Many people welcome the prospect of their city becoming a “smart city”? One poll suggests that 3 in 5 people in the U.S. would be interested in their city becoming a “smart city” and 58 percent would be interested in moving to one. Whereas, of the existing population 60 percent of people would be interested in seeing their city become a smart city.
Whether we have ‘true’ smart cities yet is open to debate. Some would say yes, others would take the view that some cites are progressing towards the goal. Such questions and answers are bound up with definitions of ‘smart cities’.
The idea of a smart city includes the upgrade of a municipality so that it uses information and communication technologies (ICT) in order to increase its operational efficiency, share information with the public and improve both the quality of government services and citizen welfare.
Beyond this, how might the smart city develop.? For example, a key priority for some demographic groups, such as Gen Z residents of these new cities is the acceptance of cryptocurrency as legal tender. This could connect with blockchain as an urban management tool to coordinate, integrate and control different city services with transparency, efficiency and privacy.
The same survey suggests that New York City, Los Angeles, and Austin are the cities with the biggest potential to become smart cities in the future.
Such observations are important since as technology continues to grow, the evolution of smart cities is seen by some policy makers as inevitable.
In terms of how a smart city might be built and the companies that are likely to win the biggest contracts, both Apple and Microsoft are key players. This adds an interesting adjunct to the continuous debate of Apple vs. Microsoft – in terms of who would you trust to build a smart city?
In one poll, Cinch Home Services surveyed over 1,000 people living in the U.S. to see how they really feel the inevitable rise of “smart cities” and what brands they trust the most. The survey found that 40 percent of people trust Apple the most to build a smart city – making it the top trusted company and standing ahead of Microsoft.
Furthermore, Apple is nearly three times more trusted to build a smart city than another leading contender – Meta (the parent company behind Facebook).
It might be for such reasons that Apple is investing heavily so that it takes the lead position talks for designing smart cities.
