Cities are continuously evolving, always moving on. Image by H. Emre at pexels
Once upon a time… a city and once upon a time this city in the 21st century. It was a time of population displacement to urban spaces, each time more and more people lived in them, and given that this city was no an exception it grew and grew. But this process of concentration of population in urban areas also implied environmental and economic issues that demanded to cities new ways to face the challenges arising to them, as I stated previously in a series of posts. With this aim they were provided with intelligence, following a new management concept known as Smart City.
The concept of Smart City
What does intelligence mean in the field of urban spaces? Intelligence is the capacity to use and manage the resources they have in efficient and sustainable way, from an economic and environmental point of view, as well as encourage an inclusive and collaborative social environment, taking advantage of the intensive use of ICT technologies, with the goal of improving the quality of life of its citizens.
How could it be easily summarised the complexity of the Smart City concept? To me, since I am visual minded, the Smart City looks like a tetrahedron with a sphere inside it, a simple but effective image based on four essential domains strongly related among them, that places citizens in the center of all actions that are carried out there.
The 21st century society
Indeed, the 21st century city places its citizens at the centre of all the initiatives with the aim of contributing to the improvement of their quality of life. Thus, it is not strange that one of the key points of the process of transformation and enhancement of urban spaces is to achieve citizen engagement, since no one better than themselves know their real needs. It would be convenient to offer to citizens a participative, digital platform, entertaining and fun (user-friendly) easily accessible from different devices, to encourage their collaboration in the process of improvement of their city as if they were playing a game.
Facing the challenges that the 21st century arises in urban spaces often involves the application of innovative initiatives which is not an easy task, since it supposes acting on very visible places, which have not been modified for ages, modifying the habits and costumes of citizens. It is very important to have as much acceptation as possible to disruptive initiatives before execute them, therefore three fundamental steps should be followed to facilitate their acceptance: inform, discuss and reach an agreement.
Last but not least, the 21 century society is characterized by the encouragement of network structures and organizations, resulting in transversal and more collaborative style of working. The construction of the Smart City is in line with this new social organization, so it is common the formation of multidisciplinary teams, horizontally structured and with no clear head, working for a common goal.
The role of ICT Technologies
One of the key points for the adoption of the concept of Smart City is the ubiquitous and immediate access to information provided by ICT technologies, as well as its automated processing. Thanks to the ICT’s it is possible to gather and process large volumes of information in very short periods of time, generating valuable knowledge for the management of big urban spaces in real time.
Although the management of the 21st century cities is facilitated by the new ICT technologies, what does really give intelligence to them is the gray matter of their managers, that is, their capacity to decide in each situation what is the best solution, being this technological or not, avoiding falling into the Gadget City trap. Some time ago I wrote about the Vilagarrina City Council case a clear example of how technology does not provide intelligence by itself to the management of urban spaces.
Access to information is a fundamental right for any person so everyone should be empowered to exercise it anywhere, anytime. In this sense, the 21st century society needs connectivity to the information access networks at low price, for instance, through Wi-Fi access points. In the same way as nowadays it would be inconceivable a city without public lighting, within some years we will not be able to think in a city without public connectivity.
Urban management based on data (Data-driven cities)
Good management requires precise knowledge of what is being managed. In the process of adaptation of urban spaces to the concept of Smart City some aspects to be improved are identified, belonging to the different dimensions covered by this concept. Some unbiased, measurable indicators are defined so that urban managers have a clear and unambiguous idea about the performance of the chosen aspects before, during and after the adoption of the measures agreed to reach the aimed objectives regarding them.
Data are, certainly, the raw material of the 21st century city, so it is very important to gather valuable information from different sources and transform it into useful, valuable knowledge for urban management. To get the maximum benefit of this vision based on data generated in an urban space, it is very important to capture the right information, from reliable sources, make a rigorous processing, and create simple visualizations but that at the same time that give as much information as possible, as we were cooking bits.
But I would like to specially remark that both, ICT technologies and the generation of knowledge from data, are nothing more than supporting tools to the management of these urban spaces, and that management intelligence is in the decisions of their managers, not in the tools they use.
The Bit City
Cities are living entities in constant evolution, which are continuously adapting to social changes and technological innovations that appear. The process of adaptation of the cities to the technologies and challenges of the 21st century is not a new issue, take for instance the evolution of street lighting in urban spaces. The main difference is that we are currently witnessing a very fast adaptation, in a few years, whereas until now these evolutions took decades, or even centuries, to be produced.
This post is a brief summary of the main ideas I have been writing until now in this blog about the process of adaptation of 21st century urban spaces to the Smart City concept, and how to use ICT technologies efficiently to face the current challenges. In the upcoming posts I am going to introduce a new view regarding the management of the 21st century urban spaces, focusing on the analysis of the data generated there. I would like to invite you to stay connected to this blog if you wish to know in more detail the concept of Data-driven City.
The Bit City 