Smart Cities

Smart cities are urban areas that use interconnected technologies to provide a better quality of life for residents. One of the key features of smart cities is the integration of mobile technologies to enhance the physical environment.

Smart cities use Internet of Things devices to monitor, control, and manage facilities and devices remotely, in real-time. These devices can contain smart sensors, monitoring devices, and AI programs designed to improve urban accessibility and mobility, promote social inclusiveness, increase energy efficiency, and help to achieve sustainability. To accomplish these aims, smart cities need to collect enormous amounts of real-time data from citizens' mobile devices as they move through the city. This has made the concept somewhat controversial in nations where individual privacy and anonymity are protected, whereas developing smart city technologies has been easier in more autocratic states and regimes.

Let's take a look at some successful and failed examples of smart city initiatives around the world - select each for more information:

Image: Vancouver Economic Commission

Potential Issues

Because smart cities require the real time collection of huge amounts of data, and the sharing of this data across a network, there are significant barriers to the adoption of the concept:

Privacy: citizens may object to the collection of ever more personal data.
Security: Large-scale networks can be susceptible to security breaches. Imagine the chaos if a smart city reliant on connectivity was taken offline.
Infrastructure: The cost to create and maintain the necessary infrastructure is significant.
Philosophical: some people have argued that the reason people like cities in the first place is because they are chaotic, unplanned spaces where human creativity and innovation can flourish. In this view, smart cities can appear sterile and dehumanizing.

Educational Benefits

Schools and colleges can potentially benefit from the growth of smart cities by integrating into the web of connections. Potential benefits (Blaylock 2019) include:

Increased access to education: smart infrastructure can help more learners to better access the physical and virtual learning environments.
Improved campus safety: smart city tech offers the promise of making campuses safer for everyone.
Learner connectivity: smart city infrastructure will allow students to collaborate and share information more widely, as well as affording connections to other digital resources.
Active instead of passive learning experiences: being able to learn anywhere at any time opens up the possibility of active, location-based learning.

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