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To live in a Smart City
Posted by: sgb on May 26, 2010
Imagine before leaving for work in the morning on your bicycle you tap a key on your watch and it tells you the weather and traffic on route.... and on the way to work (you live in Cape Town by the way) your watch beeps and glancing down you see there has been a crash ahead of you and your watch (which has built in GPS) tells you that the best remedy is to turn right at the next off ramp (Rhodes Memorial) and to go down to Obs Station where the next train is due in exactly 8 minutes . . . But hold on. The technology to do all that is here...
However the technology is the easy bit. Stick a bit of high speed fibre around Cape Town (in progress at the moment) , let a few capable apps writers loose and it will all work. Even the bit about the weather where we need it on a strict route as we all know Cape Town can experience rain in Claremont, wind in Hout Bay, and glorious sunshine in the City Centre - at the same time.
The difficult bit is the soft side, the people. Would you cycle to work around Hospital Bend knowing that if you don't get mugged for your bike in Salt River you are likely to get side swipped by a taxi drifting across four lanes of traffic? Would you take your new Schwinn bike on the train, which if it is on time (what's that?), it is likely to be full. And if your laptop is in your backpack, would you really like to try Cape Town trains? Yes. I exaggarate - I walk the streets peacefully (knock on wood), even at night. But there is some truth . . to really create a SMART city you need more than technology, you need a safe environment.
After my blog last week about the theme for World Telecommunication and Information Society Day being Better Cities Better Life with ICTs I thought I should check up these better cities. After all, according to Time Magazine (17th May 2010: Better City, Better Life) experts claim 70% of all people will live in cites by 2050,
The Smart City concept has been around for quite a while. It all started with Silicon Valley, the place that everyone has tried to copy.But there are a few requirements, not least a willingness by the government (the controlling authority, central or local) to allow and promote it. With Silicon Valley the authority was Stanford university which had spare non-income generating land where they wished to develop a centre of excellence. In south Africa we have had numerous attempts and numerous failures (or at best modest successes) - : Cape Town (near Muizenburg), Stellenbosch, and now the latest one I've read of is near George in the Garden Route.
According to Wikipedia in order to recreate a Smart City you need six elements: a smart economy; smart mobility; a smart environment; smart people; smart living; and, finally, smart governance.Without going into all the elements, the philosophy is simple:
- - the city must be a place where you enjoy both living and working: the environment must be safe, conducive to outdoors and indoors living. You must be able to work at all hours, odd hours (entrepeneur hours) without worrying about family and personal safety;
- - the city must be controlled by laws and regulations designed to help entrepeneurs, new businesses, new ventures. There must be a positive 'can do' spirit, where you can take risks (and pay the price) and get the rewards. Red tape must be minimal: contracts (while enforceable) should allow rapid uptake and slowdown both in staff and resources to allow immediate responses. (Note: this does NOT mean no law, it means relaxed business regulations. Transgressions MUST be immediately dealt with so everyone else will still be encouraged to grow). The city should also not try to control everything, but should lay the basic infrastructure and build on entrepeneurnial skills;
- - the focus of the city should be high tech, to encourage cutting edge innovations and enhancements (nothing breeds success like success).
Any takers anyone? |
