SMART CITIES
South Africa needs smart cities, but not the ones you envisage A smart city is a novel solution to make efficient use of natural resources, improve citizens’ standard of living, and achieve economic development. However, to achieve success, one needs to understand Africa’s smart city maturity. By Kirsten Kelly
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lobally, extraor dinar y technologies are deployed in cities, with a huge drive to make them ‘smar t’. The G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance was established in 2019 with the aim to help cities develop and adopt policies to guide the implementation of smart technologies. But locally, we are simply not ready for most of this – a significant portion of our population still do not have access to basic services. We therefore need to find a balance where access to basic services is prioritised and technologies are used to address the needs of the public,” says Bernadina Da Silva, civil engineer, SMEC South Africa.
SMEC South Africa’s Urban Development Division was part of the professional team that was commissioned to develop the Greater Lanseria Master Plan (GLMP). Part of the brief was to create a post-apartheid city that incorporates the full socio-economic profile of South African society and serves the needs of everyone who lives in it. “This must be true for all smart cities – they must be inclusionary,” states Da Silva. Citizens of a smart city should be able to live, work, learn, pray and play in the same space. All amenities should be placed within a comfortable walking distance. A smart city should not only be complex, but also compact in nature.
Inclusivity
“A city cannot be smar t without providing sustained basic services (e.g. clean running water). Data is a valuable resource within the smart city (e.g. water usage patterns). When one uses smart city data that has been collected over a long period of time instead of relying only on theoretical models, planning and operational departments benefit through the management of budgets, resource capacity
Basic components of a smart city She adds that smart cities aim to be inclusive – and are not only ICT or digitally driven, enabling ‘smartness’ for all. “Not everyone has a smartphone; not everyone is tech-savvy. There is also a lack of technical capacity within our municipalities to implement and maintain new technologies over and above the existing conventional infrastructure.”
and maintenance planning,” explains Dr Pieter Crous, technical specialist, SMEC South Africa. Both Da Silva and Crous emphasise that maintenance is an essential management element of a smart city. “Infrastructure is typically designed for extended lifespans (50 to 100 years), while technologies generally have significantly shorter lifespans. It is important to consider the technology maintenance requirements over shorter time intervals, together with the traditional infrastructure maintenance, to ensure that everything works and that the technology can create value over the long term,” adds Da Silva. The establishment of a special-purpose vehicle (SPV) was recommended in the GLMP where a task team would be responsible for prioritising infrastructural investment, the funding of utilities, and placing a regional focus on the provision and management of bulk infrastructure. “Another key element around a smart city is communication. Smart meters for water and energy services enable actionable communication that can be used to ensure service delivery either in real time or
A smart city should be complex, but compact
