Big city life to smart city life

As our population grows, traffic, lack of clean water, energy consumption and residential safety will worsen as they strain city infrastructures and services. What can we do to help build a prosperous tomorrow? We explore several smart cities across the globe leading by revolutionary example, and what we can expect to see in Aotearoa in the coming decades.

There is an increasing trend in implementing smart sensing technology — utilising it more efficiently and effectively to gather data and increase the quality of services. Major cities are being converted to smart cities by adopting innovative smart technologies into their infrastructures to make their residents’ everyday lives better, more efficient, and eco-friendly.

An important characteristic of a smart city is the ability to adopt technological advances and develop innovative ways to address and promote practices that resolve urbanisation challenges. A smart city must have a system that can collect, produce,

and display real-time data and trends so that the decision-makers have access to the most up-to-date and reliable information. Cities worldwide have recognised the benefits of smart-sensing technologies for measuring a city’s social and economic health in real time.

Singapore

Singapore has a reputation for being ahead of the curve when it comes to technology. Since launching its Smart Nation program in 2014, Singapore has introduced and integrated a variety of smart technologies into its society, including:

▪ Installation of sensors around the city to pick up real-time information or patterns of activity around the city

▪ Implementation of contactless payment technology; widely adopted by its citizens

▪ Introduction of a digital health system that normalises video consultations as well as wearable devices to monitor patients and assist the ageing population.

In 2021, Singapore announced its plans to convert Tengah from an agricultural town into a new eco-smart city that is entirely vehicle-free with safe zones for pedestrians and cyclists. The 700-hectare town will be home to five residential districts with 42,000 smart-enabled houses with unique characteristics, including centralised cooling systems, automated waste collection systems and a range of smart features.

Dubai

In 2021, Dubai became the world’s first government to go 100% paperless. Around 90% of their government services are now digitised and accessible through the DubaiNow app. The city has autonomous police stations where citizens can go to pay fines or report incidents without talking to a person.

Dubai has hundreds of smart initiatives resolving transport, communications, infrastructure, electricity, economic services, and other urban challenges currently in place or being implemented today.

Oslo

Oslo is working towards its goal of cutting 95% of its carbon emissions by 2030. They are the first to integrate hundreds of thousands of smart street lighting and sensor radars throughout the city. These lights are programmed to be on 20% intensity when in energy-saving mode and automatically adjust the intensity to 100% once it detects movements from cars, bicycles, and pedestrians. Oslo plans to progress further by reconstructing its transportation network to be a car-free city.

Advent of the smart New Zealand city

So, when will these initiatives hit our own shore? It’s already happening — and more so than you may think.

Last year, New Zealand became the first country to have all local council’s join the Smart Cities Council, with the aim to use technology and data to enhance liveability, workability, sustainability, and urban resilience. Not only this, but in August 2022, the Ministry of Education announced New Zealand’s First National Adaptation Plan. The plan highlights Government actions over the next six years — aligning their strategies with resilience and lowemissions objectives. With initiatives already in place, housing developments that are sustainable and eco-friendly will be supported and incentivised.

Christchurch leading by example

In Christchurch, local governments are starting to delve into new technology and approaches that will make the city a smarter, safer place in which to live, work and play. There is now a Christchurchspecific web app called SmartView available to residents and visitors. The app gives users access to a range of real-time information, including:

▪ Where to find mountain bike tracks

▪ Number of spaces available in car park buildings

▪ Where the nearest bus stop and the time of the next arrival

▪ Air quality

▪ Weather updates

▪ Updates on events happening throughout the city.

Future is bright

These are the beginning of smart city implementations being introduced across the globe that consider environmental and human factors, such as population rise. Whilst we’re not travelling via hovercraft just yet — the smart city approach allows us to create space for a growing population and enables a better quality of life without further harming our environment. It’s a sustainable initiative with people at the core.

This article reflects the sustainability and urbanisation megatrends featured in our Megatrends report. Continued growth in cities needs a diversity of housing options to enable people to stay in the one region and open up stock. Beyond residential and commercial property is a trend towards enhanced green space — especially around higherdensity town planning. Likewise, a focus on precinct circular economies and zero waste programs will provide opportunities and challenges to traditional planning approaches.

Jan Rivera, Communications & Marketing Assistant, REINZ