Smart city

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A depiction of a smart city

A smart city is an urban area that uses different types of electronic data collection sensors to supply information which is used to manage assets and resources efficiently. This includes data collected from citizens, devices, and assets that is processed and analyzed to monitor and manage traffic and transportation systems, power plants, water supply networks, waste management, law enforcement, information systems, schools, libraries, hospitals, and other community services. The smart city concept integrates information and communication technology (ICT), and various physical devices connected to the network (the Internet of things or IoT) to optimize the efficiency of city operations and services and connect to citizens. Smart city technology allows city officials to interact directly with both community and city infrastructure and to monitor what is happening in the city and how the city is evolving. 

ICT is used to enhance quality, performance and interactivity of urban services, to reduce costs and resource consumption and to increase contact between citizens and government. Smart city applications are developed to manage urban flows and allow for real-time responses. A smart city may therefore be more prepared to respond to challenges than one with a simple "transactional" relationship with its citizens. Yet, the term itself remains unclear to its specifics and therefore, open to many interpretations.

Other terms that have been used for similar concepts include cyberville, digital city, electronic communities, flexicity, information city, intelligent city, knowledge-based city, MESH city, telecity, teletopia, Ubiquitous city, wired city.

 

Major technological, economic and environmental changes have generated interest in smart cities, including climate change, economic restructuring, the move to online retail and entertainment, ageing populations, urban population growth and pressures on public finances. The European Union (EU) has devoted constant efforts to devising a strategy for achieving 'smart' urban growth for its metropolitan city-regions. The EU has developed a range of programs under 'Europe's Digital Agenda". In 2010, it highlighted its focus on strengthening innovation and investment in ICT services for the purpose of improving public services and quality of life. Arup estimates that the global market for smart urban services will be $400 billion per annum by 2020. Examples of Smart City technologies and programs have been implemented in Singapore, Dubai, Milton Keynes, Southampton, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Madrid, Stockholm, China, and New York.

Terminology

Due to the breadth of technologies that have been implemented under the smart city label, it is difficult to distill a precise definition of a smart city. Deakin and Al Wear list four factors that contribute to the definition of a smart city:

1. The application of a wide range of electronic and digital technologies to communities and cities
2. The use of ICT to transform life and working environments within the region
3. The embedding of such Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in government systems
4. The territorialization of practices that brings ICTs and people together to enhance the innovation and knowledge that they offer.

Deakin defines the smart city as one that utilises ICT to meet the demands of the market (the citizens of the city), and that community involvement in the process is necessary for a smart city. A smart city would thus be a city that not only possesses ICT technology in particular areas, but has also implemented this technology in a manner that positively impacts the local community. 

Alternative definitions include:

• Giffinger et al. 2007: "Regional competitiveness, transport and Information and Communication Technologies economics, natural resources, human and social capital, quality of life, and participation of citizens in the governance of cities."
• Smart Cities Council: "A smart city is one that has digital technology embedded across all city functions."
• Caragliu and Nijkamp 2009: "A city can be defined as 'smart' when investments in human and social capital and traditional (transport) and modern (ICT) communication infrastructure fuel sustainable economic development and a high quality of life, with a wise management of natural resources, through participatory action and engagement."
• Frost & Sullivan 2014: "We identified eight key aspects that define a Smart City: smart governance, smart energy, smart building, smart mobility, smart infrastructure, smart technology, smart healthcare and smart citizen."
• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Smart Cities: "A smart city brings together technology, government and society to enable the following characteristics: smart cities, a smart economy, smart mobility, a smart environment, smart people, smart living, smart governance."
• Business Dictionary: "A developed urban area that creates sustainable economic development and high quality of life by excelling in multiple key areas; economy, mobility, environment, people, living, and government. Excelling in these key areas can be done so through strong human capital, social capital, and/or ICT infrastructure."
• Indian Government 2014 : "Smart City offers sustainability in terms of economic activities and employment opportunities to a wide section of its residents, regardless of their level of education, skills or income levels."
• Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, UK 2013: "The concept is not static, there is no absolute definition of a smart city, no end point, but rather a process, or series of steps, by which cities become more 'livable' and resilient and, hence, able to respond more quickly to new challenges."

