According to the United Nations, around 55 per cent of the world’s population presently live in cities. By 2050, that proportion will increase to two-thirds. According to predictions, from 10 “megacities” (with populations of more than 10 million residents) in 1990, there will be around 43 by 2030.
It is perhaps a misnomer that “smart” cities are purely smart because they are more sophisticated in their use of new technology to automate functions and services. Smart cities are well-planned, combining medium and high-density dwellings with reliable resources from water, energy and internet speed through to green spaces, transport and community facilities.
Smart cities will rely upon innovative planning, reliable infrastructure and judicious regulation to ensure that technology enhances liveability while not imposing a cost on individual privacy, exposing individuals and businesses to intentional or accidental network failures or attacks, nor should technology replace human-delivered services. Open data, AI, the Internet of Things (IoT), and the integration of public and privately-owned services pose concerns in terms of legislation and governance that adequately balances individual rights with social and environmental innovation that achieves zero-carbon emissions by 2050, if not sooner.
Cities like London, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Dubai, and Paris are already instituting forward-thinking policies, such as banning older cars from entering the city centre, installing comprehensive bike paths to encourage people to rely less on carbon-emitting vehicles and contributing to traffic congestion, and using recycled waste to construct roads.
According to a Deloitte study of smart cities, major cost savings have resulted from Barcelona’s introduction of a smart water system (resulting in a cut to the city’s spending of over $80 million annually), and their smart parking increasing revenue by over $80 million per year.
As the impacts of climate change make the heat more intense, bringing more likelihood of severe storms, flooding and unpredictable seasons, there will also be consideration of building systems and housing underground. This may include installing automated underground systems for waste disposal, energy provision, and freight transport that would, in turn, enable overground spaces to be dedicated to greener spaces for parkland, wildlife habitation, and food growth and harvesting.
Last year, the Australian Liveability Census conducted by social research company Placescore asked 50,000 people around the country how they feel about where they live and what their ideal suburb would look like. Access to nature and amenities such as parks, shops, schools and transport ranked highly. According to urban planning experts, there is a fundamental issue at the heart of city design and liveability: varied density and access to efficient transport.
Security, technology and data pose privacy challenges
Lizzie O’Shea is an internationally renowned expert on digital privacy rights and the intersection between technology, privacy and the law. She is a principal lawyer at Maurice Blackburn, and the founder and the chair of Digital Rights Watch (DRW).
“A smart city is one that supports human rights,” she says.
In 2018, the Cities for Digital Rights initiative was launched by Barcelona, Amsterdam, and New York City with the support of the United Nations Human Settlements Program, with an aim to protect, promote and monitor residents’ and visitors’ digital rights.
In September 2020, DRW launched the “Australian cities for digital rights” campaign. While the promise of increased efficiency resulting from a ‘smart city’ that uses technology such as sensors, Internet of Things devices and CCTV cameras to generate and collect data is idyllic in theory, it poses serious privacy concerns.
O’Shea says, “One possible reason why it’s harder to get cities engaged or local governments engaged on digital rights issues in Australia is that we have really low-quality privacy protections in law in Australia. That has meant that there’s huge amounts of personal information able to move through the economy, often with very little understanding or consent from the people whose information it is, and very few limitations on its use. The low standards that both governments and companies are required to comply with have essentially created what I would describe as a free for all in an economy for personal information.”
O’Shea points out that Australia is the only liberal democracy without a Bill of Rights.
“There are state-based charters, but they are generally limited in a variety of ways, and our [federal government’s] thinking is pretty backward when it comes to to applying a human rights focus to some of these policies around tech expansion.”
Smart cities, broadly in terms of technology and enhanced liveability, inclusivity and safety, are built upon greater citizen participation at a local government level, she says.
“That is vital, because local government is accessible to the public in a way that federal government is not. Community consultation requires greater federal investment, but local governments are the correct entities to engage in civic governance, community engagement and any technological systems being integrated into city operations.”
O’Shea says, “There is insufficient scrutiny on the ways in which personal info is shared between public and private entities and there are very few limitations in law. In Melbourne, and likely Sydney, there is already a rollout of infrastructure of technological surveillance with very little transparency and scrutiny. There are many cameras designed to monitor pedestrian and vehicle traffic that we have very little information about regarding how long this information is kept and used. I think it warrants greater accountability and transparency about how this information is being used.”
Another concern, she says, is that “a lot of people move through cities assuming that places are public when they’re actually private, so that might be shopping centres where you use the WiFi of the shopping centres and the privately owned carparks, enabling private entities to take your personal information. We need structural change and regulation to limit the free-for-all.”
The use of facial recognition by retailers – including supermarkets – is nearly entirely unregulated in Australia, which is not the case in many other cities, like San Francisco.
Housing and community services
Sydney is set for higher density housing, but whether it achieves the intended result of more affordable housing is uncertain say experts.
According to the Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) NSW, the New South Wales government’s staged commencement of the Transport Oriented Development State Environmental Planning Policy (TOD SEPP) will enable “taller and denser housing within 400 metres of 37 transport nodes across Greater Sydney”.
The PIA raised the prospect of lower-density, affordable rental housing being demolished to make room for new developments with higher standards of environmental credibility. Those higher standards will, the PIA warns, likely make the new housing more expensive. Social and community housing have seemingly been the biggest losers in future Sydney. Developer contributions towards social housing stand at two per cent in the new SEPP, while in the UK it is 50 per cent.
