YOUR GUIDE TO THE FUTURE

Smart City thrive in a system that support collaboration and innovation. Yet, many smart cities still operate in a top-down governance structure that may limit the progress of development. One of the problem arise from the conventional governance structure is the gap between planning and implementation of smart city advancement.

Despite the strong top-down approach of smart city planning, Chinese Smart City successfully nurture the innovative and collaborative environment in their governance system by encouraging local municipality to adapt national strategic plan based on the local context.

Data collection through various sensors and monitors, and analysing them with the help of Artificial Intelligence can be a powerful system that Smart Cities use to understand the municipal needs in real time. However, without transparency and accountability of how the government use the data and process of the decision making, can be a hazard to democracy.

A side effect that may impose in creating more accessible and affordable digital platform for smart cities is the threat of privacy and safety of individual data. Thus, city government should put in place practices that strengthen the safety of people, their data and identity.

A successful initiative that improves digital literacy and bridge the digital gap is the Urban Governance Lab. This is medium that digital upskilling of the most marginalised, especially women, and young people who have a large demographic footprint within many countries and cities of the developing world.

Connecting the vulnerable social groups to the digital infrastructure and service can provide significant impact to the communities. Such as the case in Latin America, where grass-root network owned by locals jointly collaborate to provide affordable internet access to low-income groups that lacks the digital literacy and have no access to the information and technology.

To establish the sustainability of the equal digital governance initiative, mechanisms that city applies in the beginning must be coupled with recurring process of monitoring and evaluation to measure the progress. City shall appoint diverse external advisory team with key local actors.

To fully reap the benefits of Smart City development with the upgrade of technology and service provision, city government must address the issue of “digital divide” that may persist in the municipality. However, to bridge the digital gap of infrastructure and services, it cannot be handled by only one department or a single IT-agency.

To express their commitment to the promotion of human rights of digital access, The City of Barcelona establish the Institutional Declaration on Technological Humanism. This declaration not only fosters the value of equity in digital accessibility but also protects the citizen right and liberties in the digital space.

In achieving great quality of life in the city, connections to digital infrastructure and services are ubiquitous. Online services as well as offline public services must be coupled together to manage the urbanisation process and communication between local government and the residents.

Incentives and disincentives in Development Control can promote or discourage certain adaptation and mitigation objectives. In the long term it can encourage behavioural and investments towards climate-friendly urbanisation as opposed to the business-as-usual model of development that depletes our natural resources.

Whether they are premeditated or unintentional by the policy makers, in the process of land use and development control, there may be regulation or procedure that deter sustainable urban development. UN Habitat listed some of the most common in zoning law and urban management practice that incentivise the unsustainable city development.

Developing infrastructure and providing services for urban inhabitants require massive financial resources, including the aim to climate-proof the city. Through the study of numerous cities globally, UN Habitat provide examples that other cities can adopt to enhance municipal finance by generating diverse portfolio of income stream.

To ensure that new developments are located in appropriate locations, consistent with the urban design guidelines, have the necessary service and facilities, as well as consistent to the environmental protection; Development Control can become a powerful tool that urban planners use to manage city development.

Green spaces play a critical role in improving environmental quality in urban areas. It acts as a carbon sink that reduces the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, mitigating the Urban Heat Island Effect as well as reducing air pollution, providing shade/cooling, rainwater catchment and biodiversity support.

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.

Policy Entrepreneurs is one of the most critical actors that sets a certain policy objective in Smart Cities. In 2010 for example, the initiative of Automated Vehicles (AVs) as part of the Smart Mobility agenda was successfully set by the Policy Entrepreneurs from private companies, academics, and other various sector of stakeholders.

Regardless of the pervasive adoption of Smart City concept. There is no one size fit all solution that can be implemented in every city. Some policy initiatives may fail to achieve the goals that have been set.

In setting a new policy in smart city innovation, the role of Policy Entrepreneurs are critical from agenda-setting through the implementation of the policy. In the case study of Automated Vehicle (AV) in the Netherland, Gironés et al. (2020) described the process of how AV was first proposed in 2010 until being implemented starting 2018.

Policy Entrepreneurs are groups or individuals that can map the dynamics of the governance structure related to smart cities that become the communicator and facilitator between stakeholders that ensure that successful implementation of a certain policy agenda, including in the smart city development.

What would the next generation of urban transport offer? Ceder (2021) explains the trends in the innovation and technology and the possibilities of logistics and travel modes of future urban transportation. The future urban transport is going towards a more sustainable approach that considers the integration of environment, society, and economics aspects of the mobility system.

Despite the growing population, the resources of land and road infrastructure in the cities are finite and limited. Thus, the future of urban transport is public transport (PT) while discouraging the growth of private cars. There are several essential elements in the development of better Smart Public Transport that will have an important impact on the shaping of next generation, urban transportation systems.

In promoting active mobility, urban planning and transport planning sectors play a critical role in providing the infrastructure, design and engineering of the city roads. However, the public health sector is also in support of the promotion of active mobility due to the health benefits of walking and cycling for the human body.

Active mobility is so crucial in promoting physical activity that the World Health Organisation (WHO) provided a tool that could help cities quantify and monetize the effect of measures from promoting walking and cycling.

How cities design their built environment is one crucial determinants of the utilisation of active mobility in their local municipalities. The land use planning that determines the diversity of use, density of population, connectivity to nearby areas and the accessibility of the infrastructure can either invite or hinder people to choose walking and cycling as their transport mode for daily and leisure commutes.

There are two determinants that are most significant in establishing active mobility identified in the research of the past years. The two determinants are Built Environment and social, economic & psychological aspects of the demographics.