Smart Cities: What Is A Smart City?

What is a Smart City?

The vision of a Smart city is to improve the quality of life of its citizens without neglecting its responsibilities to the environment. This is done through the careful management of natural resources and human’s intrinsic motivation to innovate. Smart cities should possess the intellectual abilities to respond to ecological, social-economic and logistical problems in real-time with the aid of a network of information and communication systems. Humans are also imperative in the equation. A skilled and technologically savvy labour force is required to materialise this concept of a smart city.

The progression into a Smart City is an inevitable trajectory because the current global energy shortages brought about by excessive

It is surprising that we as species believe that it is only a matter of time and money before we get to live out our lives as 'ghosts in the machine'. The concept of Smart Cities may be dubious and unsettling at times, however such perception is wielded less as a benign and benevolent force, but more of Man’s mixture of arrogance, curiosity, emotional detachment, and compelling need to see things to their logical conclusion, that makes the evolution of cities today into future Smart Cities an inevitable trajectory. Advancements in science and technology is, at the bottom line, about creating possibilities. While the old world was dominated by limitations, an increasing mastery of the material that make up our world today has provided an adaptive advantage that is essential for our survival as a

Technological and industrial advancements may have ushered humans into an unprecedented age of wealth and comfort, but at a cost. Global warming anxieties are only the tip of the iceberg of problems we are facing in exchange for the improved lifestyles we are now leading. The rapid endangerment and extinction of plants and animals due to our high consumption patterns features just as greatly, if not more than the loss of biodiversity in our physical environment. As we clear away vast quantities of land for our urban developments, we also destroy the environment that is vital to the wellbeing of our ecological existence. Along with the destruction of our terra firma and its inhabitants, the oceans are not spared from our insatiable lust of for consumption. With our increasing demand for seafood, it has resulted in a dramatic decrease in the global seafood supply. With too many species fastly disappearing and thus damaging the food chain, the oceans may be exhausted to the point where they can no longer regenerate themselves. In addition Earth’s natural resources such as water and oil are almost sucked bone-dry to sustain this progress in human technology and general advancement. These insatiable demand for consumption thus leads to the inevitable fact that we will not be able to sustain