The massive population growth, rural to urban migration, and resource depletion are some of the major concerns our cities are facing. In the modern world with modern technology, we need to come up with modern solutions. A ‘Smart City’ approach can be the solution. New York, London, and Paris have all taken effective steps.
New York: Connected Systems
New York is the world's most important and succesful economic centre. Their approach over the last 20 years has been to create a large network of connected infrastructure rather than expanding unreasonably into a single project.
There are many notable initiatives NY has taken which focus on improving city’s infrastructure and making it efficient, like;
- The 'Accelerated Conservation and Efficiency' (ACE) program has the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emission from all the government buildings in city.
- Automated Meter Reading systems which monitor, track, and relay information regarding water consumption to utility companies.
- Heavily subsidised heating programs are switching citizens from oil to natural gas, while at the same time building tracking into the system.
London: Productivity and Health
London is known for its human capital, due to the high quality business schools and universities. Their approach is to make the city's population more productive and healthy.
Current plans include achieving full fiber connectivity, expanding public Wi-Fi networks in the streets, and supporting 5G projects to provide connectivity London's connected infrastructure. This makes their citizens more productive, and traffic monitoring systems that automatically manage and mitigate conjestion increases their mobility.
A hyper local sensor network to monitor ground-level air quality makes London home to the most sophisticated air monitoring system in the UK.
Paris: Croudsourcing Innovation
Paris is the most crowded city of France. Suffering from overpopulation, conjestion, and pollution, the City of Paris launched Reinventer Paris in 2014.
This has been one of the largest innovative urban project so far. The central idea of the project was to provide building sites to people who come up with the best innovative building projects in the region, with funds arriving from private and public sources.
The government has also opened themselves towards public suggestions and rolled out a budgeting scheme with slogan 'Madame Mayor, I have an idea'. This welcomed the citizens to put forward their innovative proposals to the Paris City Hall Department, and as a result Paris has created a milestone by committing to distribute £500 million to the projects between 2014 to 2020.
About the Author
Mahan is a Co-Founder at Openly, and he's always looking out for new things to learn. Find out more on Linkedin