Sustainably Livable Cities

With ongoing digitalization phenomena and era, we keep hearing big buzz words and Concepts such as Sustainable City or Smart City.

For a city to be described as Sustainable; it needs to be a livable city in the first place. A livable city should have a solid and well-planned infrastructure that can support the daily functions of its residents, inhabitants, and even its visitors.

1. What is a livable city

A city is a living organism. It must be able to breathe in and out its growth and capacities. It should be able to adequately serve the needs of its people and Residents with an additional capacity buffer of 35% to be put into consideration.

The city is an Ecosystem on its own. It has different elements that compose its veins, nervous system, brain, and Ecosystem. Buildings, streets, power grid, water utility network, sewage system, cars, inhibitors, shops, malls, restaurants, Airports, transportation, schools, universities, hospitals, companies, bridges, green areas, irrigation systems, street lighting systems, etc.

Cambridgeshire dictionary definition of “Sustain” as a verb is “?to?cause ?or?allow ?something to?continue ?for a?period ?of?time ” and it defines the adjective “sustainable “ as “?able ?to?continue ?over a?period ?of?time :”

In short, when the word “sustainable” is used:

1)??????? what exactly do we want to sustain in the Ecosystem of the city?

2)??????? How to sustain things?

3)??????? And for how long?

-????? Do we want to sustain the commute time from point A to point B within 20 minutes regardless of the time of the day?

-????? Do we want to sustain Red Streets Color on Google Maps? (i.e. sustain always jammed streets and roads)

-????? Do we want to sustain the Ambulance Services reach proficiency to any emergency call within 8 minutes?

-????? Do we want to sustain the continuity of utilities distribution and service within six 9s (99.9999%)? Could be four 9s as a start.

-????? Do we want to sustain the Start to Finish time of any official process within 45 minutes?

-????? Do we want to sustain off-boarding a plane to receive luggage time to 30 minutes?

-????? OR, there is nothing to be sustained and things need to be started all over again from scratch.

The Questions are:

1)??????? What exactly do we want to sustain??

2)??????? And what exactly needs to be sustained?

2. First Things First

Take a step back, have a comprehensive overall look, detect the challenges, spot what needs to be provided, improved, and bluntly state the problems.

·????? Identify the existing problems and challenges of the city and as blunt as possible.

·????? The city needs to be re-engineered first to rectify the problems

·????? The growth of the city needs to be forecasted and well planned for at least 25 years

·????? The city’s growth plans and forecast need to be revised and checked every 5 years.

2.1 How Does The Unlivable City look like?

A city can’t be a sustainably livable city if:

1)??????? The roads capacity is for 1 million car but 2 million cars are moving around.

2)??????? The traffic lights are planned to operate 45 seconds but in reality it needs to be set to 90 seconds for example.

3)??????? The sewage system is designed for 300K households but the city has 600K households

4)??????? Seasonality is not considered or fitted in the city plans. Some cities receive tourists in big numbers such as Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, etc. or the expatriate sons coming back for summer vacations.

5)??????? Cities’ inhabitants spike by 50%, 100% or more in a very short time but it is the season that will give a boost for the economy and might be eagerly awaited by merchants, hotels, restaurants, rent a car agencies, etc.

Seasonality puts huge pressure on existing city systems, infrastructure and even the permanent residents of the city.

Summer 2024, Barcelona permanent residents started chasing and tightening on the tourists saying they are fed up with the crowds and the pressure they face due to crowded metro, crowded streets, hiked prices, etc.

6)??????? Water pumping and utilities stop being continuous and start being time regulated and zone regulated.

7)??????? Electricity loads exceed the existing capacity and time regulation measures kick in. Very bad in hot weather conditions and climate changes that is going around for real.

8)??????? The drainage system is designed to handle 100 mm of rainfall over 6 hours but actual rainfall is 200 mm over 2 hours.

9)??????? Sewage systems and controls can manage pressure from 20 floors buildings but buildings are licensed to be 30 floors or higher

10)? The greenery of the city is supposed to be 25% of the city area but in reality the design of the city does not allow more than 5%.

11)? If the roads are causing continuous head concussions due to badly paved surfaces and popping up manholes every 2 meters or submerged manholes and drainage openings.

Many phenomena and topics can be listed but it will take pages and pages to list them.

3. Main Target:

Prepare The Solid Foundation for the City’s Sustainability, make it a livable city and then add the Technology that is required or planned. Technology, industry and systems of Smart Cities are introduced on top of a healthy city ecosystem and proper foundation.

A small example to illustrate that, is the Vehicle Speed Control Cameras:

If Vehicles Speed Control Cameras are planned or Installed but the average moving speed of vehicles is 10 Km per hour, then how traffic control cameras will be useful.

Some might argue that these cameras are used to figure out solutions for the traffic jam. Great, then traffic planning systems are needed and not speed control cameras.

