10 of the world’s smartest cities

September 23, 2014

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Major global metropolitan areas are implementing a vast number of technology, energy, transportation, and Internet projects to make the metropolis a friendlier, greener, safer, and more sustainable place to be

It seems these days that everything is getting smarter, from your phone to your home to your car. Cities are no different, with major global metropolitan areas implementing a vast number of technology, energy, transportation, and Internet projects to make the metropolis a friendlier, greener, safer, and more sustainable place to be. Read on to look at some of the world’s smartest cities, and see what they’re doing to injentelligence into the urban environment

New York

Not to be outdone by its global counterparts, the US cultural capital of New York has been working on smart-city plans for a number of years, particularly with Internet and open-data plans to give residents more online access to city services and information. But perhaps its most ambitious smart-city project to date is the Hudson Yards project (artist’s concept pictured), a 28-acre commercial and residential area on Manhattan’s west side that will be a Utopia of green initiatives and Internet access once it’s finished in 2018. The project will digitally track environmental and lifestyle factors — such as foot traffic, energy consumption, and air quality — to provide an optimal quality of life for Hudson Yards residents and businesses. It will even include a trash-disposal system that will remove waste via underground pneumatic tubes rather than a typical truck-based service.

Amsterdam

One look at Amsterdam’s streets — which nearly all have designated bike paths and more bicycles and pedestrians than car traffic — shows how this city is one of Europe’s leaders in creating smart cities. Aside from its longtime promotion of bicycle commuting, the city also is working with leading technology companies like Cisco and IBM to implement a number of new technologies to create a more sustainable city. One example of this innovation is the Utrechtsestraat Climate street, an effort to make one of the city’s busiest commercial areas greener. The street (pictured) features shops with smart meters to reduce and monitor energy consumption; solar-powered waste bins with garbage compactors to reduce collection by electric-powered trucks; and sustainable street lighting, among other smart technologies.

Barcelona

The Spanish jewel of the Mediterranean, Barcelona also is a leader in smart-city projects, hosting a major annual forum for smart-city technology, the Smart City Expo World Congress. True to form, the city is working on efforts on a number of fronts especially to make Barcelona greener and more energy efficient. To promote the use of hybrid and electric vehicles, the city is deploying electric charging stations as well as using EVs in its own fleet, with more than 500 hybrid taxis and 294 public EVs in use. Smart energy meters, LED lampposts, and remote irrigation control for Barcelona’s numerous green spaces to avoid wasteful use of water are also among the city’s smart-city initiatives, the latter including the use of iPads by city workers to control park sprinkler systems.

Copenhagen

Denmark’s capital aims to become the world’s first carbon-neutral city by 2025. To support this goal, the city already is engaged in numerous smart-city endeavors, including an extensive city bike-rental system and efforts to promote cycling to improve residents’ health and reduce car traffic. As part of this system, there are digital counters around the city with tire pumps for bicyclists and displays that show stats about how many people are biking along a particular bike path daily and annually (pictured). Copenhagen also boasts one of the cleanest harbors in the world and has reduced its landfill waste to 1.8% of total waste from the city.

Hong Kong

It’s little surprise that China’s most sophisticated city is also one of the world’s smartest. Hong Kong has a tech-savvy population that takes advantage of some of the best Internet accessibility and highest Internet bandwidth in the world. Ninety-seven percent of households in the city can access broadband, and Hong Kong boasts 10,000 WiFi hotspots, one of the highest concentrations in the world. Other smart-city efforts include mass transit and healthcare, but the city hasn’t yet achieved intelligence in a number of key areas. To solve this problem, officials are working with a number of partners on the Wisecity Hong Kong Project to improve the city’s air quality, waste management, energy, and other issues that still need work to make the city smarter.

Tokyo

One of the world’s technology capitals, Tokyo is rapidly becoming a proving ground for a number of innovative companies to test out new smart-city strategies. Some of these efforts are due to necessity — the Fukushima nuclear disaster sent Japan into an energy crisis, with residents of Tokyo and other cities enduring rolling blackouts due to lack of nuclear power. To deploy smarter energy solutions, Japanese company Mitsui Fudosan is working on a program to control energy consumption through smart-grid solutions. The plan includes installing 2,500 Tokyo households with smart meters that will show electricity, gas, and water consumption in the home. Tokyo also soon will have a zero-carbon-status eco-village developed by Panasonic, the Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town (artist’s concept pictured). The concept aims to provide a model for how home automation, renewable energy, and other green technologies can provide a more sustainable and eco-friendly living environment of the future.

San Francisco

With its proximity to Silicon Valley and its concentration of Internet-oriented companies, it seems natural that San Francisco would be a global leader in smart-city projects. But providing residents with Internet connectivity with a number of free WiFi hotspots (including three miles of free WiFi along Market Street, its main downtown artery) is not the only area in which the Bay Area excels. The city is a global recycling leader, with a mandate that all residents separate their garbage into recycling, compostable, and landfill waste. San Francisco also is promoting the use of hybrid and electric vehicles by providing more than 100 charging stations (pictured) throughout the city. Sustainable construction and renewable energy are other areas of investment for the city.

Seattle

Like San Francisco, Seattle is another extremely wired city — on both the Internet and its fabled coffee. The Emerald City is especially friendly to businesses that want to go green, offering substantial tax breaks to businesses and residents that purchase and implement environmentally friendly technologies. Other key areas of smart-city focus include e-government and green construction initiatives. The city was the first to develop an e-gov strategy in 2004 and is using the Internet in a number of creative ways to help residents, such as using Twitter to help spread the word and locate stolen vehicles. Seattle also helps qualified residents make their houses meet more energy-efficient standards, offering services to better weatherize properties against the elements with the installation of insulation.

Singapore

Well known for its cleanliness and efficiency, the city-state of Singapore also aims to be a smart-city leader, with its Infocomm Development Authority unveiling a recent plan to become the world’s first “Smart Nation.” The ambitious project unveiled by officials will begin rolling out its first technology trial in the Jurong Lake District (pictured), where boxes connected to fiber-optic lines will be deployed at street lights or bus stops and connect to sensors detecting pollution, heavy rainfall, or traffic jams. The sensors even can report back how full garbage bins are so they can be emptied, and keep a close eye on littering to keep trash off the streets. Singapore also aims to launch low-power super WiFi networks with unprecedented range to support the Smart Nation project.
Vienna

If Vienna has its way, it will beat Copenhagen to zero-carbon status by 2020. The Austrian capital is another one of Europe’s smart-city leaders, its strategy featuring a unique heating system that uses garbage incinerators to generate 32% of the city’s heat. The project is so renowned that one of the city’s largest incinerators, Spittelau (pictured), is a colorfully painted city landmark. Vienna also is a leader in providing easy and affordable mass transit to reduce traffic congestion; in a city of 1.7 million residents, its transit system handles about 1.3 million passengers per day.

Written by ITW Editor · Filed Under About, Smart City

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