
- Responsiveness is about orchestrating with awareness.
Efficiency
We increase efficiency by reducing process friction and information friction. Process friction is best addressed through digitalisation, i.e. re-engineering analog processes into often shorter digital ones like online payment of fines. Information friction is bi-directional — friction in collecting data and friction is distributing information (e.g. real-time multi-modal notifications). But efficiency can also be increased by reducing uncertainty. A good example of this is to show accurately estimated waiting times on personal devices so that individuals can multitask during the in-between times. A great example of how all these things come together is in the hospital healthcare system, from booking a medical appointment online (driven by preference and availability), confirming attendance, getting a queue number in advance on a personal device, displaying real-time wait-time plus number of patients ahead in the queue, distributing the medical results on a personal device.
Sustainability
We deliver sustainability by focusing on re-usability, scalability, and maintainability. These lead to the reduction of wastage. Sustainability is not about the green movement or green energy. Rather, for a city to be sustainable, it needs to minimise the unnecessary use of energy, time and resources. Imagine having to repeat your problem when you are handed off to another customer service officer; that’s wastage. These unnecessary repetitions add up. How do we identify the common (re-usable) assets across a city? How do we design for low-cost maintenance of assets? Life in the city is inevitably about physical interactions with its infrastructure. When we embed physical assets with information attributes, we can make those attributes shareable, and therefore, re-usable. For example, each building has real-time information about its parking space availability through the day, but when combined collectively, it can be used to support large scale event planning in the area.
Responsiveness
We improve responsiveness by increasing our ability for awareness; knowing where each element of the ecosystem is at all times so that we can optimise our ability to orchestrate and coordinate. Real-time data capture and integration, predictive models, optimisation models, automated workflows, etc. This is where the magic happens for the citizens / residents through the thoughtful leverage of data, digital and data science. Consider the previous example of aggregating parking space availability across buildings to support large scale event planning. When coupled with pre-booking capabilities, this could help attendees proactively manage their transportation choices.
Conclusion
While countries across the world have established smart city challenges to encourage innovation with a view to scale, they remain adhoc and tactical in nature. These include the US’ Department of Transport Smart City Challenge (ended in 2016), the EU’s Intelligent City Challenge (ended in 2025) and India’s Smart City Mission (ongoing). Solutions need to address all 3 aspects of efficiency, sustainability and responsiveness; this forces us to build real and complete solutions rather than address point-moments with component engineering.
