YOUR GUIDE TO THE FUTURE

Every year thousands of tonnes of electronics, furniture, household appliances and clothing pieces are thrown by urban dwellers. Many of these items were not being processed properly or recycled and ended up in the landfill. These items are also likely being tossed just because they are slightly damaged.

Increasing temperature is one of the effects of global climate change that threatens the livelihood in Ahmedabad, India. Extreme temperature put the citizen to risk of heat wave and numerous heat-related illnesses. With heat as one of disaster that significantly affect the quality of life, Ahmedabad implemented “Heat Action Plan” in 2015, that include mitigation and early warning system to extreme heat events.

The limitation of land area pushes Singapore to think innovatively in its efforts for sustainable energy provision. As a city-nation that is located on the equator with all year-round sunshine, Singapore is pushing solar technology as one of its sustainable energy sources.

The pursuit of Smart City requires partnership of all elements of city actors. City of Boston established New urban Mechanics, a civic innovation group that support the city government to create innovative human-centred design solution for the city.

City of Fukuoka, Japan utilise technology to keep up with its aging population and ensuring everyone to get proper health and social care. CareTech is a tool that helps aging citizens especially those with dementia to retain their quality of life.

To enhance the quality of life in the city, the city government must take advantage of the clustering resource and knowledge that the area accumulates. Cities as the place of clustering citizens, private enterprise, social organisation, and higher education hubs may benefit from smart cities with open governments.

The concept of smart city is about utilising the combined intelligence, skills and resources that a city possesses from the heterogeneous stakeholders that work together to find solutions to the city’s problems. Part of becoming a smart city is the ability to be more open and encouraging for opportunities for new business models and entrepreneurship.

One indicator of a successful Smart City is its ability to adapt the vision and strategies to local context. Yet, through the study of 15 cities globally, many Smart City visions and strategies poorly accommodate the local needs. Failing to incorporate the unique physical characteristics, demography, and culture of a local area in the Smart City implementation, a municipality risk themselves in loosing the comparative advantages with other cities.

Cities are noisy. With various social activities and traffic, noise level in urban areas can reach a point where it is detrimental to our physical and mental wellbeing. The Municipality of Berlin developed a tool to help its citizens locate places of quiet in their neighbourhood, called Hush City Mobile Lab.

By comparing four American cities and four Chinese cities with advance level of smart city implementation that represented the countries’ major geographic regions, Hu and Zheng (2021) compares the similarity and difference of these two countries that have differing legal, political and institutional elements.

Clear vision with specific goals and objectives combined with clear division of role and responsibilities is critical in establishing Smart City. However, only 11 out of the 69 councils in Sydney dan Melbourne that Dowling et al. (2019) study, that shows local municipalities are equipped with appropriate Smart City Strategy for their local areas.

The advancement of technology in every aspect of our daily life has also brought negative externalities of the accumulating electronic waste or e-waste. Tretavathan and Sharp (2020) in their study introduce a Social Enterprise called Substation33, which has a mission to reduce the number of electronic wastes that end up in the landfill while also contributing to the community through capacity building programs.

The collection and management of e-waste is crucial to reduce the amount of toxic material released to our environment. Effective waste management also has a potential to retrieve valuable materials to be reused and recycled such as gold and copper. Kang et al. (2021) proposed a smart e-waste collection system that could be applicable at household level in the city.

The massive investment in Smart City development should come with a suitable risk management. To assist municipalities in identifying and managing their risk in smart city implementation, Ullah et al. (2021) had identified a technology-organisation-environment or TOE-based risk management.

Smart City development risks may interfere with the success of the goals that municipalities set for their cities. Thus, risk management is required to reduce the probabilities of negative impact and even increase the probability of positive opportunities in Smart City implementation.

Upgrading the governance of a city is critical to the success of Smart City establishment. It is imperative that city authority use the data and technology of smart city to improve the governance system to achieve the growth, distribution and effective administration of public service.

The public involvement in the design, planning and implementation of smart city is one factor that determine the success of the vision. It is critical that smart city vision is constructed specifically to the local context. Thus, public participation is crucial to ensure that it is appropriate to the local citizens’ need.

The success of Smart City depends on the ability to innovate. One domain that are challenging but critical for innovation is the way we govern our city to improve the quality of life.

Despite having an ambitious vision of Smart City, there often a big gap in the existing city condition and the goals being set for the city. A study on City of Tallinn in Estonia, provide some insight on how city can better transition into Smart City.

In creating the most liveable city, the design of the street is one of the major areas that municipalities must pay great attention to. Many cities started to experiment on parts or blocks of a street to formulate the best design framework for improving the quality of the inhabitants’ lives.

Following social restriction during the pandemic, many cities took the initiatives to redesign and repurpose their streets in hope for more active inclusive use of road space. Halifax, Canada, has reallocated 16 km of its city street since 2020.

Play Street is an intervention of a street or parking lot temporary closure to create a place for children to play outdoors. This initiative is one way to improve not only the quality of life of the children in cities, but also strengthen the community's relationship.

Children who walk for their daily commute to and from school are healthier and less likely to be obese (Bosch et al., 2019). They are also better at recognising and visualising their neighbourhood through maps, explain the built environment

Complete Street is a design approach that puts forward the safety of all modes of travel, accommodating all ages and types of abilities. This is a system that provides alternatives to designing streets exclusive for motorised vehicles.

Improving the quality of the streets that are inviting and attractive is one way to increase the walkability of a street. Enhancing the quality of experience of the local street, or place-making, can also encourage the use of public space especially in areas that are socio-economically disadvantaged.

Encouraging technological advancement and urban innovation in Smart Cities has a significant impact in the improvement of ecological environmental quality and promote high quality growth. A case study in China found that this strategy has resulted in the reduction of exhaust gas and industrial wastewater by approximately 20.7% and 12.2% respectively.

City government's main goal as provider of public value or public goods in many cases is hindered by any of these challenges, complex technological adoption, high investment cost, legal & bureaucratic rules and lack of personnel with sufficient technological knowledge and development.

Despite city population that continuously grows around the world. Creating a safe and accessible city planning and design for all members of the community is not the pre-set of many smart cities.