Page 26 - U4SSC Blockchain for smart sustainable cities

3.2 Smart Sustainable cities and communities

There is increasing interest in “smartness” around the world, and large investments are being made to
make cities and communities smart. China has been developing more than 200 smart cities. Launched
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in 2015, India’s “Smart Cities Mission” includes more than 100 cities. More recently, the United States
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has developed the “Smart Cities Initiative”, while Spain promotes smart city activities through its
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“National Smart Cities Plan”. 41

Smart city projects were initially based mainly on the capacity of technological platforms,
communications networks and specific hardware in monitoring and controlling local public services,
such as vehicle traffic, water supply or energy. Analysis of the data collected by such tools helps optimize
the management of urban territories. Over time, however, the focus of these projects has moved
from a purely technological perspective towards the effective improvement of the services provided
to residents, including projects that are initiated by residents themselves.

Despite the prominence of cities, there is also a growing recognition of the diversity of communities that
equally need to address their challenges through the use of ICTs. As thinking has shifted towards more
systemic understanding, the inter-dependence between urban and rural areas has been acknowledged
and hence the idea of being smart is increasingly being applied to communities of various sizes and
configurations that go beyond the definition of city or municipality (such as villages, neighbourhoods,
parishes or even islands). This idea has also been expanded to smart territories or regions to include
joint projects that cover areas that maintain economic, environmental and social relationships with
each other.

3.2.1 What is a smart sustainable city or community?

The idea of smart cities and communities emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s with initiatives in
the United States (San Diego as a City of the Future), Canada (a national Smart Communities initiative),
the United Kingdom (Southampton as the self-recognized “first smart city”), Singapore (the Intelligent
Island), India (Bangalore as India’s Silicon Valley) and Australia (Brisbane’s sustainable urbanism).
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Since then, the terms “smart city”, “intelligent city”, “digital city”, “sustainable city” and “resilient city”
have all been explored, defined and debated at length. The terms have also vied for prominence and
authority in the past two decades, with the composite concept of “Smart Sustainable City” now being
widely accepted.

While the terms remain ill-defined, and thus refreshingly open to local interpretation, there have been
attempts to distill from these debates the essential elements, or essence, of a city that is trying to work
in better ways and use technology to do so.

One of the attempts to understand the essence of the smart, sustainable city was made by the Focus
Group on Smart Sustainable Cities (FG-SSC) set up by ITU. This group examined the definitions that
were in use at the time, to identify the common elements. They put forward the following definition
(in March 2014):

16 U4SSC: Blockchain for smart sustainable cities