What makes a smart city smart?

The ‘smart’ tag has been floating around ad nauseam in the past years, up-scaling everything from clothes through tennis rackets to water bottles. With cities joining in, it could get a bit confusing to understand what actually makes an object, a service, or an area smart.

We could try by looking at a few traits that make us, humans smart; like the ability to learn and interact.  Add in some experience, coordination, connectivity, and predictability and we mostly defined what makes a smart city smart.

In essence a city is a complex intertwined system of systems that need to work and interact with each other 24/7. With the increase of urbanisation comes the growing threat of congestion, and difficulties in traffic and commuter management. Mobility is key, and can make all the difference either seamlessly aiding people and goods in getting from A to B or acting as a disruptive obstacle to the delicate ecology cities represent.

Devices, fixed or nomad, that are able to interact with each other, send and receive information, analyse and interpret it are the base.

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