How artificial intelligence can help us realize our smart city dreams

Since the 2008 financial crisis, a new way of urban planning and service delivery has begun to emerge around the world. As technology continues to advance, city planners are adopting new ways to monitor the needs of city residents and leverage technology to provide better services. This new way of urban management is called "smart city", and it makes the city smart by applying the Internet of Things to all aspects of urban management. However, although smart cities have become the norm in major cities around the world, some believe that this is just a brand promotion rather than a complete revolution in urbanization. They believe that the concept of smart cities may be overhyped and is simply a new way of managing cities. In fact, the development of smart cities still faces many challenges, such as data privacy and security issues, and uneven resource distribution. Therefore, the future development of smart cities still requires continuous exploration and improvement.

Using technology to ease urban life is nothing new. Since the first cities appeared more than 6,000 years ago, humans have been exploring ways to use technology to improve our daily lives. The advent of smartphones has allowed city planners to collect vast amounts of data to better understand residents’ needs. As a surveillance technology, the amount of personal information collected by smartphones is unprecedented in human history. This data gives urban planners a new understanding of how the urban environment is used and how resources are allocated. By analyzing this data, planners can more effectively improve traffic flow, optimize the layout of public facilities, provide more convenient services, and improve residents' quality of life. In addition, the development of science and technology has also brought about innovative solutions such as smart homes and smart transportation, which have further improved the lives of urban residents. As technology continues to advance, we can expect more innovative technological applications to make urban life more convenient and livable.

However, smart city brands focus more on personal comfort than data surveillance. In some cities, such as Dubai and Singapore, municipal offices have stopped using paper for official transactions and residents interact with municipal services through smartphone apps. They can use a smartphone app to report service outages, pay fines and more. Smart city marketers envision a future in which residents do not need to physically visit physical city offices to conduct business and where resources are automatically allocated based on demand.

Over the past decade, many global cities have adopted smart city approaches to varying degrees. Even in a city like Cape Town, residents are able to solve many problems via smartphones or online platforms. However, truly innovative smart city models are changing. Saudi Arabia plans to build NEOM cities on the Red Sea coast, promising to integrate technology into nearly every aspect of the urban environment. The goal of this plan is to create a highly intelligent and sustainable city that applies emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data analysis and the Internet of Things to urban planning, traffic management, energy supply and other fields to improve residents' quality of life and promote economic development. This ambitious project will set a new benchmark for smart city construction and serve as a model for future urban development.

The core of smart cities is represented by the surveillance architecture built into the urban environment - Joseph Dana

On the other side of California, a group of leading technology investors plan to build a new cities to test smart city concepts to solve urban problems. The project, called California Forever, is backed by Silicon Valley billionaires Reed Hoffman, Laurene Powell Jobs and Marc Andreessen. They plan to build a "dream city" in Northern California with state-of-the-art solar technology, safety facilities and a high-quality living environment. The project has secured large tracts of land and promises to create a model for smart cities of the future.

These investors are responding to severe decline in California cities. California cities from San Francisco to San Diego have struggled to control rising crime and homelessness. Technology backers in California are betting on the concept of smart cities, controlled environments maintained by the latest surveillance technology, to provide an alternative to California's increasingly dangerous urban areas.

This view is reasonable. The core of smart cities is represented by the built-in monitoring architecture in the urban environment. However, public accounts are generally milder. To better understand this dichotomy, we need to consider how emerging markets have changed over the past two decades. In the mid-2000s, investors began looking for new markets with lucrative returns. Globalization, low interest rates and a growing young population have brought cheap funds, making emerging market countries, especially those in the Southern Hemisphere, a popular choice for investors. The emergence of new narratives validates and accelerates new investor sentiment. In other words, technology and a growing young population herald a historic shift in the global economy. Therefore, the future will belong to emerging markets.

The seamless experience promised by smart city visions can be more easily achieved through artificial intelligence - Joseph Dana

Technically speaking, there is nothing wrong with this. Technology gives knowledge workers around the world greater access to markets. Many cities in the emerging world have growing populations of young people who enjoy greater opportunities than their parents did. Cities like Dubai have become new innovation hubs, bringing diverse groups of people together. That narrative has been shattered in recent years as high interest rates have drained away the cheap money that fueled the boom. However, some emerging market countries have really come into their own.

The smart city narrative remains critical to the narrative in emerging markets. Many city officials view the use of smartphones to pay parking tickets as a sign of technology's promise to make life easier. It removes the bureaucratic hurdles often associated with the legacy of colonialism in some emerging market countries.

Now that these developments have become commonplace around the world, the narrative needs to change. The rise of artificial intelligence will change the way we think about cities. Thanks to the vast amounts of data collected by cities over the past decade, artificial intelligence systems can be deployed to predict and handle resource allocation. The seamless experience promised by smart city visions can be more easily achieved through artificial intelligence.

The dream of a truly smart city is not over yet. As long as humans live in cities, there will be motivation to improve the urban environment. Smart city brands associated with emerging market growth may have had their best days and are changing as new technologies give planners more options. Thus, one important chapter in the history of urbanization is coming to an end and another is about to begin.

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