Smart Cities: The city of the Future.

The World Bank, The EU and non-profits are creating awareness campaigns for cities to help themselves finance the smart city transformation. Here is the World Bank's guide to smart city financing (Link), the EU’s (Link) and this is a large insurance company also giving advice to finance it (Link). Ask yourself why are financial institutions, insurance companies, Big Tech and governments interested in Smart Cities.

Illustration by the Future of Privacy Forum

For architects, urban planners and landscape architects, this strong financial incentive should be a hint where the city’s prioritizes are leading. Smart cities collect data through sensors and internet of things (IoT) technologies. Here is a diagram from Future of Privacy Forum.

The idea is that with that data we can, optimize, make more accurate and/or more convenient all of these urban fabrics:

• Coordinated emergency management

• Traffic optimization

• Transportation efficiency

• Solid waste management

• Sanitization Economic development

• Utility systems

• Public safety services

What does this mean for architects, planners and landscape architects? As architects, we need to consider how these societal changes will affect social systems, global security, democratic processes and individuals autonomy. Architects will have to consider these factors in relation to GDPR and similar upcoming laws. We will have to ponder the technology because our role as designers to craft the outcomes of the future. Our role as designers is to please the clients (the city, the World Bank) and protect the users from potentially unwanted outcomes.

The design brief of the future, for architects, will be to design the interconnection and data processing of these IoT technologies and sensors, that protects personal privacy but gathers the essential data for the optimized smart city.