Mindsets and Machines: Getting to Love the Smart City

Adam Beck, Executive Director, Smart Cities Council Australia New Zealand

Adam Beck, Executive Director, Smart Cities Council Australia New Zealand

The smart city is one that embraces technology and data to help it become more liveable, workable and sustainable. What’s there not to love about that concept?

Apparently a lot, as the concept continues to be extremely polarising.

I, of course, thrive in the smart cities narrative, however many are afraid the robots will take over, jobs stolen by machines and corporates owning all our personal data with our privacy being eroded.

And this continues to be the ‘achilles heel’ of smart cities – security and privacy.

Well, on privacy, that train left the station a long time ago, when we signed up to the delights and benefits of applications on our smart phones, helping us go about our daily lives with greater ease, efficiency and effectiveness. Meta data being scraped, crunched and packaged up for us to enjoy. Google maps is but one example of many, where if Google didn't know where we were, the app wouldn’t work.

And lets not forget, credit card companies have been taking our data for over 40 years!

But safety and security isn’t the only challenge. The ‘fence-sitters’ hate the idea of autonomous cars, flying drone taxi’s and real-time information about everything. Well almost anything, as long as its real-time information about others and not them.

Many Cities, Over The World, Have Had Smart Cities ‘Done To Them’, Rather Than They Being The Architect Of Their Own Smart Cities Journey

It’s a challenging topic indeed, smart cities.

I suspect much of it is about fear. The fear of losing privacy, loosing human connection and ultimately loosing control. And with the rapid pace of digital transformation, who can blame them. It’s happening at breakneck speed. Many cities, over the world, have had smart cities ‘done to them’, rather than they being the architect of their own smart cities journey.

However, this is more a function of lack of strategy, knowledge and capacity to embrace the opportunity, and the disruption that comes with change, more than anything. Technology doesn’t do these things unless you let it. Technology, remember, is merely an enabler. We are in control.

“Tech and data for good”, that’s my response to the question of “what is a smart city?”. And I get asked this every single day. If you tell yourself its for good, if you read articles highlighting its positive social impact and if you see demonstrations of tech deployed for good, you build that mindset.

And that’s the mindset we need to build around smart cities.

What lays beneath the smart city are people, and of course technology and data. But the intersection of our physical, digital and social systems are where we still have much opportunity to exploit the benefits of the smart cities movement.

Collect, communicate and crunch is how we like to describe it, that’s a core function of the smart city. Its not that complicated really, I dont think. Use machines to collect data and then communicate it to a place where we can analyse it. Converting data into situational awareness is key.

And at the heart of this is the internet of things. The single biggest opportunity to create actionable intelligence that can transform the way we make decisions, invest our resources, and enhance opportunities. Something that is at the heart of the smart city.

But we can go further, by not only understanding what’s happening, but predicting what could happen. And this is exciting.

The internet of things as a force for social good, a strategy for climate protection and a platform for innovation is a real opportunity. But this is only possible when we have the right mindset, when we focus on the things to love about the smart city.