Under the hood: A look at techno-centric smart city development

Techno-centric smart and intelligent city initiatives continue to garner our attention and resources, as transforming urban areas into prosperous, livable, and sustainable settlements is a long-standing goal forlocal governments. Today, countless urban settlements across the globe have jumped onto the so-called “smart city bandwagon” to achieve this goal. Most smart city projects are either focused on transformation of the existing technical and physical infrastructures of a city— brownfield developments, or greenfield urban projects. Local governments around the globe are investing in partnerships with technology companies to help shape the future of cities. Companies such as Google and Microsoft have begun to show interest in the movement with the development of Toronto’s Sidewalks Lab and Arizona’s desert city. However, more commonly governments are investing in network infrastructure partnerships4 with companies such as CISCO to develop complex networks, sensors, and data processes. For the last several months, we have been studying the range of techno-centric smart city partnerships to uncover what works and what should local governments watch out for. Here are some of the cases we have looked at.