Category: Smart Cities
-
It’s Not YOUR Data, Didn’t You know?
Identity. In the digital age, this is widely characterised by our data. Internet browsing data, consumer data, digitised public service records and biometrics. A key thread linking many a Smart City talk today is the optimization of public services through data technology. This encompasses everything from delivering healthcare to undeserved populations to more efficient tax […]
-
Upcycled Shipping Containers and Treemail, Two Ideas for a ‘Circular’ City
Barcelona’s Smart City Expo looks at ways for cities to transition to a more circular economy. Vertical vegetables and trees with their own e-mail address might sound like inventions of Dr. Seuss, but they’re actually part of the World Economic Forum’s top 10 list of urban innovations for 2015. James Pennington, a specialist at the Forum’s […]
-
As Dog Days of Summer End, Cities Pick Up Pace Fighting Poop
Dog waste on city streets is more than a smelly inconvenience. It’s unsanitary, a hopscotch game for children and adults, extra work for cleaning crews, and in the words of one Spanish mayor, on a par with vandalism. Like vandalism, the fines for not picking up after your dog are high, as high as 500 […]
-
London Pushes Through Stiff Resistance to Cycle Superhighways
Two new segregated bike paths will crisscross the city and open up speedy, safe cycling that will ease pollution and traffic for everyone, non-cyclists, too, Boris Johnson says. London is a big huffing puffing city, so Mayor Boris Johnson’s success in pushing ahead with his plan to build cycle superhighways right through the heart of it […]
-
Cities Should Consider Going Cashless
It is starting to make sense for cities worldwide to prepare for a cashless society. Children in Iceland bake cookies to sell on the street, a tradition similar to American kids’ first taste of business selling lemonade. The difference is their choice of payment: While in the US, kids selling lemonade only take cash, Iceland’s children […]
-
Barcelona wins five more years of MWC despite new mayor wobble
There’s nothing like continuity. Today, the GSMA announced that the Mobile World Congress — the world’s largest gathering of all things mobile — had extended its contract with Barcelona until 2023. It’s a measure of the city’s success in organizing a smoothly-run event attracting increasingly bigger crowds over the past 10 years that the GSMA should sign a new […]