Characteristics

It has been suggested that a smart city (also community, business cluster, urban agglomeration or region) uses information technologies to:

• Make more efficient use of physical infrastructure (roads, built environment and other physical assets) through artificial intelligence and data analytics to support a strong and healthy economic, social, cultural development.
• Engage effectively with local people in local governance and decision by use of open innovation processes and e-participation, improving the collective intelligence of the city's institutions through e-governance, with emphasis placed on citizen participation and co-design.
• Learn, adapt and innovate and thereby respond more effectively and promptly to changing circumstances by improving the intelligence of the city.

They evolve towards a strong integration of all dimensions of human intelligence, collective intelligence, and also artificial intelligence within the city. The intelligence of cities "resides in the increasingly effective combination of digital telecommunication networks (the nerves), ubiquitously embedded intelligence (the brains), sensors and tags (the sensory organs), and software (the knowledge and cognitive competence)".

These forms of intelligence in smart cities have been demonstrated in three ways:

Bletchley Park often considered to be the first smart community.

• Orchestration intelligence: Where cities establish institutions and community-based problem solving and collaborations, such as in Bletchley Park, where the Nazi Enigma cypher was decoded by a team led by Alan Turing. This has been referred to as the first example of a smart city or an intelligent community.
• Empowerment intelligence: Cities provide open platforms, experimental facilities and smart city infrastructure in order to cluster innovation in certain districts. These are seen in the Kista Science City in Stockholm and the Cyberport Zone in Hong Kong. Similar facilities have also been established in Melbourne.
  
  
Hong Kong Cyberport 1 and Cyberport 2 Buildings

• Instrumentation intelligence: Where city infrastructure is made smart through real-time data collection, with analysis and predictive modelling across city districts. There is much controversy surrounding this, particularly with regards to surveillance issues in smart cities. Examples of Instrumentation intelligence have been implemented in Amsterdam. This is implemented through:
  • A common IP infrastructure that is open to researchers to develop applications.
  • Wireless meters and devices transmit information at the point in time.
  • A number of homes being provided with smart energy meters to become aware of energy consumption and reduce energy usage
  • Solar power garbage compactors, car recharging stations and energy saving lamps.

Some major fields of intelligent city activation are:

Innovation economy	Urban infrastructure	Governance
Innovation in industries, clusters, districts of a city	Transport	Administration services to the citizen
Knowledge workforce: Education and employment	Energy / Utilities	Participatory and direct democracy
Creation of knowledge-intensive companies	Protection of the environment / Safety	Services to the citizen: Quality of life

According to David K. Owens, the former executive vice president of the Edison Electric Institute, two key elements that a smart city must have are an integrated communications platform and a "dynamic resilient grid." Both are large investments.

Frameworks

In order to achieve an accurate description and explanation of the concept of Smart City it is needed to first analyse the topic through a specific framework. The framework is divided into 4 main dimensions:

Technology framework

Several concepts of the Smart city rely heavily on the use of technology; a technological Smart City is not just one concept but there are different combinations of technological infrastructure that build a concept of smart city.

• Digital city: it combines service oriented infrastructure, innovation services and communication infrastructure; Yovanof, G. S. & Hazapis, G. N. define a digital city “a connected community that combines broadband communications infrastructure; a flexible, service-oriented computing infrastructure based on open industry standards; and, innovative services to meet the needs of governments and their employees, citizens and businesses”.

The main purpose is to create an environment in which citizens are interconnected and easily share information anywhere in the city.

