Key Takeaways
- People-focused approaches are key to making smart cities sustainable and livable.
- Community involvement is crucial for successful urban development and technology adoption.
- Education and collaboration are essential for adapting to new urban challenges and innovations.
From their inception, smart cities — the modern urban hubs collecting data electronically to optimize operations — have chased technological advancement. Their rise over the past decade, in particular, has marked a period of exciting innovation and transformation: We’ve seen the growing integration of artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, blockchain, and more.
Looking ahead, the key to maximizing smart cities’ sustainability and livability will be focusing beyond the tech itself to create more opportunities for residents and visitors to be directly involved in their growth and development.
Technology alone has never been the key to unlocking smart solutions; putting people at the center is what matters. Positive public sentiment toward smart tech will only become a sustainable reality if there is a continued focus on proactively meeting community members’ needs and desires and engaging them in the process.
As tech improves, so can tourism and sustainability efforts
While many residents want to lead more eco-conscious lives, they often don’t know where to begin. So the smart cities that will progress the most will be the ones incentivizing a collective movement toward more sustainable livelihoods. There needs to be just as much responsiveness to the growth of urban trees — from data on when each was planted to where it is in its lifecycle — as there is to identifying and resolving traffic congestion.
Cities leaning into blockchain technology are already reimagining how to obtain information on sustainable livelihoods better, but the locales that will win the support of the people are the ones that prioritize clever, engaging strategies. For example, people want to see the same urgency that is put into payment gateways directed at mitigating climate change. And at the end of the day, it’s not just just about the tech. It’s also about offering sustainable choices through rewarding projects.
Managing land more sustainably and becoming a global, accessible city also means tackling design problems in a collaborative way, a way that connects distributed groups of people and makes the city more accessible to those beyond its borders. But before we can get to this point, transparent and verifiable impacts — sustainability benchmark assessments and success reports that are based on open and candid communication and feedback loops — will have to become non-negotiable.
When thinking about how to maintain the history and the rich culture that defines every space residents enter, cities will need to look into how to better build and export their cultural brand and engage with people around the world through the preservation of their heritage. A good place to start would be at the intersection of the tourism industry and the digital world and innovating how a city’s cultural beauty, its story, and the work of local creators are celebrated.
Human opinion needs to be taken as seriously as technology
The narrow service provider mentality should be left behind. Responsive cities will only be built once robust participation is a reality and technology stands to merely support those goals.
What this looks like is striving for transformative shifts in daily life, starting with service provision to all without compromising on quality. Digitalized identity and educational credentials, for example, could assist this process: Having a secure platform to prove one’s identity through diverse government channels would help individuals access more services and resources. This could mean more active engagement and community governance, with blockchain voting and policies that are generated with, as opposed to merely for, people. This approach would also give individuals greater control over their personal information.
Adapting to new patterns requires collective knowledge
>If one of the most important components to realizing a global smart society is data sharing and consistent monitoring thereof, then tapping into collective brainpower is key to people-centered cities. Privacy and ethical AI are necessary, but the only way everyday people will become more open to changing their behaviors and trusting the infrastructure their city is built on is by understanding it. This means cities need to focus on educating and making projects less abstract by putting benefits into action.
Education shouldn’t end with everyday people, either. With ideas regarding work-life balance shifting drastically and gig work being a major contributor to today’s labor market, it’s time for city mindsets to shift too. City and state leaders can start supporting these initiatives by refashioning their local economic goals toward accommodating, for instance, the creator economy that demands more flexibility. At the end of the day, successful future cities will need to do some unlearning, take the leap, and offer new opportunities for innovation across industries. For example, through co-creation in the entertainment space, where artists, designers, brands, and consumers’ insights and desires are encouraged and incorporated.
It’s rarely easy to get everyone on board with new ideas, but it’s crucial because the only way a city becomes responsive is by engaging people together and getting them to embrace new initiatives. It’s now up to city leaders and us to rediscover that responsibility as well as to ensure a well-looked-after planet, better diversity, enhanced governance, and accessible and increased participation.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Pan Lorattawut
Quelle/Source: ccn, 11.07.2024
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