Forget New York and Los Angeles—it's really the small to midsize metro areas like Columbus, Ohio, that are successfully implementing smart-city programs.
Read MoreLast year, 78 midsize cities applied to the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) inaugural Smart City Challenge to develop projects for an "integrated, first-of-its-kind smart transportation system that would use data, applications, and technology to help people and goods move more quickly, cheaply, and efficiently."
Read MoreSingularity University (SU), whose mission is to educate, inspire, and empower leaders to apply exponential technologies to address humanity’s grand challenges, is sponsoring the Smart City Accelerator in Columbus, Ohio. The city was the winner of the US Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge last year.
Read MoreThere are a number of converging factors that can turn a municipality’s vision for a smart city into reality: the steady rollout of high-speed public Wi-Fi networks; the rapid evolution of Internet of Things devices that enable people, businesses and government agencies to measure and get data in real time; and the new transportation and business models created by the NATU (Netflix, Tesla, Airbnb, Uber). Just as significant a factor is the renewed embrace among both government officials and business leaders of public-private partnerships (P3s). That’s encouraging, because without a P3, a smart city plan will most likely remain stuck on the drawing board.
After winning the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)'s Smart City Challenge — earning a $50 million grant to help fund future smart mobility projects earlier this year — the city of Columbus, Ohio, is in the early stages of planning how the funds will be used. The city was able to raise another $90 million from businesses, local agencies, and investors to augment the federal grant.
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