SMART CITIES: The New Trend in 21st Century Urbanism.

Konza Smart City, Kenya

Santa Cruz, Califonia, USA

MIT Smart Cities Lab, USA

Delhi L Zone Smart City, India

Amsterdam Smart City Initiative, Poland

Bletchley Park

Cyber Port Zone, Hong Kong

The key ingredient to urban sustainability in 21^st century especially within the content of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) Agenda is the emergence of Smart Cities. According to Wikipedia, a Smart City uses digital technologies, information and communication technologies to enhance quality and performance of urban services to reduce costs and resource consumption, and also to engage more effectively and actively with its citizens.

There are 8 identified key aspects of a typical Smart City:

• Smart Governance,
• Smart Energy,
• Smart Buildings,
• Smart Mobility,
• Smart Infrastructure,
• Smart Technology,
• Smart Healthcare and
• Smart Citizen.

Usually one or more of these key aspects can be added to an existing urban center (e.g. Barcelona, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Southampton, Hong Kong, etc.) or using these eight(8) key aspects as the basis of planning and building a new urban center (e.g. Konza in Kenya).

A typical outline of services available in a typical smart city includes:

1. E-Governance and Citizen Services
   • Public information, Grievance Redressed
   • Electronic Service Delivery
   • Citizen Engagement
   • Citizens – City’s Eyes and Ears
   • Video Crime Monitoring
2. Waste Management
   • Energy and Fuel Management
   • Compost Waste Management
   • Treatment of Waste Water
   • Recycling and Reduction of C & D Waste
3. Water Management
   • Smart Meters and Management
   • Leakage Identification, Preventive Maintenance
   • Water Quality Monitoring
4. Energy Management
   • Smart Meters Management
   • Renewable Sources of Energy
   • Energy Efficient and Green Buildings
5. Urban Mobility
   • Smart parking
   • Intelligent Traffic Management
   • Integrated Multi-Modal Transport
6. Others
   • Telemedicine and Tele-education
   • Incubation/Trade Facilitation Center
   • Skill Development Center

The major challenges facing the emergence of smart cities includes fund, human resources, enlighten citizenry and so on. Therefore, the criticisms of smart cities revolve around the following contract issues:

• A bias in strategic interest may lead to ignoring alternative avenues of promising urban development.
• The focus of the concept of smart city may lead to an underestimation of the possible negative effects of the development of the new technological and networked infrastructures needed for a city to be smart.
• As a globalized business model is based on capital marketing, following a business-oriented model may result in a losing long-term strategy, that is, mobile capital that follows the new trend can move elsewhere when it receives a better deal just as we have in industrial (manufacturing) cities.
• The high level of big data collection and analytic has raised questions regarding surveillance in smart cities particularly as it relates to predictive policing.

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