Australia is a highly urbanised nation, but it remains relatively low density by international comparison. According to research by CoreLogic, 75 percent of Australians live on only 2.6 per cent of the country’s land mass. Melbourne, at 521 people per square kilometre, and Adelaide, with 444 people per square kilometre, are higher density than Sydney, with 441 people per square metre. This is despite Sydney’s plentiful high-density housing stock (29.5 percent of all Sydney dwellings), and smaller blocks of land on average, but Sydney boasts a larger metropolitan land area. According to the Urban Land Institute, a US-based think tank, making use of dormant spaces within cities prevents wasted land, enabling mixed-use accessibility whether that’s pop-up retail, holding events in spaces that are vacant rentals, or enabling urban gardens to be built in unused spaces.
Smart cities recognise that the trend, owing to affordability and desire to live in city centres, is apartment living.
More than 1.2 million people live in strata communities in NSW and yet, NSW Fair Trading had more than 965 complaints about strata agents in the five years to 2023. In June, the NSW Government introduced laws introducing higher penalties, greater transparency, and a promise to crack down on agents receiving undue commissions, and empowering NSW Fair Trading with greater enforcement and compliance abilities. The 4 Acts which have been amended are: Strata Schemes Management Act 2015; Strata Schemes Development Act 2015; Community Land Management Act 2021; and Community Land Development Act 2021.
Climate change and disaster prevention and readiness
NSW government legislated the Climate Change (Net Zero Future) Act 2023, which outlines principles for action to address climate change that consider the impacts, opportunities and need for action in the state. It also holds the state responsible for meeting emissions reduction targets for NSW:
- 50 per cent reduction on 2005 levels by 2030
- 70 per cent reduction on 2005 levels by 2035
- Net zero by 2050.
Part of the Act was establishing an independent, expert Net Zero Commission to monitor, review, report on and advise on progress towards these targets.
One of the measures towards resilience in the city is the Cool Suburbs project, a collaboration by the Greater Sydney Commission, Resilient Sydney and Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils to create a rating tool that enables developers and authorities to determine whether they are “cooking or cooling” people in their planned developments.
According to the Infrastructure Sustainability Council, infrastructure directly or indirectly contributes up to 70 per cent of Australia’s carbon emissions.
A prime example of a place that takes mitigation and preparedness seriously is California, where the state government is statutorily required to update its climate adaptation strategy every three years as mandated by Assembly Bill 1482 (Gordon, 2015).
The 2024 California Climate Adaptation Strategy is open for public submissions and holds in-person events throughout cities and regions to garner feedback and suggestions. This cooperative approach provides a blueprint to governments seeking to shape cities that address the genuine needs of local communities rather than transplanting wholesale systems that work elsewhere. In California, Native American Tribes are consulted with, and partnered with, in decisions around urban planning.
Likewise, Sydney’s Climate Adaptation Strategy has already seen the Urban Forestry Strategy implemented to drought-proof public parks along with trials of pavement modifications to prevent excessive heat within urban centres. Sydney presently has a population of nearly five million, but it is experiencing many of the same chronic stresses typical of many urban centres, including a lack of affordable housing, transport congestion and pollution, flooding, bushfires, and cyber-attacks.
Smart cities may drive greater inequality
The City of Sydney area is one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in NSW and Australia. Almost 50 per cent of residents were born overseas, and 34.8 per cent of people speak a language other than English at home. Most commonly spoken languages include Mandarin, Cantonese, Thai, Spanish, and Indonesian.
Peter Poulet is the Director of UNSW Cities Institute. Like O’Shea, he is concerned that smart city technology has the potential of not enhancing equality and inclusiveness per the ideal scenario.
“The legislative frameworks, the planning regulations, the way planning is undertaken in Australia is all fairly antiquated. It’s still a colonial construct that is not necessarily fit for purpose. Redressing the inequities in housing is a big part of what governments should be doing, and while they are favouring social housing and affordable housing, they’re still relying on mechanisms that are profit driven and designed for the private sector to deliver upon,” he says.
Poulet points out that not all cities can afford to be smart cities, so good cities don’t necessarily have to be smart cities that are reliant on the Internet of Things.
“There are basic human things that don’t require technology, such as ease of access, equal opportunity for health care, healthy food, education, job prospects and forming communities,” says Poulet.
“The most habitable, happy cities are those that celebrate diverse communities. That involves different housing models, different communication models, different education and employment models, and that’s not always the case in Australia. The way cities are structured currently are exacerbating inequality.”
Ultimately, he says, “Cities are good. When people aggregate, good things can happen. The sense of being part of a community is powerful. Urbanisation is happening rapidly, so it’s a question of how to make the best of it. We need to be wary of being overly paternalistic with over-policing and over-surveillance. We have a social contract with one another, so city design can’t necessarily address a social problem.”
The UNSW Cities institute is, Poulet says, “a future-gazing, optimistic organisation that wants a better future for our cities by calling out some of the inequalities baked into some of our systems, and equally, saying some of the solutions that are offered are trojan horses. The solution should be socially driven, not technologically driven.”
Echoing O’Shea’s belief that local government and councils are both elemental to engagement and the delivery of city-based initiatives and modifications, Poulet says the “grassroots stuff that happens at council level is really powerful”, particularly with refugee and migrant communities who may feel alienated by city design based on North American and European city principles.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Cat Woods
Quelle/Source: LSJ Media, 22.08.2024
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