What are Smart Cities?

Smart cities – what is being done for us to get there?

17:18 10 October 2017

Smart cities, which what we all want to achieve by 2030, refer to an urban development vision to integrate information and communication technology and internet of things. Smart cities are being developed mainly to better serve residents by making their lives better and improving their experiences while using different services.

 

While these are all good in paper, a lot must be done in order for us to get there. Planning has already started. Earlier this year, Prospect and Atkins convened three roundtable events in Manchester, Birmingham and Bristol to discuss the future of smart cities.

 

They agreed that the first step should be agreeing to share data collected of each city as well as ensuring that it is in easy-to-use format. This creates a need for national guidelines on how data should be presented.

 

Other issue raised is data governance and whether or not the public and private sectors should make their data available to each other. It is also important that the gains by individual firms and authorities can be measured.

 

Attendees agree that if we want to build smart cities by 2030, change should start happening now. Although some areas in the UK are making progress, others are at risk of lagging behind.