"SMART" OPPORTUNITIES FOR SCOTLAND'S CITIES
By Iain McCreaddie, Policy Executive, Scottish Cities Alliance, Scottish Council for Development and Industry
By 2050 seven out of every ten people will live in cities. Globally, city leaders are responding by developing smart strategies around infrastructure, service delivery and work practices in the knowledge that smart planning now will enable their city to effectively embrace the opportunities and manage the resource pressures commensurate with population growth. Technology is the tool that will enable city leaders to develop their vision of an efficient and responsive city which can predict problems before they occur and design tailored services which make city living better for both its citizens and the economy.
Technology is the tool that will enable city leaders to develop their vision of an efficient and responsive city which can predict problems before they occur
Scotland’s city leaders’ rationale for progressing a Smart Cities programme is supported by best practice worldwide. McKinsey's recently published report ‘How to make a city great’ outlines numerous global examples of good city leadership, many of which have a smart cities approach at their core. For example, the report acknowledges that the way city leaders integrate the environment into economic decision making is vital to smart growth. In 2011, New York City decided to use technology to efficiently retrofit, monitor and control the energy usage of the Empire State Building, reducing annual energy consumption by 38% with a payback period of 3.5 years. The report also acknowledges that using data and technologies can help engage citizens and businesses in the process of improving a city and its services. In Buncheon City, South Korea, drivers are able to access real time traffic information generated from numerous sources, including CCTV cameras, helping them avoid congested roads and helping the city authority to make informed decisions on how to address road congestion and keep the city moving.
the way city leaders integrate the environment into economic decision making is vital to smart growth.
Integral to the Glasgow plan is to make the city’s citizens part of their service delivery standards; moving the city council and its partners away from being providers of a service for citizens towards providing a service with citizens. The ‘MyGlasgow’ Smartphone app will enable citizens to develop a dialogue with council services, gain a better understanding of what is going on in their city and play an important role in influencing city decisions. The commonalities between the Glasgow Demonstrator and McKinsey’s examples of good city leadership confirm that all of Scotland’s cities are right to learn from Glasgow’s approach. This is because the Demonstrator project recognises that in a resource constrained world, cities need to develop and integrate systems that optimise their use of resources and delivery of services across the key systems of energy, transport, water and waste using data and ICT.
the global market for smart city solutions and the additional services required to deploy them is$408 billion by 2020. The UK's strengths in design, research, finance and engineering services could allow it to capitalise on 25% of the total smart cities market.
IBM’s ‘5 in 5’ report gives an aspirational outlook on what smart service provision could look like if cities were sentient. The sentient city will use the breadth of technologies capabilities to “respond in real time, predict problems before they occur and deliver up more tailored services to make city life better for everyone… Cities and their leaders will make decisions based on infinite different types of information that will be visualised on fluid heat maps of city systems… Using advanced analytics, it will be possible to understand and continually digest new information freely provided by citizens.” This is an aspiration shared by the Leaders of Scotland’s cities who, working collaboratively with the Alliance partners, are best placed to deliver our citizens and businesses Smart opportunities.
Iain McCreaddie is Policy Executive – Scottish Cities Alliance at Scottish Council for Development and Industry
By Iain McCreaddie, Policy Executive, Scottish Cities Alliance, Scottish Council for Development and Industry
Issue 8: January 2014
SMART CITIES: SMART SERVICES: SMART WORKING
Smart Cities: Smart Services: Smart Working Editorial
In focusing on 'Smart Cities' let's start with a few teaser questions (answers at the foot of this column)...
- Connecting the Unconnected
- Smarter cities, greener cities cost less to run
- The Future of Mobility - Economic and Transport Opportunity
- Will 2014 be the year that cities become even smarter?
- Geographic Information for Smart Working
- Smart Accelerator: Accelerating action to create smarter cities and regions
- Public Service Reform in an Enabling State: It's about people - not just curly cables
- Data's the way to do it as Glasgow fast forwards to the future
- Time To Start Powering Public Services?
- A 'Smart' Move for Scotland? Edinburgh Napier University's role in the EU Smart Cities Project
- Transport for Edinburgh - Integrated Transport for a Smart City
- Co-ordinating Investment to Deliver 'Smart Places'
- Delivering a sustainable rail future
OTHER ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE
- Editorial
- Children - Putting Policy Into Practice
- Worth more than the First Minister? Senior Salaries in Scottish Quangos
- Success secrets shared: Learning from the best Mittelstand and British global niche champions
- Remembering John Muir
- Internship Can be Good For You
- Planning for Human Rights in Scotland
- Power to the People?
- Evidence exchange: sharing social policy lessons between neighbours
- Helping to build stronger communities across Scotland
- How Can We Engage The Disengaged?
- Pay as you Go?
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