A Simple Path to Building the Smart City of the Future

This morning as I was skimming my LinkedIn feed I noticed I’d been tagged by a colleague seeking my thoughts on the topic of which cities in the world are most effectively pioneering the use of smart city, immersive AR, and VR technologies? As I began to ponder the question it struck me, this is the wrong question! So, rather than responding with the name of a city that has implemented a slew of IoT sensors and systems, implemented amazing machine learning capabilities, and then deployed them into digital twins, or augmented and virtual reality platforms, I decided it was time to write this essay.

Let me start by saying I have been in the geospatial industry for over 25 years, and I am just as excited and intrigued by the potential of new technology and applications as anyone. In fact, I have a bad habit of looking too far ahead and having ideas well before most of the world is ready to consider their adoption. Through my professional career working in academia, research, and the public sector, something began to change in my thinking.

Anyone who works with data knows we collect a lot of it. Every day the sensors, cameras and other technology already installed in our cities collect far more data than our organizations ever meaningfully assess. Add to that the plethora of data coming in from other sources, satellite-based sensors, vehicle-based sensors, and so on, collected by both public sector agencies and private companies and we are no doubt acquiring zettabytes of data most of which gets dumped on servers someplace and is minimally or never analyzed.

So, what makes a smart city? Clearly, it is not as simple as deploying a slew of sensors across the community, on vehicles, and elsewhere to track, capture, and just gather endless amounts of data. Sure, there are lots of tools and technology that can begin to tease apart patterns and anomalies in these data and alert City staff that something requires attention. But is that truly smart? I don’t want to get too philosophical here, but I would suggest when we boil it all down using computers to implement data processing algorithms does not make them smart. Computers simply do what we tell them to and make it faster and more efficient, and while we can do a good job with the data and understanding we have about our cities, no smart city system can collect and assess everything.

Fifteen years ago, I worked on a study of rural broadband in northern California. Although the technology has changed, and speeds are faster, I find it discouraging that here I am fifteen years later, and we are having the exact same conversation. At a personal level, the difference for me is that now I work for the largest county in the United States and one for which the digital divide is perhaps more intense in the urban core as it is in the outlying rural communities. It certainly affects a far larger number of our fellow citizens.

Why do I bring up the digital divide in an essay about Smart cities? In short, as I pondered the original question, I realized that every city on the planet already possesses the most sophisticated IoT sensor network imaginable, humans! The people of a community know it best and can process and interpret data far better than any machine learning algorithm ever will. But to use this amazing pool of knowledge we must enable those individuals already embedded in our cities, the human sensors. The human sensors and data analysts have already been deployed in every corner of our cities; the missing component is a reliable connection to the network! Citizens without connectivity are no better than that colleague at the office who hordes data on their desktop computer and never loads it to the shared server. While that individual may hold a wealth of data and knowledge, nobody else benefits from it.

If we know connected information and knowledge is the basis of a smart city, why do we continue to forego the most obvious opportunity in front of us? To truly realize a smart city is the best use of limited resources to continue investing billions of dollars to install even more IoT and camera systems or sensors on vehicles? Or might it be a better use of those resources to connect and educate every citizen? By enabling the collective knowledge of the local communities and individuals, not only are smart cities possible, they are inevitable! To achieve this a critical first step is to delete the digital divide through improved connectivity, education, and outreach to the human sensors that are already present in every community. While I could use a vehicle-based sensor to assess pavement or sidewalk conditions or IoT sensors to monitor flow in a water system, it is the people who live in our communities that can provide the best near-real-time information about damaged sidewalks and potholes. Local communities know when the water from their kitchen faucet is coming out brown or smelling funny. The same people are also aware of where opportunities exist: a vacant lot that could be converted into a community garden or park; a vacant building posing health and safety risks; or which intersections are most dangerous for their children to cross on the way to school.

Imagine what it would be like if we were able to harness the data collection and analysis capacity of billions of humans across the globe! If we view the internet as the public good as it was envisioned decades ago and provide a real way for everyone to receive the access and education to participate, imagine just how smart our cities could be!

Admittedly, I don’t know the math on this, but imagine the potential return on investment if we collectively found opportunities to put these investments, not towards IoT sensors, but towards access and education to homes and schools in every corner of every city to truly empower the citizens. The investment in that single individual (multiplied by thousands) would multiply the potential for community and economic development, innovation, and most importantly opportunities to every single individual in the community. Add to that the fact that your IoT sensors and computing platforms depreciate over just a few years before requiring repair or replacement. Investing in individuals provides a return on investment over decades, and in fact, has an incredible opportunity to become more valuable over time. What piece of hardware or software do you use that increases in value over decades rather than ending up as e-waste?

If this all sounds a bit too idealistic, simply consider how effective using human sensors in mapping streets and infrastructure of the world has been for the Open Street Map (OSM) project. Compared to the billions invested by governments and private industry, OSM has mapped most of the planet, including many places commercial and government interests hadn’t, and is now considered a valuable source of free data used by many of those same governments and commercial interests on a daily basis. The OSM project has been compiled and maintained by an estimated 7.5 million contributors, human sensors that were willing to contribute, not for pay, but because it served a common good and presumably helping their own community as well. Notably, this base of OSM contributors represents less than 0.1% of the current global population. Where I work, in Los Angeles County, California in just those neighborhoods that represent the least connected communities (the digital divide), there are nearly 400,000 children enrolled in K-12 schools. More than a quarter of those kids live in households without internet access.

Providing all of those kids with the necessary connectivity and education to get involved in making their own communities smart could go a long way towards improving their neighborhoods. Even assuming the 0.1% participation rate seen for OSM, connecting that 25% of households that lack access would translate 10,000 kids into a lifetime of involvement in making their communities truly smart! Those cities that enable and support their citizens have a tremendous opportunity to build smarter communities from the ground up.

Those communities that invest to delete the digital divide in a very real and intentional way, not only as a question of infrastructure and access but also through educational opportunities and support of their citizens will become the smart cities of the future. Enabling the human sensors, human knowledge and human capacity are what lead to augmentation, visualization, and consideration of future possibilities. I believe the most compelling and creative AR and VR emerges from the minds’ eye, not the computer screen, the computer is simply a tool to help to share that vision with others once it has been conceptualized. The strength of the smart city will be engaging with community members, on the ground, with local knowledge to become equal partners in data collection, analysis, and visualization of their own futures.

So, returning to the original question, “Which cities in the world are most effectively pioneering the use of smart city, immersive AR and VR technologies?” I don’t have that answer…not yet. I do believe that the cities that choose to focus their investments simply on sensors and data systems with an expectation that it will solve their problems may be unpleasantly surprised by the outcome. It is at their own peril, that cities which ignore the exceptional human capital that is right there in front of them, risk being in the same spot in another 15 years as the technologies and sensors they install today become obsolete and the world passes them by.

In short, if you want to build a smart city, invest in enabling smart people, by which I mean ALL PEOPLE. The results over time will be orders of magnitude better when we build on community knowledge and human capital as the core of our smart cities of the future!