• Virtual city: In these kinds of cities functions are implemented in a cyberspace; it includes the notion of hybrid city, which consists of a reality with real citizens and entities and a parallel virtual city of real entities and people. Having a smart city that is virtual means that in some cities it is possible the coexistence between these two reality, however the issue of physical distance and location is still not easy to manage. The vision of the world without distance still remains unmet in many ways. In practice this idea is hold up through physical IT infrastructure of cables, data centers, and exchanges.
• Information city: It collects local information and delivered them to the public portal; In that city, many inhabitants are able to live and even work on the Internet because they could obtain every information through IT infrastructures, thanks to the sharing information method among citizens themselves. Using this approach, an information city could be an urban centre both economically and socially speaking; the most important thing is the linkage among civic services, people interactions and government institutions.
• Intelligent city: it involves function as research or technological innovation to support learning and innovation procedure. The notion emerges in a social context in which knowledge, learning process and creativity have great importance and the human capital is considered the most precious resource within this type of technological city. In particular one of the most significant feature of an intelligent city is that every infrastructure is up to date, that means have the latest technology in telecommunications, electronic and mechanical technology. According to Komninos and Sefertzi, the attempt to build an “intelligent” Smart City is more a radical innovation rather than an incremental innovation owing to a big quantity of efforts to use IT trying to transform the daily life.
• Ubiquitous city (U-city): It creates an environment that connect citizens to any services through any device. According to Anthopoulos, L., & Fitsilis, P., U-city is a further extension of digital city concept because of the facility in terms of accessibility to every infrastructure. This makes easier to the citizen the use of any available devices to interconnect them. Its goal is to create a city where any citizen can get any services anywhere and anytime through any kind of devices. It is important to highlights that the ubiquitous city is different from the above virtual city: while the virtual city creates another space by visualizing the real urban elements within the virtual space, U-city is given by the computer chips inserted to those urban elements.
• Cognitive Smart City: Cognitive smart city expands the concept of the smart city by referring to the convergence of the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) and smart city technologies, their generated big data, and artificial intelligence techniques. Continuous learning through human interactions and consequently performing a dynamic and flexible behavior and actions based on the dynamic environment of the city are the core components of such framework.

Human framework

Human infrastructure (i.e., creative occupations and workforce, knowledge networks, voluntary organizations) is a crucial axis for city development.

• Creative city: creativity is recognized as a key driver to smart city and it represents also a version of it. Social infrastructures, like for instance intellectual and social capital are indispensable factors to build a city that is smart according to the human framework. These infrastructures concern people and their relationship. Smart City benefits from social capital and it could be possible and easier to create a Smart city concept if there are mix of education and training, culture and arts, business and commerce as Bartlett, L. said.
• Learning city: according to Moser, M. A., learning city is involved in building skilled workforce. This type of city in the human context improves the competitiveness in the global knowledge economy and Campbell established a typology of cities that are learning to be smart: individually proactive city, city cluster, one-to-one link between cities, and city network. That lead a city to learn how it should be possible and realistic to be smart through learning process followed by city workforce.
• Humane city: It exploits human potential, in particular the knowledge workforce. Following this approach, it is possible focus on education and builds a center of higher education, which is the city, obtaining better-educated individuals. According to Glaeser, E. L., & Berry, C. R, this view moves a smart city concept in a city full of skilled workforces; the same reasoning could be make for those high tech knowledge-sensitive industries which want to migrate in a so dynamic and proactive community. As a consequence of the above movement, the difference between Smart City and not are getting wider; Smart places are getting smarter while other places getting less smart because such places act as a magnet for creative people and workers (Malanga, S. 2004).
• Knowledge city: It is related to knowledge economy and innovation process; this type of Smart City is very similar to a learning city, the only difference refers to “a knowledge city is heavily related to knowledge economy, and its distinction is stress on innovation” (Dirks, S., Gurdgiev, C., & Keeling, M.).

The concept of knowledge city is linked with similar evolving concepts of Smart City such as intelligent city and educating city. The most important feature of this city is the fundamental concept of knowledge-based urban development, which has become an important and widespread mechanism for the development of knowledge cities.

