New-Tech Europe Magazine | August 2017

Smart Cities: How smart are our cities anyway?

Dan Chupek

Every city wants to present itself as a smart city. Understandable because the word is reminiscent of innovative technology, progress and sustainability. Yet some realism is in place. Our cities are in fact not nearly as smart as we want. The concept of smart cities is very promising. New technology, digital applications and Internet- connecteddevices transformthewaywe liveand travel. Billions of sensors continuously collect data about our homes, roads and hospitals. With this information we can prevent all kinds of urban problems. Traffic congestion, pollution and waste of energy, therefore belong in the city of the future to the past. This all sounds wonderful, but how feasible is this utopia? Definition of Smart City We put this question to John Stokoe, smart city expert at Dassault Systèmes. Stokoe shares the enthusiasm, but also thinks we should be realistic about smart cities. According to him, the term is often incorrectly used.

"There are misunderstandings about the definition of a smart city," he begins. "The cities in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the Scandinavian countries I have studied, all are going more or less into the same direction. They choose a small part of the city and create a smart hub out of that. "With smart they mean usually that they put sensors to measure activity," the expert explains. "For example at traffic lights and along roads to prevent traffic jams and other traffic suffering. Or in buildings, so no energy is wasted if no one is in a room. Also installing many cities security cameras to observe and monitor problem areas e.g. for crime or fires at an early stage. That's all very clever. But this makes a city in my eyes not really smart."

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