“Theory of Smart Cities” , IBM authors involved with the Smarter Planet initiative suggest that the term ‘smart cities’ derived from ‘smart growth’, a concept used in urban planning in the late 1990s to describe strategies for curtailing sprawl and inefficient resource use which later changed to describe IT-enabled infrastructures and processes oriented toward such objectives.
So, the question arises, How did this transition from ‘smart growth’ to ‘smart cities’ take place? Where did this idea of desire for an IT enabled and networked city emerge and who guided this thought process of need for a networked and mechanically efficient city (smart city) as a progressive city?
A report funded by the Rockefeller foundation, the Institute for the Future suggests that smart cities are likely to be a ‘multi-trillion dollar global market.”
Are smart cities a need or the desire of citizens? And if ‘smart’ means efficient, would it be right to question the efficiency of cities we live in today. Are current cities inefficient? What is the optimal limit of efficiency, if that is the primary element we are looking at. Should the question be about a never ceasing want for efficiency or should it be more about being sufficient?
When code is meant to reprogram urban environments, it also becomes entangled in complex urban processes that interrupt the simple enactment of scripts.
Considering the complex nature of programmability, weaved into the fabric of urban processes it would be interesting to look at how the idea of a networked city with a primary focus on digital infrastructure ( to make it efficient and smart ) evolves with the evolving technologies and changing game players. Sensing citizen data and using this big data for decision making and the idea of connectivity using digital infrastructures is smart today. Will it be dumb in the future? Will it be replaced by concepts more rigorous, more intrusive or participative? Sensing a direction of this evolution and change is an important aspect to consider to realise when is it a time to slow down.