Institutional framework

According to Moser, M. A., since 1990s the Smart Communities movement took shape as a strategy to broaden the base of users involved in IT. Members of these Communities are people that share their interest and work in a partnership with government and other institutional organizations to push the use of IT to improve the quality of daily life as a consequence of different worsening in daily actions. Eger, J. M. said that a smart community makes a conscious and agreed-upon decision to deploy technology as a catalyst to solving its social and business needs. It is very important to understand that this use of IT and the consequent improvement could be more demanding without the institutional help; indeed institutional involvement is essential to the success of smart community initiatives. Again Moser, M. A. explained that “building and planning a smart community seeks for smart growth”; a smart growth is essential what the partnership between citizen and institutional organizations try to do that is a reaction to worsening trends in daily things, like for instance traffic congestion, school overcrowding and air pollution. However it is important noticed that technological propagation is not an end in itself, but only a means to reinventing cities for a new economy and society. To sum up, it could possible to assert that any Smart City initiatives necessitate the governance support for their success. 

The importance of these three different dimensions consist that only a link, correlation among them make possible a development of a real concept of Smart City. According to the definition of Smart City given by Caragliu, A., Del Bo, C., & Nijkamp, P., a city is smart when investments in human/social capital and IT infrastructure fuel sustainable growth and enhance quality of life, through participatory governance.

Energy framework

Smart cities use data and technology to create efficiencies, improve sustainability, create economic development, and enhance quality of life factors for people living and working in the city. It also means that the city has a smarter energy infrastructure. A more formal definition is this: “… An urban area that has securely integrated technology across the information . . . and Internet of Things (IoT) sectors to better manage a city’s assets.”

A smart city is powered by “smart connections” for various items such as street lighting, smart buildings, distributed energy resources (DER), data analytics, and smart transportation. Amongst these things, energy is paramount; this is why utility companies play a key role in smart cities. Electric companies, working partnership with city officials, technology companies and a number of other institutions, are among the major players that helped accelerate the growth of America’s smart cities.

Data Management framework

Smart city employs a combination of data collection, processing, and disseminating technologies in conjunction with networking and computing technologies and data security and privacy measures encouraging application innovation to promote the overall quality of life for its citizens and covering dimensions that include: utilities, health, transportation, entertainment and government services.

Platforms and technologies

New Internet technologies promoting cloud-based services, the Internet of Things (IoT), real-world user interfaces, use of smart phones  and smart meters, networks of sensors and RFIDs, and more accurate communication based on the semantic web, open new ways to collective action and collaborative problem solving. 

Online collaborative sensor data management platforms are on-line database services that allow sensor owners to register and connect their devices to feed data into an on-line database for storage and allow developers to connect to the database and build their own applications based on that data.

In London, a traffic management system known as SCOOT optimises green light time at traffic intersections by feeding back magnetometer and inductive loop data to a supercomputer, which can co-ordinate traffic lights across the city to improve traffic throughout.

The city of Santander in Cantabria, northern Spain, has 20,000 sensors connecting buildings, infrastructure, transport, networks and utilities, offers a physical space for experimentation and validation of the IoT functions, such as interaction and management protocols, device technologies, and support services such as discovery, identity management and security. In Santander, the sensors monitor the levels of pollution, noise, traffic and parking. 

Electronic cards (known as smart cards) are another common platform in smart city contexts. These cards possess a unique encrypted identifier that allows the owner to log into a range of government provided services (or e-services) without setting up multiple accounts. The single identifier allows governments to aggregate data about citizens and their preferences to improve the provision of services and to determine common interests of groups. This technology has been implemented in Southampton.