Assume the bottleneck roads get identified by the vehicles speed control systems and their speed sensors came up with a Solution (!!??) indicating the expansion of the road, demolish buildings and shift utilities lines. Was the problem solved? or was it just shifted to another spot? Most probably, the behavior of traffic jam is sustained (!!??) but it is created in the next junction.

4. Initial Steps to Implement:

Governments are the funding source of city infrastructure build out and also the owners plus funding source of Sustainable cities.

Governments need to to look holistically at the project of the sustainable city and create the correct foundation to build out the sustainable city. Governments must:

·????? Solve the current existing problems

·????? Bridge the gap between different neighborhoods and areas within the same city

·????? Divide the city into areas with specific functions such as Educational regions, Commercial regions, Media Regions, Governmental Services Regions, higher Educational (Universities) Regions, Entertainment Regions, Cultural Regions, Residential Regions, etc.

·????? Adopt the distributed functionality policy. Each part of the city contains sub-region of the ones listed in the previous point. No concentration of specific function in one area so all inhabitants need to head there to accomplish their tasks, documents or even getting a verification governmental official stamp.

·????? Privatize or use postal services for the governmental services such as Documents Renewal, Documents Issuance, Car Registration, License Renewal, Bills Payments, etc. (embassies are adopting this model in many countries for Visa applications)

·????? Create city zones where in each zone certain number of cars shall be permitted to roam and move around.

·????? For each zone, the cars get official and maybe electronic permission that will be provided with annual car license renewal. You might say that this is a smart city solution and I would say yes but an essential basic one that can be reused and kept in place while the sustainable foundation is being established.

·????? Avoid concentration points, hubs and functionalities such as central train station, central food markets, central fish market and so on.

·????? Create multiple exists and entrances for each city zone and region.

·????? All students must use public transportation systems or provided transportation system by their schools and universities.

·????? Force building underground parking levels that will accommodate 150% of the designed building capacity.

·????? Run huge and multiple data analysis on the inhabitants behaviors such as number of cars per household, average time of cars moving on the streets, rush hours, do they do their shopping physically or online shopping,

·????? Check how many people use online services like banking, governmental or meetings.

·????? Check how many people use public transportation

·????? Check how many people are commuting using the same car.

·????? Check the cars in the country or city: Year Make, Model, Type, Engine Type, Aging, Country of Origin, Electric or Gasoline, etc.

·????? Check the per capita cars ownership

·????? Check the cars’ density in each city. While the country low ratio of cars per capita as a whole might be 30%, the capital city might have 80% ratio.

·????? Identify the traffic bottlenecks and the root cause behind the congestion. Once the reason is identified, take an action to offload the roads.

·????? Start using parking meters everywhere, and put hefty fines for the cars without paid parking fees. This will definitely kill the double and triple parking liners (cars)

5. The Private Sector must Contribute:

Responsibility of enhancing the city to be sustainable and livable must not the government’s sole responsibility. Private sector must participate in the whole project, its implementation, its development, and its rollout.

5.1 Case-1: Road Networks

Government can privatize the roads networks at least the main ones and cars will pay fees for using the roads. In return:

·????? Private companies will fully maintain the roads quality and services based on international standards. (benefit for all)

·????? Private companies will earn money. (benefit for private sector)

·????? Government will adopt a revenue share with the private companies (benefit for government)

·????? The government will reduce the fuel prices in return. (benefit for inhabitants)

5.2nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; Case-2: ICT Infrastructure

Government can facilitate the Rollout and building of 5G-Advanced networks (5G is an outdated technology as of today). The 5G-Advanced networks will allow the rollout of multiple Smart City Technologies based on wireless connectivity. The benefits:

·????? ICT infrastructure will be up to date

·????? ICT industry will contribute more to the national GDP

·????? Huge unnecessary governmental budgets for streets digging and street rollout of fiber will be eliminated or at least 90% saved.

·????? Note: Fiber rollout is a must to build the 5G-Advanced networks and future generations like 6G in 2030.

·????? ICT Infrastructure must be coordinated with the Private Road Networks so Fiber Layout will be considered when roads are reconstructed.

5.3 Case-3: Coordinated Utilities Rollout

Government shall handover the existing utilities networks to private sector. The private sector shall coordinate the rollout of all utilities in all the areas and MUST coordinate with The Roads Network Company.

·????? Government will have savings from the reduced or eliminated wasted water

·????? Government will get rid of the Aerial electricity and Fiber grid since it will be underground.

·????? Reduce visual pollution

·????? Reduce the service interruptions

·????? Increase the efficiency of energy generation and power distribution

·????? Elimination of continuous road and street digging again and again each time a new service is required.

6. Managed Services Model

Government shall adopt the Managed Services Model where the government will pay a certain amount of annual funds but definitely less than what is being paid today.

Government and ministries will have an Operation Center that will monitor and observe the services.

Service Level Agreements SLAs shall be put in place between the utilities services providers and the government.

The Government Budget Savings can be directed to other sectors like Education and Health services.

