YOUR GUIDE TO THE FUTURE

Buildings are responsible for the 32% of total global energy use and emits significant share of Green House Gas emission (GHG). How we design neighbourhood can substantially reduce the emission and energy use those urban buildings use. Designing the neighbourhood into urban form that minimise trapping the solar radiation and allows for wind access (ventilation) is one way to do it.

Urban areas play a critical role in reducing the amount of GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emission as it generates 70% of human induced GHGs. Smart Cities can take up this role by designing their cities that integrate climate mitigation into their urban planning process, building design, construction as well as through their services & infrastructure.

The urban forms of a city, which is defined as “the patterns and spatial arrangements of land use, transportation systems and urban design elements, layout of streets and buildings, as well as the internal configuration of settlements”, significantly determine the amount of energy used by that city.

Due to the concentration of people, economic activities, social and cultural institutions; urban areas have higher vulnerability to climate change-related disasters. Millions of urban dwellers around the globe have already experienced this direct existential threat.

Following the Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessment, the next step is to identify and prioritise adaptation options. City must first identify and create catalogue on all adaptation options that for their specific context. New and innovative adaptation strategies are required to cope with the novel and unique challenge of climate change.

City of Ithaca, New York sets out an ambitious vision to be eliminate or offset all carbon emission by 2030. This 2019 vision is followed by a US$ 100 million plan to climate proof this municipality. One method that the policymakers in Ithaca use to help achieve the ambitious goal is to create a Digital Twin of the city.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A study on smart cities in Nottingham, Stavanger and Stockholm proved that Smart City Project may serve as a catalyst in creating a more sustainable urban energy use and management. The study found a link that although a local smart city initiative does not aim specifically to improve the urban energy sustainability, it still encourages cities to achieve a more sustainable way to manage their energy system.

To cope with increasing temperature in cities, Livesley et al. (2021) proposed small-scale solutions that cities can use to increase thermal comfort to not only humans but also fauna living in the urban environment.

The idea of compact cities claims to provide people with everything they need within the community, from stores, schools, employment, public service, and other amenities in a densely built urban area. However, this concept received many critics to how much they contribute to the environmental, social, and economic benefit to the community.

UN defines water security as the capacity to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quality of water for human well being and socio-economic development while ensuring protection against water borne pollution and water related disaster and preserving the natural ecosystem.

Challenged with massive growth and pressure from various human activities, providing clean and save water is one of the serious issues cities must tackle. Better water management that ensures the availability of water more efficiently is urgently needed.

In the effort of transitioning to more sustainable energy production and consumption, a smart city project SINFONIA was developed as part of the European Union sustainability agenda. Part of this project includes the deep energy retrofitting of real-estate assets in mid-sized cities in Europe.

Throughout the life cycle of a building, from construction, operation, and demolition, consumes a lot of energy. Accordingly, improving the efficiency of one step of the life cycle can significantly reduce the carbon footprint of the building. One notable way to do this is to practice better passive design that will eventually reduce the energy demand.

The advancement of technology has given way to innovation of smarter materials for buildings. Mohammed (2017) defined “smart material” in building construction as high technological material that responds intelligently to climatic changes and different seasons.

Cities that are citizen-driven show significant success and replicability rate in delivering smart city projects. This is due to the co-creation aspect in the delivery process ensures that the vision is better accepted by the citizen, which in result increases the likelihood of the improvement of the citizen's wellbeing.

Sustainable building practice considers the social, financial and environmental impact of the building throughout the whole life cycle of the building, including the generation of waste during construction.

A study provides evidence that suggests the crucial role cities have in mitigating climate change through their techno-policies choices. Sethi et al. (2020) identifies key sectors that should take a bigger role in adapting and mitigating climate change in cities, including waste, transport, energy, and buildings.

Noise pollution in urban areas is a serious threat to the health and wellbeing of city inhabitants. City government must take deliberate action to prevent the damage to their inhabitants. To help city government as well as other city stakeholder reduce the noise pollution, Bello et al. (2019) invented SONYC (Sound of New York City) a system for monitoring, analysing, and mitigating urban noise pollution with its first case study in New York, one of the busiest and noisiest cities in the world.

In 2011, Malmo, a city in Sweden signed the Climate Contract, a collaboration between the city government and private companies that aims to develop a sustainable and energy efficient city in Malmo. Through this contract, the impact of smart solutions in the City of Malmo to urban governance were studied.

Food security issues usually take the front seat in the discussion of urban food systems. Innovation in Smart Cities could take form in both technology and social. Maye (2019) bridges the discussion of ‘Smart City’ and ‘Urban Food Practice’ and shows how they relate to many more issues and stakeholders and has the potential for more holistic transformation within the urban society through four elements.

Smart growth is a planning concept that aims to build a more compact city design with diverse transportation options and mixed use of land. This concept is considered to address today’s urban challenge of pollution, congestion, long commute time and loss of natural habitat.

Kampung Glintung, a neihbourhood in City of Malang leads the way in initiating a community movement that creates a healthier living environment. This neighbourhood were an area prone to flooding before the community started to build and install Biopore Infiltration Wells in their area.

City of Semarang is one of Indonesia’s largest city in terms of population number. The activity of the 1,8 million people in Semarang produces around 1200 tonnes of waste each day. This becomes a huge problem for the municipality. With the help of the president’s decree, the solution proposed were to use the waste as a source of energy.