IT’S TIME FOR CITIES TO EMBRACE A “SYSTEM OF SYSTEMS”
Today, many equipment, software and smart services players are embracing the concept of “Smart Cities” in their march towards urban digital transformation. But for cities to become truly smart, new relationships and interactions must be enabled not only for the many traditional equipment players—e.g. utilities, transportation, buildings, emergency services, and so on—but for all stakeholders. Networks are about communication, and communication requires the open flow of information. If we don’t get that straightened out, we’re doomed to create an even larger collection of incompatible systems, devices and information-islands.
If we’ve learned anything in the last thirty years, it’s that siloed information and non-interoperable systems aren’t the solution to anything. Anything digital that human beings invent must be connected and open, while remaining completely secure and privacy-protecting.
And yet the many manufacturers and advocacy groups keep spinning out different tales about the smart city of the future. There’s the “technology optimist” tale told by large multi-national equipment manufacturers, telcos and a long list of software and IT vendors. This one advocates a top-down, command-and-control approach that leaves the manufacturers and their proprietary technologies at the center of the world.
Diametrically opposed to that tale is the “pragmatist” version—and by pragmatist we mean anyone living in a large city and observing the complexity and rapidly changing dynamics which pervade any urban center. This tale accepts that siloed information and incompatible systems will always exist, and that our path into the future will be messy.
Which of these smart city tales should we believe?
If you ask us, neither, and that’s because the best tale of all isn’t being told here. The proper technology development path to building smart cities is to reject the idea of centralized control centers and impose order onto chaos the sane way, with an overriding information architecture that builds a “system of systems” approach from open data.
Ask fifteen people to define a smart city and you’ll get fifteen definitions. But if you implement a smart city the way we’ve just outlined, all those definitions can be correct, and full citizen involvement in the future of that city will always be appropriate and welcomed.