‘Smart’ cities provide potential remedy for America’s city woes

SEOUL. South Korea | If Americans are to deal with a rising tide of city dysfunction and implement high-tech, good cities, they need to focus not solely on digital applied sciences but in addition on the tradition of digital citizenship.

That’s the prescription of Park Jung-sook, secretary-general of the World Smart Sustainable Cities Organization, or WeGO, a world affiliation of over 200 cities worldwide.

“Data is the blood of a smart city and data is generated by smart citizens,” Ms. Park says, “so the social contract is more important than ever.”

The adoption of latest applied sciences could deal with what increasingly more Americans really feel is the declining high quality of life within the nation’s biggest cities, together with rising crime, underpopulated downtowns and declining income bases for primary providers and safety. But the tech-adoption methods should be systemic reasonably than merely bodily, good metropolis analysts say.

“Smart cities are not just master planning,” Ms. Park mentioned. “They are a new culture for humankind.”

They demand, she famous, the adoption of reasonable attitudes towards knowledge assortment; pragmatic attitudes towards knowledge use; and an up to date sequence of protocols governing the interfaces between know-how, authorities, enterprise, the person and society.

Calling good cities “a kind of choice,” Ms. Park noticed, “If citizens don’t supply data, you don’t get a smart city.”

Alluding to anti-mask protesters in the course of the current COVID-19 international pandemic, she mentioned: “That is your choice, but you may be left behind, you may become marginalized in your own city – or you may die.”

The fourth industrial revolution

Inner-city America wants assist. 

Crumbling infrastructure; overpopulation and homelessness; fentanyl epidemics and disintegrating regulation and order — these are just a few points plaguing cities that after had been admired worldwide.

 A 2022 article in The Atlantic reported that New York, the place over a 3rd of one million individuals reside in public housing and 1 / 4 of one million are on ready lists, is in search of a jaw-dropping $78 billion to repair its amenities. In Seattle, a ballot this 12 months discovered that 59% of respondents believed their metropolis had gotten worse during the last three years.

Solutions could lie throughout the Pacific, the place Seoul-based WeGO had its origins in e-governance.

South Korea, with its educated, urbanized inhabitants densely clustered in high-rise condominium complexes, arrange a nationwide broadband community within the Nineties. Similar futuristic approaches had been pioneered in a slew of cell service rollouts.

The outcome: South Koreans grew to become among the many world’s most gadget-friendly, tech-savvy individuals, whereas the nationwide authorities has set a world normal in e-governance. WeGO, with 50 unique member-cities from across the globe, was based within the South Korean capital in 2010.

In 2017, WeGo shifted its mission with the popularity that public-private partnerships, reasonably than simply governments, are key to livable cities, Ms. Park mentioned. The international shutdown and disruptions introduced on by COVID compelled one other shift, underscoring the “importance of integrating resilience in our cities to ensure the well-being of citizens.”

Can these classes be discovered throughout the Pacific? Many of the nice American city conglomerations grew to their current prominence in a really totally different time.

“New York, Seattle and LA were very successful cities in the era of the Third Industrial Revolution,” she mentioned. “But now we have to change our perspective.”

Historians date the Third Industrial Revolution to 1969, ushering in an period of vastly extra highly effective telecommunications, electronics and private computer systems. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is ongoing, marked by the digitization and automation of industries, media and societies.

“We have to adapt to new machines and technologies” with associated protocols, she mentioned. “This is the basis of society.”

Data and democracy

Data-intensive applied sciences helped South Korea meet the problem of the COVID virus with zero lockdowns and a few of the world’s lowest per-capita dying tolls. A core device was an info internet that, beneath emergency legal guidelines, that was capable of synchronize “big data” drawn from customs info, closed-circuit TV networks, bank card transactions, public transport utilization and smartphone location monitoring.

Artificial intelligence techniques then mined this knowledge ocean to seek out individuals who had been near contaminated individuals. A personal-sector messaging app, Kakao, was used to warn tracked residents to check.

South Koreans largely didn’t protest these invasive measures, Ms. Park famous, surprisingly attributing the acceptance to the deep roots of  democracy within the nation as we speak and a belief by residents that the information wouldn’t be put to malign makes use of.

“Voting rights are very important,” she mentioned. “We trust our government and give rights to our leaders, then do our best to be good citizens.”

That strategy could also be a harder promote within the United States, with a conventional fashionable skepticism of central authorities and intrusions on individual property and liberties. Ms. Park counters that anybody who has an internet presence has already successfully deserted management of their private knowledge.

“Already, Google has all this information about you,” she insisted. “You trust Google but won’t give your information to your own country?”

She grants that South Korea’s extra homogeneous, communal society may be very totally different from the varied, individualistic American mannequin, however says a stability should be struck.

“During[COVID], we realized that digital identity is very important,” she mentioned. “But we have to find our digital rights.”

Elected officers are the important thing to constructing belief.

“I cannot protest against a big company, but over city leaders, I have a voice,” she mentioned. Likewise, social media has granted residents artistic instruments and suggestions mechanisms conventional media lacked.

Smart cities, good residents

For cities and metropolis residents ready to embrace the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a number of applied sciences have emerged to enhance the standard of city life.

“Smart curtains” are digital drapes that may be chosen from any shade or sample, and drawn throughout home windows manufactured of clear shows. These home windows may also substitute stand-alone TV screens.

Ms. Park prefers to speak not of particular applied sciences, however of the advantages they provide. “We are facing a low birth-rate cliff, so the question is how to make houses more comfortable and more convenient for spouses.”

That means not merely constructing conventional public housing, however housing tailor-made to habitation teams. For instance, housing zones for singles want a number of public areas to allow interactions, from shared laundries to shared assembly areas.

As mega-cities rise, commutes lengthen and inner-city property costs soar. Decentralization is one reply; Sao Paulo, she mentioned, is taking a deep have a look at tips on how to develop distant work and schooling.

Singapore leads in good sustainability, she mentioned. Gaps are purposely inbuilt high-rise buildings to scale back warmth, and rainwater-collection amenities water crops within the complexes’ public inexperienced areas.

In crime-ridden cities, surveillance cameras are important, however draw complaints about privateness violations. Some British CCTV firms are programmed to blur faces — but in addition deploy AI to acknowledge violent actions or weapons, enabling swift police responses.

AI embedded in CCTV additionally may also calculate numbers of individuals in areas, enabling warnings of harmful overcrowding at public occasions comparable to concert events. Related techniques in transport terminals allow quicker passenger motion round choke factors.

Cities even take a “smart” strategy to waste administration:. In Tunis, sensors in trash cans alert authorities when full, enabling sanitation employees to plan their routes and pickup occasions extra effectively.

In Seoul, residents can lease sustainable transport — public bicycles — by way of an app. Bike sensors present authorities if and the place bikes are deserted, enabling environment friendly assortment at evening.

Such oversight promotes “ethical citizenship,” Ms. Park mentioned, however she acknowledges the tradeoffs that include a wider system demand a “big discourse” —  a social compact on digital rights and ethics.