6 smart cities where the future has already arrived

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Technology in these locations is helping to deal with traffic jams, recycle waste and save lives.

1. New York

New York places great emphasis on security. The entire city is equipped with security cameras and microphones that send a signal to the police when gunfire is heard. There is also a single open data system that ordinary developers can use. For example, the startup HunchLab has created a tool for crime prevention based on it. The system determines in which area and at what time it can be dangerous.

In 2014, Massive Wi-Fi was launched in New York. Special LinkNYC terminals became routers. With their help, you can go online, as well as recharge your smartphone or view the map on the built-in display.

The city saves on electricity: automated systems study the congestion of the streets and control the lighting based on the data. A similar system, Midtown In Motion, uses traffic information to regulate traffic lights, relieving road traffic during rush hour.

Litter bins in New York are also technologically advanced. They are called BigBelly and are equipped with sensors that send a signal to utilities when the tank is full.

The city is being improved not only through technology, but also through social programs. For example, one of them - Home-stat - is aimed at employing the homeless. Every resident, seeing a vagrant, can call social workers. They will try to find a person in need of work, and subsequently housing.

2. London

One of the main problems in London is car congestion. The city is tackling it with investments in public transport, additional taxes on driving on weekdays, and technology. The latter include smart parking lots, which inform drivers in the application about free places, and a navigator program, which advises the most convenient mode of transport depending on traffic congestion.

Technology meets London's guests right at the airport: the Heathrow Pods automated trailers run from one of Heathrow's terminals to the parking lot.

Also in London there is a single open data warehouse - any information about the city is available to both ordinary residents and developers who can use it to create software products. The exact number of such applications is unknown, but in 2017 their number exceeded 450 in London - The Dawn Of Tech-rich Life Is Here. The purpose can be different: from enrolling children in a queue in kindergarten to participating in the political life of the city.

3. Copenhagen

The transport infrastructure of the Danish capital is designed primarily for cyclists. The so-called green wave works here: the system adjusts the traffic lights so that the users of the cycle paths get to work in the morning and return in the evening without waiting. For the convenience of cyclists, inclined waste bins are located along the roads, as well as light indicators that warn about the phases of traffic lights - so people know in advance whether they should slow down or speed up.

Copenhagen's DriveNow car sharing service offers BMW i3 electric cars for rent, and the application will inform you if it is faster to reach your destination by public transport.

In the city, you can find garbage chutes with a pneumatic waste system: all the garbage thrown in them is sucked into a remote storage facility through pipes. This allows you to get rid of garbage trucks on the roads and keep yards clean.

Even the Amager Bakke incinerator can be called eco-friendly in Copenhagen. It generates energy for a nearby power plant and extracts water from condensate from waste burning. And the roof of the building with a non-plastic coating serves as a year-round ski slope.

By 2025, the Copenhagen authorities plan to move to a carbon-neutral economy and completely eliminate fossil fuels. Solar panels and wind turbines will help achieve this goal, as will the further proliferation of bicycles and electric vehicles.

4. Reykjavik

While most smart cities are only striving to obtain electricity from renewable sources, Reykjavik has almost reached this goal: more than 70% of the energy here is produced by Reykjavík Smart City geothermal (from the interior of the Earth).

For city driving, Reykjavik residents use the Strætó service. In it, you can not only plot the best route, but also buy bus tickets and monitor the movement of public transport in real time.

In addition, Better is popular in Reykjavik, a service where you can propose urban initiatives. Over the 10 years of its existence, more than 200 projects have been jointly developed, on which about 1.9 million euros have been spent from the municipal budget.

Firefighters and an ambulance in Reykjavik go to the call without waiting for the green light of the traffic light and without interfering with other road users. The secret is that the capital of Iceland uses the Sitraffic Stream satellite prioritization system. Every emergency vehicle has a sensor. When firefighters go to extinguish the fire, and doctors - to rescue a patient, satellites track the position of their cars with an accuracy of 5 meters and switch traffic lights to green in advance.

5. Singapore

Singapore is one of the world leaders in population density. Therefore, they took care of installing cameras and sensors. They allow you to keep track of the cleanliness of city streets, as well as more thoroughly analyze the flow of residents and cars on the roads.

Singapore was one of the first cities to launch self-driving cars and buses. By 2020, they want to equip each car with navigation systems and sensors - on a virtual map it will be possible to track the movement of all vehicles in the city.

All residents have access to local services with a special ID - a digital passport called SingPass.

Technology has infiltrated the healthcare industry. Here, for example, there is a system of remote medical assistance. Doctors conduct video calls with patients: inquire about their condition, prescribe medications and recommend exercises, and then monitor the fulfillment of prescriptions using cameras and sensors.

The apartments of the elderly are equipped with sensors. The devices send a notification to doctors and relatives if the elderly fall or do not move for a long time.

6. Seoul

The Seoul authorities are not introducing technology into urban environments thoughtlessly, but after careful research into the behavior of residents. This is how night buses were launched in the city. First, we studied the calls to taxi services, and then - the routes people traveled. The data obtained helped to draw up a map with areas where night transport is especially in demand. As a result, the city authorities managed to cope with the problem by launching only 50 buses.

OLEV electric vehicles were also tested in the city. They are charged not from wires, but from an electrical network located under the road. Like a smartphone on wireless charging, only very large.

Seoul residents are actively involved in the life of the city. All information bases are in the public domain. Any developer can use the data to create their services and applications, and every citizen has a voice when discussing local reforms.

Almost every Seoul has smartphones and other smart devices: the municipal government offers its own version of the trade-in program. Poor people can rent out old electronics and purchase new equipment at a discount.

However, not all the experiments of the Korean visionaries have been crowned with such success. For example, the city of Songdo, built 30 kilometers from Seoul, can be called the most technologically advanced ghost town.

A pneumatic waste disposal system, waste-free water supply and other advanced environmentally friendly technologies were supposed to work here. The city built the 312-meter Northeast Asia Trade Tower and laid out a huge green area similar to New York's Central Park. But the city of the future did not cope with the main thing - it did not attract people.