Roadmap

A smart city roadmap consists of four/three (the first is a preliminary check) major components:

1. Define exactly what is the community: maybe that definition can condition what you are doing in the subsequent steps; it relates to geography, links between cities and countryside and flows of people between them; maybe – even – that in some Countries the definition of City/community that is stated does not correspond effectively to what – in fact – happens in the real life
2. Study the Community: Before deciding to build a smart city, first we need to know why. This can be done by determining the benefits of such an initiative. Study the community to know the citizens, the business's needs – know the citizens and the community's unique attributes, such as the age of the citizens, their education, hobbies, and attractions of the city.
3. Develop a Smart City Policy: Develop a policy to drive the initiatives, where roles, responsibilities, objective, and goals, can be defined. Create plans and strategies on how the goals will be achieved.
4. Engage The Citizens: This can be done by engaging the citizens through the use of e-government initiatives, open data, sport events, etc.

In short, People, Processes, and Technology (PPT) are the three principles of the success of a smart city initiative. Cities must study their citizens and communities, know the processes, business drivers, create policies, and objectives to meet the citizens' needs. Then, technology can be implemented to meet the citizens' need, in order to improve the quality of life and create real economic opportunities.This requires a holistic customized approach that accounts for city cultures, long-term city planning, and local regulations.

Whether to improve security, resiliency, sustainability, traffic congestion, public safety, or city services, each community may have different reasons for wanting to be smart. But all smart communities share common attributes—and they all are powered by smart connections and by our industry’s smarter energy infrastructure. A smart grid is the foundational piece in building a smart community. — Pat Vincent-Collawn, chairman of the Edison Electric Institute and president and CEO of PNM Resources

Research

University research labs developed prototypes for intelligent cities. IGLUS is an action research project led by EPFL focused on developing governance systems for urban infrastructures. IGLUS announced a MOOC through Coursera. MIT Smart Cities Lab focuses upon intelligent, sustainable buildings, mobility systems (GreenWheel Electric Bicycle, Mobility-on-Demand, CityCar, Wheel Robots); the IntelCities research consortium for electronic government, planning systems and citizen participation; URENIO developed intelligent city platforms for the innovation economy focusing on strategic intelligence, technology transfer, collaborative innovation, and incubation, while it promotes intelligent cities research and planning; the Smart Cities Academic Network is working on e-governance and e-services in the North Sea region. The MK:Smart project is focusing on issues of sustainable energy use, water use and transport infrastructure alongside exploring how to promote citizen engagement alongside educating citizens about smart cities.

Commercialization

Large IT, telecommunication and energy management companies such as Cisco, Schneider Electric, IBM and Microsoft market initiatives for intelligent cities. Cisco, launched the Global Intelligent Urbanization initiative to help cities using the network as the fourth utility for integrated city management, better quality of life for citizens, and economic development. IBM announced its SmarterCities to stimulate economic growth and quality of life in cities and metropolitan areas with the activation of new approaches of thinking and acting in the urban ecosystem. Sensor developers and startup companies are continually developing new smart city applications.

Smart city technological companies exist in Israel, with Tel Aviv getting an award in 2014.

Examples

Major strategies and achievements related to the spatial intelligence of cities are listed in the Intelligent Community Forum awards from 1999 to 2010, in the cities of Songdo and Suwon (South Korea), Stockholm (Sweden), Gangnam District of Seoul (South Korea), Waterloo, Ontario (Canada), Taipei (Republic of China), Mitaka (Japan), Glasgow (Scotland, UK), Calgary (Alberta, Canada), Seoul (South Korea), New York City (US), LaGrange, Georgia (US), and Singapore, which were recognized for their efforts in developing broadband networks and e-services sustaining innovation ecosystems, growth, and inclusion. There are a number of cities actively pursuing a smart city strategy:

Amsterdam

Street lamps in Amsterdam have been upgraded to allow municipal councils to dim the lights based on pedestrian usage.

