Balancing sustainability and privacy to create smarter cities

The #smartcity must be more than a buzzword. Efforts by a UN body to set out guidelines could ensure that city planners deliver #sustainable cities with people’s needs at the core.

In 1991, the UN’s Centre for Human Settlements defined a sustainable city as one “where achievements in social, economic and physical development are made to last”. The definition encapsulated the three pillars that become central to the debate over urban sustainability — people, profit and planet.

Almost 35 years later the body now known as UN-Habitat, which is responsible for sustainable urbanisation, has reached a critical point on its timeline for developing guidlines to build people-centred smart cities. On 19 April it said it had begun the drafting work that it is scheduled to complete in May 2025, with a final version of the guidelines.

The process kicked off at the second United Nations Habitat Assembly in June 2023 in Nairobi, Kenya, where UN-Habitat assembled a global experts working group comprised of 31 experts nominated by Member States. The guidelines aim to be a voluntary framework for drawing up smart city regulations, plans and strategies to ensure that digital urban infrastructure and data contribute to making cities sustainable, inclusive and prosperous.

It might seem like classic talking-shop bureaucratese. But the need for coherent urban development is strong. Globally, over 50% of the population lives in urban areas today, according to the World Bank. By 2050, the urban population will more than double by which point almost 70% of humans will live in cities. Smart cities will also need to be climate-smart as a forecast 2.5 deg C to 2.9 deg C rise in temperatures by 2100 will hit cities hard.

At the same there is likely to be a continued explosion in digital technologies on top of the flow[KI1]  of ICT apps, devices and platforms. While artificial intelligence and its potential is the most obvious example, specific technologies have emerged such as LED lighting connected to a city-wide intelligent infrastructure, surveillance devices, digital twins that create online versions of the physical city, Internet of Things sensors, and drones to name five.

Each has the potential to bring great benefits in terms of smoother operations, greater efficiency and shared knowledge, but at the same time they threaten to negatively impact citizens’ lives through the loss of privacy or the feeling that decisions are being taken out of their hands. Thes concerns have become more live amid the debate over the activities of the global media companies such as Google, Microsoft and Elon Musk’s xAI.

UN-Habitat says that the guidelines will define how to achieve an “open, free and secure digital future of all” in the context of cities, and describes the guidelines as key to ensuring that smart city development is “people-centred”. However, there is a danger that this term — smart cities — can become just a buzzword. The guidelines must avert that by showing a route towards making genuinely beneficial changes to the design of cities.

Public participation

The good news is that UN-Habitat program made that agenda clear in its 2020 flagship strategic programme, People-Centred Smart Cities (PCSC) by acknowledging that “digital technologies in cities, depending on their use, can be a force that widens social gaps or reduces them”. The PCSC expanded the definition of smart city to include themes such as public participation, education, public health, data governance and digital inclusion. That is important because it focuses on the quality of services rather than the infrastructure per se, and highlight’s the need for the technology to enhance citizens’ wellbeing and engagement rather than just deliver clever applications.

If smart sustainable cities are to benefit citizens and drive inclusion rather than exclusion, then there are two steps that policymakers should take. The first is to raise the general level of digital literacy skills and ensure everyone can use these smart tools and services accessibility of the technology. The goal is genuine digital inclusion.

Second, while data are crucial to get a better understanding about how the city works as a dynamic entity, they must not be used in a way that breaches people’s privacy. For example, cities such as Amsterdam have used data showing tourists’ movements to change the services they offer and design ways to move visitors away from congested areas. But if smart cities collect huge amounts of personal, financial or biometric data on their citizens, it could create fears of vulnerability to a data breach or create a feeling of Big Brother-type surveillance.

If policymakers can find the balance between improving the quality of life for citizens and making them feel uncomfortable, then technology has the potential to help create sustainable cities in social and economic as well as environmental terms.

 [KI1]What does this mean?