The pandemic is accelerating smart city tech

Source: Smart Cities Dive Published: October 21st, 2020

It's incredibly difficult to look for a silver lining in the midst of a pandemic when all you can see is the carnage it's caused in its wake. Millions of people have lost their lives. Millions have lost their jobs. We've all lost any semblance of normalcy, and it looks like this will be our reality for the foreseeable future.

But believe it or not, there is a silver lining in all of this.

Disease outbreaks are a grim reminder of how one incident can snowball into a global nightmare, but they also have a long history of changing things for the better. London got its Victorian sewer system after the cholera epidemic claimed the lives of 30,000 people. The Spanish flu, one of the worst pandemics in history, brought about better ventilation standards for buildings.

Join the thousands of retail leaders who read Retail Dive's Daily Dive to stay on the pulse of the latest retail news and what it means for the industry.

COVID-19 is poised to bring about the same widespread change as other pandemics have by accelerating the adoption of smart city technology across the world. Klaus R. Kunzmann, the former head of the Institute of Spatial Planning at the Technical University of Germany, describes the coronavirus outbreak as being "a lubricant for the smart city."

Let's unpack this.

Click here to read more

Photo by JC Gellidon on Unsplash