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Published:
July 15, 2020

Smart Cities For Dummies

Overview

Become empowered to build and maintain smarter cities 

At its core, a smart city is a collection of technological responses to the growing demands, challenges, and complexities of improving the quality of life for billions of people now living in urban centers across the world.

The movement to create smarter cities is still in its infancy, but ambitious and creative projects in all types of cities—big and small—around the globe are beginning to make a big difference. New ideas, powered by technology, are positively changing how we move humans and products from one place to another; create and distribute energy; manage waste; combat the climate crisis; build more energy efficient buildings; and improve basic city services through digitalization and the smart use of data. 

Inside this book you’ll find out:

  • What it really means to create smarter cities
  • How our urban environments are being transformed
  • Big ideas for improving the quality of life for communities
  • Guidance on how to create a smart city strategy
  • The essential role of data in building better cities
  • The major new technologies ready to make a difference in every community

Smart Cities For Dummies will give you the knowledge to understand this important topic in depth and be ready to be an agent of change in your community.

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About The Author

Dr. Jonathan Reichental is a multiple-award-winning technology and business leader whose career has spanned both the private and public sectors. He's been a senior software engineering manager, a director of technology innovation, and has served as chief information officer at both O'Reilly Media and the city of Palo Alto, California. He also creates online education for LinkedIn Learning and others.

Sample Chapters

smart cities for dummies

CHEAT SHEET

Human destiny is tied to cities. If we humans are going to have a happy and prosperous future, we need new ideas, skilled talent, and informed leaders to build the cities of tomorrow. Everyone deserves a good quality of life. Smart cities can help make that happen. Find out how. ©THINK A/Shutterstock.com6 Techniques for Falling in (or Back in) Love with Your CityEveryone who lives in a city has some form of a connection with it.

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Articles from
the book

Beginning the journey to create a smart city is a bold and courageous first step. The risks and costs are high, and positive outcomes aren’t guaranteed. Most cities that haven’t yet committed to a strategy may be able to detect an element of inevitability that the day will soon come. Evolving needs and community expectations will demand it.
Technology is the heart of a smart city. But, where there’s technology, there’s data. And knowing how to manage that data in a smart-city context is absolutely essential.Cities with technology create a lot of data. With more systems and devices coming online every day, the volume of data produced, collected, and stored is growing rapidly.
You’ve decided that a smart city initiative is right for your community. You now have a bold and ambitious vision. It’s time to get started so that you can actually realize this vision. You must initiate a process of translation to move from your smart city vision to a set of actions. For this, you need a plan.
So you, your colleagues, and members of the community have decided that increasing the quality of life and solving complex challenges by using technology — coupled with data, new processes, and a progressive disposition toward innovation — is the right path for your city. You want to take a smart city approach going forward.
Smart cities are well known for their ability to use data to their advantage. Any smart city worth its salt will have a solid data governance strategy. Data management is concerned with how you use data to run your organizations and make good decisions. Equally important is that you also need to ensure that agreed-on data policies and processes, accountabilities, decision structures, and enforcement rules are in place.
A smart city strategy is only as good as the degree to which it is followed. A smart city strategy that is written and agreed on and then never referenced again is worthless. Success in reaching goals relies on having a roadmap and a set of guiding principles that everyone can follow. But even with the best of intentions, individuals and teams can veer off course and, before long, find themselves way off track.
Human destiny is tied to cities. If we humans are going to have a happy and prosperous future, we need new ideas, skilled talent, and informed leaders to build the cities of tomorrow. Everyone deserves a good quality of life. Smart cities can help make that happen. Find out how. ©THINK A/Shutterstock.com6 Techniques for Falling in (or Back in) Love with Your CityEveryone who lives in a city has some form of a connection with it.
The smart city movement is truly global. In almost every part of the world, cities have declared smart city initiatives. Even cities that don’t overtly align with the smart city nomenclature are doing work that has all the hallmarks of smart initiatives.In addition to existing communities, new cities are being built, or are in the process of being built, that are designed with urban innovation at their core.
In June 2015, the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi announced the Smart Cities Mission, an urban renewal-and-retrofitting program to develop 109 cities all over India to make them citizen-friendly and sustainable. The smart city mission recognized that considerable investment and a deliberate strategy are required to address the large number of significant challenges facing these communities.
Urban innovation is a primary element of the smart city. However, that is often a term that gets thrown around with little understanding of how it truly impacts the development of a smart city. Since there is sometimes disagreement about the term innovation, so here are a couple of definitions to help you understand this topic: Innovation: Converting ideas into value Urban innovation: Discovering and implementing new ideas to meet city challenges Okay, now let’s talk about water.
There may actually be no such thing as a smart city. Wait — what? That’s certainly an odd comment coming from an article about smart cities. Okay, let’s explain. There’s no such thing as a completed smart city. It would be difficult to find an example where all the work has been finished and the designers and implementers have, after completing their tasks, washed their hands and said, “We’re done.
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