A few years ago a report from the Institute for Engineering and Technology (IET) found that the public is not really sold on the benefits of smart cities, due in large part to confusion about just what the term means and precisely what makes a city smart (or not).
This general air of confusion still seems to cloud the sector, with the lack of clarity not necessarily helped by those who aim to gauge a city’s general level of smartness. For instance, last year the Smart City Observatory run by IMD and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) published its latest Smart City Index, which measures a city’s status based on things such as technology and structure. The authors highlighted the huge role the pandemic had played both in how people perceive their city and also the pace of digital transformation undertaken.
“This year’s findings shed light on the tectonic shifts that have disrupted logistical chains and organizational structures worldwide as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Bruno Lanvin, President of IMD’s Smart City Observatory.
A muddled picture
My own city of London placed a lowly 22nd in the rankings, which was a fall of 7 places from the 15th managed in 2020. While London brands itself as the city that never sleeps, it was clearly caught napping in terms of its “smartness”, and lagged far behind cities like Singapore and Zurich, which topped the standings.
You can imagine my surprise, therefore, when IESE published their own Cities in Motion index this month and placed London at the top of the pile as the smartest city in the world. What’s more, this new index placed Singapore a lowly 7th and Zurich didn’t even make the top 10.
The index ranks cities according to things such as their livability, sustainability, and fairness, which the researchers believe are all key factors in whether a city can weather the various economic or climate-related shocks that seem to be all too frequent.
In total, they assess cities according to nine distinct metrics:
- human capital, which includes the ability to attract and develop talent
- social cohesion, which covers the harmony with which different social groups can rub along together
- economy, which focuses on the current and predicted GDP of the city
- governance, and how well each city is governed at a local and national level
- environment, including air pollution, water quality, and other measures of the health of the local ecosystem
- mobility and transportation, and the general ease of getting around
- urban planning, and the functioning of housing policy, health infrastructure, and sanitation services
- international profile, especially in terms of the branding and tourism a location attracts
- technology, and last, but not least, the use of digital technologies
London on top
While these metrics seem somewhat subjective, London nonetheless scored highly across the board. For instance, it came first in human capital, urban planning, and international profile, and also managed top ten rankings in mobility and transportation, and economy. Indeed, the city only scored poorly in terms of social cohesion, environment, and technology.
“The British capital hosts more start-ups than any other city in the world,” the report explains. “The city recently launched the Smarter London Together project, which is intended to serve as a flexible digital master plan for making London the smartest city in the world.”
It’s perhaps noticeable that the Cities in Motion Index relegates technology to a somewhat minor role. Indeed, the initial IET research I mentioned highlighted that smart city projects were largely failing to grab the public imagination precisely because they were too focused on the technology and not enough on the humans that make cities such vibrant places to live.
After all, becoming a smart city should be viewed as something of a means towards a broader end that allows the city to better respond to the needs and desires of its residents. In that sense, perhaps the rankings themselves are less important than the thematic change in focus.
If you would like to see where your city comes in the rankings, you can do so via an online map that allows you to drill down into the respective scores across each of the dimensions. The researchers have also developed a calculator that lets you enter indicator data for any given city and uncover where it would rank based upon this input. This allows users to see where a city might rank should their metrics change.
