Rethink on Smart City: Technology Approach,Showcase Approach or Demand Approach?

Abstract

The author reveals three current approaches to build Smart Cities, i.e., technology-oriented, showcase-oriented and demand-oriented, and analyzes the causes, advantages, shortcoming and influences of the three approaches. In the conclusion, a composite approach with the demand approach as its core is advocated, which returns to the demands of the city that supports problem-solving, innovation, intelligent governance, economic development and regional synergy.

After 15 years hectic construction, the initiative concept of Smart City ought to be rethought from five perspectives:

1. initiation and “people-centered” goals of Smart City: Better City, Better Life;

2. the potential routes to approach Smart City;

3. the stakeholders developing Smart Cities;

4. the reliability of a Smart City evaluation system according to its initiation;

5. academic debates on further development directions and education of Smart City.

Viewing Smart City from the above five perspectives, we could identify what had been proven false, useless, wasteful, formalistic and infeasible by the 15-year history of Smart City. And we could propose for the future Smart Cities what is needed by citizens, what can be useful in real cases, and what is efficient, motivating and sustainable.

There are generally three approaches to build a Smart City. The first is offered by technology suppliers, which we call Technology Approach (TA); the second is decided by the pain points of cities and demands of improving life quality in cities, which we call Demand Approach (DA); and the third is a formalistic one, which we call Showcase Approach (SA). A SA smart city or smart park operates its “smartness” only as a showcase so that it wouldn’t fall behind in the wave of urban intelligence booms, but without the actual intellectualizing its urban system and governance.

Facts have proven that SA is extremely fortune-consuming. Large-scale technology development and hardware constructions are invested and often wasted later, only to meet some external but non-problem-oriented requirements of a city. Some giant technology suppliers may propose sets of smart city indicators while remaining ignorant about the real demands of people’s everyday life, of economic prosperity or of intelligent governance upgrading. The vast fiscal investment and market input could end up in the deserted intelligent systems and the accelerated decline of the city’s economy. Without rapid iteration, technological equipment would become a network of non-recyclable waste, represented by rusty pipelines everywhere. All cities should be alert to such waste of resources and damage to the environment.

Some small and medium-sized cities are dragged into SA model in their ways towards Smart Cities. “Smart City” becomes a pretty decoration in such cities. It only exists in exhibition halls and many smart functions only work in well-composed videos. Through such vanity projects, cities do not become smarter, but on the contrary, like a plain brain burdened with a gorgeous crown, would turn dull.

The mode we advocate is a composite one with DA as its core. The Smart City construction must return to the demands of the City. A city’s demands include solutions to its citizens’ urgent problems; innovative concept for sustainability required by the city’s technology and economic innovation; refinement, precision and efficiency in the operation of the city’s intelligent governance; and the synergy between the city and the region it is in. Metropolises also demand intelligent solutions to international exchanges and cooperation in economy, culture and technology.

Only when demands in DA are clarified can the technological pathways in TA and the display plans in SA could be discussed. Some “Smart City” exhibition functions should be converted to facilities for public popularization and training. Generally, a Smart City project should be a public project. The investments in the initial stage and the later stage of the process of a city being smarter should be clearly planned. In the initial stage, major public investment should go to the project’s preparing, planning, design and top-level structuring. More market investment should go to the later stage to ensure the intelligent project is sustainably supported by market and economic drivers.

The effect of a Smart City project should also be evaluated by the intentions stipulated in DA. The evaluation criterion should not be composed only of technical indicators, but take in the feelings of citizens, the improvement of life quality, the growth of innovation and vitality, the gathering of young talents, and the refinement of city governance.

In 2011, the Chinese Academy of Engineering had launched a research grant to establish an Intelligent City Evaluation System. PAN Yunhe raised the idea that a systematic and comprehensive evaluation of Smart City should be from five aspects: intelligent social governance, intelligent economy and innovation, intelligent living environment, intelligent infrastructure and professionals of intelligence. Later, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech) and The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Science (IVA) jointly proposed the concept of City IQ, which has been evolving till today. The latest City IQ evaluation ranking of world cities shows that the levels of intelligence of cities in China are frequently changing. Some cities ranked high in the world in their initial stages, but fall behind in later stages due to the lack of market dynamics. While some other cities, driven by continuous market forces, are heading to the top of the ranking. For example, in the 2022 City IQ Ranking, the City Shenzhen has topped the world list.

In the last 15 years, we have traced around 500 cities which have announced smart city projects, all of which is released on the website www.wupen.org. The three approaches SA, TA and DA have been combined in individual cities. We can hardly find a city that applies only one approach. Some cities initiated in TA model, after 5 or 10 years will suffer painful technological upgrading; many cities in Eastern Asia have changed their courses to DA models after rethinking their TA models. Still more cities, in their transforming periods, are depending on the popularization of intelligence in the cities, especially during the epidemic disaster in the last 3 years. And some cities starting from SA are losing enthusiasm. The once-attractive showrooms almost have no visitors any more. The glorious Smart City concept is no longer in the city governments’ schedule and plannings. The best cases we have found are in the DA model, either DA from the beginning or transforming to DA during the past years. The only surviving model of Smart City today is for convenience in daily life, business efficiency and zero-carbon emission, as well as energy saving in smart parks. On the base of the real contribution of the four points, Smart Cities or Smart Parks can combine the model of SA and get supported by TA model.

The key question, here after 15 years, is which model, TA, SA or DA, should be the fundamental driver of the other two models? Till now, we can find the only model outlived the others is DA + TA + SA. That means Smart City should come back to the people’s better life, back to the initiative of solving urban system problems, and back to the sustainability of the governance.