Do you live in a smart city?

Before you render judgments on the intellectual capacity of your local city representatives, a “smart city” is one that contains “smart technologies” – smart grids for power generation, networked urban infrastructure, smart cards for public services, automatic vehicle ID systems and a whole host of yet unrealized and somewhat futuristic systems that will link the public services of whole urban areas, making them more efficient, less chaotic, safer, less prone to crime and generally easier to live in.

Chances are you don't yet live in a “smart city,” since there aren't many of them yet. ABI Research (News - Alert) revealed this week that while $8.1 billion was spent on smart city technologies in 2010, by 2016 that number is projected to reach $39.5 billion. A smart city is determined by six dimensions: smart economy, environment, governance, lifestyle, transportation, and community. There are currently 102 smart city projects worldwide, says ABI with Europe leading the way at 38, North America at 35, Asia Pacific at 21, the Middle East and Africa at six, and Latin America with two.

Two examples of cities undertaking smart city projects are Holyoke, Massachusetts and Amsterdam. Earlier this year, Holyoke – in Western Massachusetts – teamed with Cisco (News - Alert) in an attempt to transform the former mill town into a smart and connected community within a year. Cisco’s plans for Holyoke include using technology to deliver urban services in order to generate new economic opportunity, improve education, and bolster population retention.

Said Josh Flood, senior analyst at ABI Research, “Smart city concepts are really taking off globally. Currently, the largest spending on smart city technologies is for smart grids; however, over the next five years we will see a significant increase on spending for smart transportation technologies such as automatic vehicle ID and smart governance systems such as e-ID and ID document systems.”

Amsterdam's “smartness” has been the subject of an agreement between Utility Liander and Amsterdam Innovation Motor. The program will subject city residents, businesses, and government newer technologies and methodologies designed to save energy, with a goal of reducing CO2 emissions. While Amsterdam had previously committed to reducing its carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2025, compared to a baseline of 1990, the smart city project aims to achieve that goal 10 years earlier by 2015, says ABI.

For more information about smart city projects, check out ABI's “Smart Cities Market Data”, more than 100 current smart city projects and the technologies that are enabling them.

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