Portraits of the World's Smart Cities

Certain smart cities around the world are leading by example. By examining the solutions that are delivering the highest impact, these best practices can be more widely adopted to replicate their success. This smart city portrait provides an overview on the smart city approach and intelligent solutions implemented in the Dutch City of Eindhoven. For its achievements, especially in regards to open innovation, the City of Eindhoven was named the "Intelligent Community of the Year 2011" by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF).

Eindhoven’s Smart City Strategy

Together with Manchester (UK) and Stavanger (Norway), Eindhoven is acting as a ‘Lighthouse City’ for the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Triangulum project,[1] seeking to drive smart city innovations globally by demonstrating real solutions that are smart, sustainable, and inclusive. The project places a focus on the areas of energy use and CO₂ emissions, open data and data infrastructure, sustainable and affordable housing, and the proliferation of joint-ownership in projects, engaging and empowering the citizens to take greater roles in the ongoing development of their living and working spaces.

Certain smart cities around the world are leading by example. By examining the solutions that are delivering the highest impact, these best practices can be more widely adopted to replicate their success. This smart city portrait provides an overview on the smart city strategy and intelligent solutions implemented in the City and nation-state of Singapore.

Singapore’s Smart Nation Strategy

Cities all over the world are applying new technologies to solve their problems and become smarter. Singapore’s take on technology, as endorsed by bee smart city,^[1] is that it should not be an end in itself – it should be made to serve the people, who should be firmly at the center of the smart city concept.

Singapore can be regarded as one of the 'early movers' in the smart city movement, being recognized as the first "Intelligent Community of the Year" by the Intelligent Community Forum in 1999.^[2] In recent years, the city was top-ranked as one of the world's smartest cities. Tying with Chicago and slipping in only a single point behind Vienna,^[3] Singapore took second place on Roland Berger’s recent Smart City Index.^[4] It was also named ‘Global Smart City – 2016’ by Juniper Research, for its "fixed and cellular broadband services, city apps and strong open data policy”.^[5]

Certain smart cities around the world are leading by example. By examining the solutions that are delivering the highest impact, these best practices can be more widely adopted to replicate their success. This smart city portrait provides an overview on the smart city strategy and intelligent solutions implemented in the Austrian City of Vienna.

Vienna – A Collaborative Smart City

Vienna has placed a strong focus on the collaborative nature of growing smarter. In 2014, Austria’s capital decided to adopt a strategy generated with the help of businesses, research institutes, public servants and private citizens to decide on the directions the city should take as it develops.

The preservation of resources, productive innovation and new technologies, and improving the quality of life were the top three things people wanted the strategy to focus on. The areas identified for long-term improvement were then broken down and specific goals were set to help the city “achieve growth while reducing resource consumption”,^[7] right through to the year 2050.

Certain smart cities around the world are leading by example. By examining the solutions that are delivering the highest impact, these best practices can be more widely adopted to replicate their success. This smart city portrait provides an overview on the smart city strategy and intelligent solutions implemented in the City of Barcelona.

Barcelona’s Smart City Strategy

Barcelona is no newcomer to the smart city scene. In 2011 it launched a project designed to make the city more innovative, listing the sustainability of energy use and of mobility, open data initiatives, flexible smart services and social initiatives as key areas for development, and it encouraged connections among researchers in both the public and private sectors with a focus on these topics.

One major early step for Barcelona was to establish new technological infrastructure on a massive scale to support and improve upon the city’s services. It created citywide networks of different types of sensors, providing real-time feedback on everything from air quality to noise, energy and waste management. Coupled with free WiFi around the city, this new level of connectivity and data collection allowed Barcelona to become a testbed for smart projects driven by the Internet of Things.

Barcelona was officially recognized as a smart city back in 2014 by the European Commission, taking the very first European Capital of Innovation prize for "introducing the use of new technologies to bring the city closer to citizens".^[1] The city had indeed pursued the application of technology to generate smart solutions for the problems most relevant to its citizens – but with mixed results.

Certain smart cities around the world are leading by example. By examining the solutions that are delivering the highest impact, these best practices can be more widely adopted to replicate their success. This smart city portrait provides an overview on the smart city strategy and intelligent solutions implemented in the City of Amsterdam.

Amsterdam, the Dutch capital city, is one of the early adopters of smart city strategies in Europe, following their strategic approach to become smarter since 2008. Today, the city is one of the leading smart cities in Europe.

Amsterdam's Smart City Approach

Amsterdam, the Dutch capital city, was one of the early adopters of the smart city concept in Europe. Following a holistic strategy to become smarter that launched in 2009, it has become one of the leading smart cities in Europe and, in 2016, was named the European Capital of Innovation by the European Commission.

Holistic approaches modelled on a quadruple helix concept – government, businesses, universities & research institutions, and citizens – are key to the creation of a truly smart city. Amsterdam realized this fact early on, adopting a bottom-up methodology based on smart growth, startups, social inclusion and quality of life.[1] The city’s approach covers all of the relevant fields of action for a municipality, which can be summarized by the indicators smart economy, smart environment, smart government, smart living, smart mobility and smart people.

Certain smart cities around the world are leading by example. By examining the solutions that are delivering the highest impact, these best practices can be more widely adopted to replicate their success. This smart city portrait provides an overview on the smart city strategy and intelligent solutions implemented in the City of Toronto.

Toronto, Canada's largest city, has long been working on becoming smarter, being awarded the "Intelligent Community of the Year" by the Intelligent Community Forum in 2014. In 2015 the city made a big leap through a partnership with CityZenith. With a citizen-centric approach and the recently announced partnership with Google's Sidewalk Labs, the city now aspires to take another big leap forward to become one of the smartest North American cities.

Toronto’s Smart City Strategy

Strong collaborations are a good foundation for any successful smart city strategy, and Toronto’s smart city approach has certainly led it to form some powerful relationships.

Waterfront Toronto is the body in charge of revitalizing the city’s waterfront real estate, which has long boasted little infrastructure despite its apparently prime location in Canada’s largest city. It has now partnered with Sidewalk Labs, tasking the Google-spawned startup company with the re-development and re-envisioning of Toronto’s Quayside area as a testbed for truly smart living, creating a unique smart city solutions ecosystem.