‘Smart City’-just a buzz or reality?

By: Sarang Vengurlekar

Since early 2000, there has been a lot of movement in the ‘Smart City’ domain across almost every industry sector (including Government, Private, Education, Transport, Health etc.). Thus, raising questions about the ‘Smart City’ concept and its adoption across Australia and the world. To demystify the picture, we interviewed Uday Kulkarni, a doctoral researcher and an experienced Information Technology management professional. He is currently researching the adoption of Information and Communication Technologies in local governments.

SV: What is a Smart City?

UK: In reality, there is no single definition of a smart city. In my opinion, it is a city, town, or place where the community and the local economy are benefited from innovative infrastructure and urban services, thus fostering quality of life. In some instances, the smart city is viewed as a smart community, intelligent infrastructure, e-community, citizencentric service/s, and sustainable. The rhetoric is that smart cities are being developed to solve the urban problems mostly through the use of modern technology – for example, traffic management, pollution monitoring,

e-services, remote health services, distance education, and many more.

SV: How did the Smart City movement evolve?

UK: The smart city phenomenon evolved from the need to address the social, economic and environmental developments which put significant pressure on infrastructure and services, giving birth to unfamiliar challenges. There is no choice but to develop innovative and intelligent solutions tailored to meet community needs and expectations to address these challenges. For example, in Australia, there are predictions that the population will reach 40 million by the middle of the century, which calls for opportunities to explore smart and visionary ways to address emerging challenges.

SV: What are the inclusions within Smart City?

UK: Smart City is fundamentally a multifaceted idea and has many components associated with its implementation. Communities are critical stakeholders and play an essential role in their adoption. Additional factors that influence the smart city are local demographics, apt technologies, the willingness of governments, local infrastructure, available services, supporting legislation, and supporting policies. However, every community has its own desires. The place has unique characteristics, so these factors need to be considered when implementing innovative city initiatives. Most importantly, Smart Cities result from a thoughtful collaboration between the communities, governments, local authorities, private businesses, and other sectors – education, transport, and so on.

SV: How does Smart City benefit the local community?

UK: Smart City initiatives benefit the community in many ways. Smart technologies help the citizens improve their quality of life by enabling the delivery of effective and sustainable services like energy management, healthcare, education etc. The governments can offer 24 x 7 innovative online services by reducing red tape and engaging with the community in developing the plans & strategies for the future of their city. For example – the local council’s online services. Other sectors like transport, education & private businesses also benefit from smart city attributes. Adoption of advanced technologies helps deliver initiatives like e-Health, Virtual Classrooms and Live Traffic Updates. The technologies include high-speed Internet, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, smart sensors etc. There are numerous smart opportunities in every walk of life that can be developed and adopted to be converted into a smart community.

SV: Are there any obstacles in developing or implementing Smart City initiatives?

UK: The research indicates that the expression smoke and mirrors can be categorically used concerning the smart city concept. There is a lot of confusion about what the word ‘smart’ in the city context really entails? The reason is that every city, town, or place has its own characteristics associated with local impediments and aspirations of the local community. This means every city, town, or place has varying pieces of the smart city puzzle that need to be put together. The puzzle pieces include local priorities from government, citizen, and business perspectives. For example – the priority City of Brisbane will be alerting residents with flood warnings. In contrast, the Sydney residents will prioritise addressing traffic congestion.

SV: Does Smart City elevate the status of a particular locality or a suburb?

UK: As discussed earlier, smart city initiatives provide many benefits to a particular locality or a suburb, especially from the demographics, tourism and industry perspective. For example, the pandemic has significantly increased the demand for efficient and reliable Internet services because people now choose to work from home to take care of their families. So, working families prefer to live where infrastructure and services are available that meet their needs. From the tourism perspective, cities or towns can broaden the reach to local, national, and international visitors through smart e-portals to market their presence. Further, the industry benefits from smart initiatives because it can reach more potential buyers through online marketplaces and speedy delivery arrangements. Subsequently, more and more cities are competing with their counterparts worldwide by increasingly embracing intelligent infrastructure and online services to elevate their global socioeconomic status.

SV: Can local community members have a say in the local council Smart City Project?

UK: As I have suggested earlier, local communities play an essential role in Smart City projects (or initiatives). After all, almost all smart city projects are executed to meet the needs of communities and foster the local economy. You can reach out to your local representative or council to seek further information and ways to involve in the smart city program. Also, you can reach out to the private/community organisations and groups that represent citizens in the development of smart city plans and strategies alongside the local council and other authorities.

SV: It was an absolute honour to interview Uday Kulkarni who has such vast knowledge in the field of smart cities. He was able to highlight the importance of such cities going forward. In conclusion I would like to point my direction towards how our cities are evolving and how we can leverage technology to assist such a massive feat. We are just seeing the tip of iceberg as the future cities will be very advanced since the technology will keep evolving. The standard of service offerings from local councils will increase over time, so we can rest easy and be assured that our rates payments are being utilised in a correct manner to bring these facilities to fruition. I would also like to thank the local & state government for such initiatives and the massive effort to push forward such high technology construction projects.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article and found it to be informative. Please drop me a line or any feedback on sarang@vengurlekar. com. All your feedback provides me with an opportunity to bring the best technology news to my readers every month.