Improving the quality of life of city dwellers in a context of unbridled urbanization through innovation, without harming the ecological cause: these are the challenges of the smart city. By placing digital tools at the heart of the city, we can develop energy-efficient services. The mobility within the city walls is made more fluid and the consumption of natural resources in the public and private sectors is reduced through intelligent infrastructure design. Although digital transformation is still in its infancy, the smart city has a bright future ahead of it.
The smart city: urban planning at the service of ecology
At the experimental stage in some European countries, the “cyber city” has already conquered huge metropolises such as London, New York and San Francisco. But what do we mean by smart city? Not everyone agrees on the exact definition of this concept, which has crucial stakes. For all that, it is accepted that a smart city has the following specifications :
- To use digital innovation to manage the city in a resilience strategy;
- To collect information on households, in order to analyze their habits and avoid energy waste;
- To promote the use of “clean” transport;
- Equip buildings with cameras, which are synonymous with customized maintenance and permanent security.
- To involve the inhabitants in the project, as full-fledged actors.
Artificial intelligence: a lever for transforming the city of tomorrow
Faced with the growing scale of climate change, public opinion is showing a real sense of urgency. In order to stop the trend, the states are advocating the values of the slogan: smart city, sustainable city, which they are applying on their territory, relying on modern technologies.
The smart city is born thanks to the assets of digital technology and its algorithms, as well as the rise of AI, with :
- cameras for detecting the presence of pedestrians or motorists on the roadway;
- ecological transport, to eradicate mechanical cars from city centers;
- sensors, to check the thermal productivity of solar and photovoltaic panels.
Innovation: everyone’s business!
To build smart cities, decisions are not made in isolation, but together. The smart city and interoperability duo allows:
- local authorities to federate stakeholders in the vast engineering project that is the smart city;
- urban planning professionals to modernize infrastructures without impacting the environment;
- to the inhabitants to stop being only users, to become energy producers, by leaving their car in the garage.