Smart cities in the world: examples

50 years ago only a third of the world’s inhabitants lived in cities, today the people who live in cities have risen to 50%, however, it is estimated that during the next 30 years this figure will rise to 70 %. These data show the importance that metropolises are exercising as a center of attraction, an attraction that poses great demographic, ecological, social and economic challenges for them.

Unfortunately, not all are prepared to face it in the same way, however, there are some cities that have decided to take a step forward and take advantage of the tools provided by the information society and telecommunications to adapt their infrastructures and services to be able to improve and be more efficient in community management of resources.

What is a Smart City

A Smart City (or smart city) is one that uses ICT (Information and Communication Technology) to improve the quality of life of its inhabitants, achieve sustainable development and use available resources in the most efficient way possible. But how do they do it? What changes have occurred? What are these cities of the future like? Here are the examples of smart cities in the world so you can see the changes that are taking place in these metropolises.

Taking into account everything that we have explained, we could summarize the advantages of a smart city in the following list:

• They facilitate public administration.
• Governments are more efficient.
• Improve user attention.
• More participatory citizens.
• They allow to compare, measure and improve the different public policies.

How could it be less, the “capital of the world”, the city of cities, had to be within this ranking. Little by little, the city of skyscrapers is making its technological transformation that has made it one of the best examples of smart city . Some examples of these changes that are taking place in New York are:

• Smart street lighting systems.
• Automatic water measurement in all publicly owned buildings.
• Management through an intelligent system of city traffic.
• Intelligent automated signage.
• Application of the Internet of things in nursing homes.
• LinkNYC – The largest and fastest municipal Wi-Fi network.
• Mobile charging stations.

Barcelona is one of the best examples of smart cities in Spain. The city of Barcelona, ​​which was named the most technological city in 2015, is within this select group of cities. In what stands out Barcelona, ​​beyond being a great pole of technological attraction and the headquarters of many companies in the sector -without going any further is where the Mobile World Congress is held-, it is in the large number of metrics that are evaluated for improve services and their efficiency. Noise levels, traffic patterns, the selfies people take and where they do it, etc., serve so that they can later be established efficiently:

• Public wiring system.
• Wireless traffic management.
• Social cohesion tools.

In addition, as in the case of New York, Barcelona has a large public WiFi network with more than 450 access points that cover almost the entire city.

In 2011, the capital of the United Kingdom began its adventures in a project that ends in 2021 and that should end up greatly improving the lives of its citizens. A large part of this project is focused on making a comprehensive improvement of the public transport network , making it the best in the world. In addition, countless sensors have been installed that capture information about many different aspects of the city and its inhabitants.

All this information is collected, saved and analyzed on the London Datastore platform , from where different technological developers create Apps and other tools that make life easier for all the inhabitants of London.

This emblematic city of the French Côte d’Azur is another one that deserves to be on this list, as it does not lack merits. On the one hand, they have a large network of sensors that record data such as pollution, sound levels, waste management, energy expenditure or water quality. Based on its analysis, different measures are carried out to improve many services in the city.

In addition, in this city there is the Innovation Center for Smart Cities , a platform from which advances in this field are taught, researched and disseminated, an institution made up of universities, public services and private companies.

With a similar vocation, we find the Mediterranean Institute of Risks, Environment and Sustainable Development , an institution that seeks to define a new way of cooperating between companies, researchers and the territory to advance in areas such as green technology and smart cities .

Among its many advances, we find the redefinition of San Isidoro, a completely ecological neighborhood that serves as a paradigm of what the cities of the future should be.

This Southeast Asian city-state has set out to become the smartest city -or country- in the world, and the actions they carry out are not misguided. The installation of sensors has been enormous, in fact, up to 8,000 databases have been created that are distributed to many startups from all corners of the world to work with that information and find solutions to the problems of the city.

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