Week 10: Smart Cities

The future of urban development starts with the enterprise of smart cities. According to the class lecture, a smart city is, "hard infrastructure ('physical capital') and the availability and quality of knowledge communication and social infrastructure ('intellectual and social capital')." What this is essentially saying is that a true smart city is where real and virtual worlds converge. While reality brings physical necessity, barriers and restrictions, a virtual world brings freedom and unlimited possibilities. The article, "The Future of the Future: Being smart about smart cities," by Art Murrary, Mark Minewich and Azamat Abdollsev discuss the benefits and obstacles of the development and implementation of smart cities. The benefits that arise form a smart city are endless. The main benefit is the amount of knowledge and information that can supported by a smart city is immense. But with the storing of all this information comes obstacles that have to be overcome.  The first obstacle that must be overcome in order for a smart city to be developed and thrive is the lack of financing. Many investors have eased on committing large amounts of money to the development of smart cities, despite clear evidence of strong sustainability. Smart cities need to be advertised more as a strong financial investment in order for more money to be put into these development processes. Another obstacle rests with the government. Today, "regulatory and organizational structures are woefully outdated and in urgent need of reform." This leads to government incentives to be forced onto special interest groups rather than others. In order to achieve this barrier, future incentive programs must consider the large objectives and benefits of a smart city, such as the creation of a highly intelligent work force. A third obstacle is the industry's problem with bandwidth. Consumer requirements are usually narrowly focused, which leads to "little if any attention given to enabling the flow of knowledge." A smart city would demand more from communication carrier, forcing them to build a knowledge infrastructure supporting the intensive work of knowledge in a virtual environment. A last obstacle of smart cities are the cyber-attacks that could be of result. Although cyber security extension is taking place, attacks can still occur on any system. Special focus would have to go into protection of the smart cities virtual environment to maintain their security from threats. While the promise of smart cities paints an bright and exciting future, these barriers and obstacles prevent the development and implementation from occur  immediately. However, with increased knowledge and study, smart cities can become the future.

http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/Column/Future-of-the-Future/The-Future-of-the-Future-Being-smart-about-smart-cities-77848.aspx