Pitch Long Beach! gives vendors a process for proposing new approaches to civic challenges and city managers a way to quickly learn about emerging technologies that can meet local priorities.
Vendors with ideas that could benefit Long Beach, Calif., can now pitch them directly to the city through an online portal.
Houston, Texas, has started deploying digital kiosks throughout the city. In addition to offering wayfinding services and municipal resources to residents and visitors, they also serve as Internet connectivity hubs.
The city of Houston has started the deployment of digitally interactive kiosks, which will offer wayfinding information and act as Wi-Fi hot spots.
In the two years since the COVID-19 pandemic shifted schools and government alike to operate virtually, digital equity has become a top priority for cities. Local governments have taken a number of routes to establish more public Wi-Fi hot spots, deploying them at libraries and even in smart streetlights.
Weiterlesen: US: Texas: Houston to Use Digital Kiosks to Boost Equity, Smart City Appeal
Home to Wall Street, Broadway, and the United Nations Headquarters, New York is often described as the cultural, financial, and media capital of the world. Yet, it is also the most populous city in the US and one of the most densely populated major cities in the world, boasting more than 8.5 million residents. As 66% of the global population is projected to move and reside in urban areas by 2050, the population of New York will also likely to climb significantly.
With a rapidly growing population, comes high energy consumption and carbon footprint. In 2020 alone, New York emitted about 56.5 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, primarily derived from its busy transportation and intensive electricity usage. With the goal to reach net zero emissions by 2050, the Big Apple not only needs to decarbonise many of its sectors, but to become more sustainable overall. One of the ways to do so is by adopting smart technologies and transitioning into a smart city to be more energy efficient and minimising carbon emissions.
Weiterlesen: US: How New York Smart City Projects are Leading the Way
In the early months of the Covid pandemic, when so many of us shifted to working from home, there was considerable discussion around what this might mean for cities. For many years, the prevailing narrative was that cities were the engines of our economies, with the agglomeration effect bringing together talent and consumers to make cities extremely compelling environments for work, rest, and play.
Concern propagated, however, that the very technologies that enabled us all to work from home would mean that we could, in theory, work from anywhere, which means we wouldn't need to be tied to cities in order to work for companies based there. Would small towns be turned into "Zoom towns", with cities hollowed-out shells of their former glory?
The City of Somerville in Massachusetts is piloting sensor-equipped rat traps that provide real-time data to inform pest control.
Working with partner Modern Pest Services, the city will install 50 SMART Boxes in four neighbourhoods for the five-month pilot.
When a rodent enters a SMART Box, sensors detect movement and body heat and activate a ‘catch’ function, immediately killing the rodent with an electrical current. The rodent is deposited into a closed container, then the trap automatically resets. SMART Boxes monitor and record rodent activity 24/7 and send alerts when activity is detected.
Weiterlesen: US: Massachusetts: Somerville: Cities step up data-driven efforts to outsmart rats