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Dan Swinhoe (Global)- Tomorrow's Tech Cities Today

Posted b y Dan Swinhoe Company IDG Connect

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August 2012
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What you're Saying Kathryn Cave (Global) - Is Facebook Another Britney?

I see Faceb ook as hitting a plateau. An over priced stock and a b usiness model purely b uilt on advertising to an audience that is increasingly b ecome... Peter 08-31-2012

The future's urb an. By the middle of the century the majority of people will b e living in cities. But these won't b e any ordinary cities. No, these will b e super smart cities of the future, the kind you read ab out in sci-fi novels and see on TV. The Guardian paints a rosy picture of life in the future; virtual hologram conference calls, automated street cleaners and auto-ovens, all amongst a utopian paradise. 2050 looks like a nice place to live. But what ab out now? We've already looked at the super hi-tech cities of the future, so now we turn our focus to find out which cities are already on the way. Last year was the first time the numb er of people living in cities actually outnumb ered those in rural areas. The likes of IBM and Cisco have b een introducing smart city projects to thousands of locations worldwide. These range from places like Memphis, where a Real Time Crime Center that pinpoints and reports crime instantly as well as predicts hot spots for efficient police distrib ution has seen crime rates at their lowest rate in a quarter century. There's also a project in Rio de Janeiro, where a new weather system, known as Deep Thunder' tracks changes and predicts storms in order to reduce the impact of flash floods and landslides. A large part of a smart city's raison d'etre is to b e kinder to the environment than a normal city. To this end, Barcelona is one of the world leaders. Along with a smart city campus for companies and institutions to come together and work, there are electric cars and hundreds of charge points, strong emphasis on solar energy, sensors on rub b ish and recycling b ins, water sensors in parks to ensure water is used more intelligently, sensors in parking areas to indicate empty spaces and sensors on streetlights all to increase efficiency and reduce waste. Currently all the smart cities are generally placed in the more developed nations, as the up and coming cities in places like Kenya or Nigeria are yet to b e completed or fully adapted into the smart' category. The Dutch have also muscled in on the smart city scene, with the aim making the historic city of Amsterdam the first fully smart city in the EU. Smart houses, workstations, eco-friendly harb ors, even smart schools are b ecoming more widespread as the project expands. Singapore too has emb raced the idea of smart electrical grids and is looking to b e the first to fully introduce near-field communications (NFC) technology for contactless payments. In reality it's hard to say any one city is super smart. Towns and cities across the world are all introducing little changes piece b y piece as they require. And I highly doub t there'll b e a point where our cities are the kind of Utopia that some envision. But, according to ABI Research, $39.5 b illion will b e spent on smart city technologies in 2016, so it's safe to say smart cities are here to stay. No doub t there'll b e more new cities b uilt around the world, and old metropolises will b e retrofitted and rejuvenated to meet the needs of the future. Since the previous post I've seen further projects in Japan and China and will likely b e seeing many more in the future. You have to wonder, is it only a matter of time until people start to ask, "Why isn't this happening in our city?"

Dan Swinhoe (Global)- The Smart Cities of the Future

You are talking ab out packing 6 to 7 b illion people packed into cities, and the first prob lem that comes to mind is how an executive can avoid waiting... Dave 08-29-2012

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By Dan Swinhoe, Editorial Assistant, IDG Connect

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