The Managed Services Model is very successful in many industries and well established in the ICT industry. Govenments must consider the Managed Services Model in certain segments as a start and then generalize the experience to the other domains.

7nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; The Human Element of the City Ecosystem

Humans, inhabitants, residents are the major factor of the Ecosystem of the city.

The mindset of people has to be changed towards positive behaviors and attitudes when using the city facilities. These are few things that people can do:

·????? Smartly use the natural resources such as water

·????? Utilize solar power as much as possible

·????? Protect the greenery of the city

·????? Drive with positive attitude and respect the lanes (assuming lanes are put in place)

·????? Respect the parking metering and pay their dues

·????? Single tasking while driving. It means focus on the driving, the road and surroundings.

·????? Use public transportation (assuming the public transportation system is available and efficient)

·????? Be ICT literate and start using online services (assuming that not only payment services are digitalized)

·????? Report any problem in the city infrastructure on the spot to support reducing the lose of resources.

·????? Adopt the mentality of walking for 10 minutes to do the shopping instead of using the car.

The natural mindset change might take a long time (years) to be in place so the educational system shall be designed with a focus on how to prepare the future generations for city sustainability.

Mindset change can also be forced to change. This is done through strict regulations imposed by the government.

8. The Way Forward

Cities need to be livable as a start before being smart.

Cities need to have a sustainablity mechanism in place to make sure that it is a livable place.

Solutions for existing challenges and problems need to be designed and implemented.

Privatization and private sector must be part of the elevation of the city infrastructure and life standards.

The government needs to consider the Managed Services Model when running the cities. Let the private sector run the infrastructure with clear targets on increasing the efficiency and effectiveness, reducing the OPEX and reducing Investment of the government. All to be controlled and managed with clear SLAs.

When re-engineering the city or planning the city; within the blueprints of the city consider the inclusion of ?all utilities and services as part of the infrastructure. Gas pipelines, electricity grid, electricity distribution network, water distribution networks, fiber networks, and adequate space for future expansions, maintenance and new additions.

With this draft, it is believed that any city can be made sustainably livable city.

Technologies of Smart Cities can then be applied in the different domains:

·????? Smart water metering

·????? Smart electricity metering

·????? Safe city technologies

·????? Smart Traffic management and monitoring technologies

·????? Smart Parking Systems and metering

·????? Introducing smart sensors for monitoring utilities networks

·????? Smart city Networks Operations Center

·????? Smart irrigation systems

·????? Smart street lighting systems

·????? Smart Medical and First Aid Systems

·????? Smart Classes and Smart Education

·????? Smart payment systems

·????? Unmanned banking systems

·????? Unmanned Ports

·????? Unmanned Airports

·????? Smart Recycling

9. The Aging Factor

Technologies and infrastructure has the aging factor. Therefore, it is always recommended to have the aging factor as part of the consideration.

Consider infrastructure materials that are having a life time of 20 to 30 years.

Consider the ease of replacement during periodic and preventative maintenance activities.

Consider the recycling aspects. By the way recycling is an important element of the Smart Sustainably Livable City. It is important since:

·????? It will manage the waste of the city

·????? It will reduce the CAPEX of the government

·????? It will reduce the OPEX of the government

·????? It will create many parallel industries

·????? It will contribute to the Carbon Neutrality targeted by government

·????? It will generate fertile soil that can be used to fight desertification

·????? It will generate Methane gas that can be used to generate energy and reduce the energy bill of the country

·????? It will generate fertilizers

·????? It will provide a good source of wealth to the government since electronic waste has gold, copper, steel, rare earth metals and many other things.

·????? Waste water can be recycled and used for irrigation

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9.1 Aging Vehicles

Many of the city infrastructure elements are going around Vehicles and its needs; roads, parking, charging stations, streets, roads, metering, fueling, etc.

Many industries are also evolving around vehicles and their needs; spare parts, maintenance, fixing, upgrades, and even insurance business.

The aging factor is very fast on cars specially if it is coming with low quality.

The government must put strict regulations on what specifications of cars need to be allowed inside or imported to the country.

Cars on the streets must be well inspected and many of them need to be disqualified and removed away from the roads.

Certain brands of car shall be 15 years from the day of manufacturing. Then they are scrapped and recycled. Owners should be given benefits to encourage them to scrap their old cars.

Classic cars can be allowed if they are well maintained with very clean records.

Putting smart solutions for the vehicles will support:

·????? Reduction of the number of cars on the streets

·????? Increase the utilization of public transportation since it will be faster to travel with public transportation and definitely cheaper.

·????? Reduce the carbon footprint and reach faster to the targeted carbon neutrality.

·????? Reduce the psychological tension amongst people due to long queues of traffic.

·????? Reduce the energy bill of the government

10. Finally

The topic of Smart Sustainably Livable Cities is a huge topic. First steps might be difficult but definitely are needed.

Governments need to establish a stand alone entity the would tackle all aspects and angles of such a rich topic and life impacting matter.