Posts in Policy
6 inconvenient truths about Smart Cities

The last year has shown a huge acceleration of interest and action in the Smart Cities market – in the UK, and around the world. What has long been a topic of interest to technology companies, academics, urban designers and local authorities was covered extensively by mainstream media organisation such as the BBC, the Independent newspaper, New Statesman magazine and marketing magazine The Drum.

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Why P3s Are the Brains Behind Smart Cities (Industry Perspective)

There 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. 
 

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Smart Cities at the Crossroads: New Tensions in City Transformation

The Smart Cities movement has produced a large number of projects and experiments around the world. To understand the primary ones, as well as their underlying tensions and the insights emerging from them, the editors of this special issue of the California Management Review enlisted a panel of experts, academics, and practitioners from different nationalities, backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. The panel focused its discussion on three main areas: new governance models for Smart Cities, how to spur growth and renewal, and the sharing economy—both commons and market based.

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Governing the City: Unleashing Value from the Business Ecosystem

Governing a city is arguably one of the most complex management tasks facing organizational leaders. Based on an analysis of Vienna, London, and Chicago, this article demonstrates that city leaders treat cities as ecosystems, structured and governed either as “extended enterprises” where inputs from specialized organizations are coordinated and integrated into the final service or as “platform markets” where direct interactions between third-party service providers and citizens are facilitated by the city leaders. If cities are viewed as the “ecosystem of ecosystems,” then successful city governance requires an orchestration approach where leaders choose the appropriate structure and manage the ecosystem dynamically in a constantly changing environment.

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The Making of the Urban Entrepreneur

Pressures on infrastructure—due to growing urban populations, the ubiquity of new technologies, and collaborative business models—are fostering a new form of entrepreneurship focused on addressing quality of life in cities. Urban entrepreneurs are challenging the logic of formal market structures, forcing us to re-frame our thinking around the interactions between place, individuals, institutions, and the resulting innovative outcomes. Urban entrepreneurs—operating at the neighborhood, city, and global levels—are developing alternative forms of private-public-people partnerships and unique business strategies.

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The Open Kimono: Toward a General Framework for Open Data Initiatives in Cities

The article presents a framework for exploring the drivers, structure, and dynamics of open data initiatives in the city context. Drawing on a case study of the city of Barcelona complemented with other cases, it develops a stepwise framework that can serve as a practical guide for both urban and private leaders to implement open data strategies. Following this model can enable managers to minimize risk and effectively harness the power of open data.

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3 Insights from NLC’s Smart Cities Report

Four U.S. cities — Charlotte, N.C.; Chicago; Philadelphia; and San Francisco — have all launched full-fledged smart city initiatives. Through products developed by companies like Cisco Systems and Microsoft, the Internet of Things (IoT) and other emerging technologies are enabling complex and robust digital infrastructure development that will improve residents’ lives through the collection and analysis of real-time data.

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Big feature: Historic opportunities presented by smart cities

This unstoppable trend is driving double-digit growth in a trillion-dollar global market. What are the opportunities for telecom companies, utilities, financial institutions, transportation companies, software developers, equipment manufacturers and others in the smart-city market? 

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Smart City Development Examined By National League Of Cities

The National League of Cities (NLC) has released “Trends in Smart City Development,” a new report featuring case studies about how five cities — Philadelphia, San Francisco, Chicago, Charlotte, NC, and New Delhi, India — are implementing smart city projects from different approaches. The report also provides recommendations to help local governments consider and plan these projects

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Pittsburgh's smart city efforts include autonomous driving, open data, and renewable energy

Pittsburgh has partnered with Uber on its self-driving pilot and it's working on smart traffic lights thanks to $10.9 million in funding from the US Department of Transportation (DoT) as part of the DoT's $165 million latest funding round for smart city projects. Pittsburgh Mayor William Peduto has high hopes that a full conversion to a smart city will happen sooner rather than later, and he's taking steps to make that happen, despite joking that self-driving cars could be what keeps him from getting re-elected.

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When smart cities meet heritage preservation

As part of its smart city programme, China has created 400 smart cities and 20 “national smart city pilots”. The Chinese government reports on the status of the programme in annual white papers, however, these have shown that progress has slowed due to the absence of an overarching planning process and multiple, inconsistent standards.

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Interdisciplinary thinking: Stanford scholars and students imagine truly ‘human cities’

At Stanford, scholars and students are looking for creative ways to make cities better places for people to live and thrive – places that offer quality and affordable housing, desirable public spaces, robust transportation systems, healthy air and water, and economic promise for all.

 

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