 

The Amsterdam Smart City initiative which began in 2009 currently includes 170+ projects collaboratively developed by local residents, government and businesses. These projects run on an interconnected platform through wireless devices to enhance the city's real time decision making abilities. The City of Amsterdam (City) claims the purpose of the projects is to reduce traffic, save energy and improve public safety. To promote efforts from local residents, the City runs the Amsterdam Smart City Challenge annually, accepting proposals for applications and developments that fit within the City's framework. An example of a resident developed app is Mobypark, which allows owners of parking spaces to rent them out to people for a fee. The data generated from this app can then be used by the City to determine parking demand and traffic flows in Amsterdam. A number of homes have also been provided with smart energy meters, with incentives provided to those that actively reduce energy consumption. Other initiatives include flexible street lighting (smart lighting) which allows municipalities to control the brightness of street lights, and smart traffic management where traffic is monitored in real time by the City and information about current travel time on certain roads is broadcast to allow motorists to determine the best routes to take.

Barcelona

A new bus network was implemented in Barcelona due to smart city data analytics.

 

Barcelona has established a number of projects that can be considered 'smart city' applications within its "CityOS" strategy. For example, sensor technology has been implemented in the irrigation system in Parc del Centre de Poblenou, where real time data is transmitted to gardening crews about the level of water required for the plants. Barcelona has also designed a new bus network based on data analysis of the most common traffic flows in Barcelona, utilizing primarily vertical, horizontal and diagonal routes with a number of interchanges. Integration of multiple smart city technologies can be seen through the implementation of smart traffic lights as buses run on routes designed to optimize the number of green lights. In addition, where an emergency is reported in Barcelona, the approximate route of the emergency vehicle is entered into the traffic light system, setting all the lights to green as the vehicle approaches through a mix of GPS and traffic management software, allowing emergency services to reach the incident without delay. Much of this data is managed by the Sentilo Platform.

Columbus, Ohio

In the summer of 2017, the City of Columbus, Ohio began its pursuit of a smart city initiative. It partnered with American Electric Power Ohio to create a group of new electric vehicle charging stations. Many smart cities such as Columbus are using agreements such as this one to prepare for climate change, expand electric infrastructure, convert existing public vehicle fleets to electric cars, and create incentives for people to share rides when commuting. For doing this, the U.S. Department of Transportation gave the City of Columbus a $40 million grant. The city also received $10 million from Vulcan Inc. 

One key reason why the utility was involved in the picking of locations for new electric vehicle charging stations was to gather data. According to Daily Energy Insider, the group Infrastructure and Business Continuity for AEP said, "You don’t want to put infrastructure where it won’t be used or maintained. The data we collect will help us build a much bigger market in the future."

Because autonomous vehicles are currently seeing "an increased industrial research and legislative push globally", building routes and connections for them is another important part of the Columbus Smart City initiative.

Dubai

Shaikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum vice president of UAE and a Ruler of Dubai has initiate the Smart Dubai project that contains more than 100 initiatives in 2013, this project will lead Dubai to be the world smartest city by 2030. As his highness says this project is going to facilitate and enhance the quality of life of Dubai's citizens by integrating the private and public sectors and enabling citizens to have an access to these sectors through their smartphones. One of the initiatives that has been launched is Dubai Autonomous Transportation Strategy within this strategy Dubai will only have driverless transits. In addition, to save the environment by 2021 Dubai will be paper-free; all information and transactions of governments, businesses, and customers will be fully digitized. As a part of the Smart Dubai project, citizens will have unlimited access to government applications by providing 5000 hot spots in different locations of the city by 2021. Dubai has launched two mobile applications; mPay and DubaiNow that facilitate the payments of services of the citizens. mPay enables citizens to pay for utilities, electricity and water, traffic fines, and Etisalat bills while DubaiNow enables citizens to pay for educational, health, transport, and business services. In addition, Dubai has established Smart Nol Card; a unified rechargeable card that enables citizens to pay for all the transportation services such as metro, buses, water bus, and taxis. Dubai Municipality has launched an initiative called Digital City in which each building in Dubai city is assigned to unique QR code that contains information about the building, plot, and location. Citizens are able to scan these codes to access and get benefit of the municipality e-services.

Dublin

Dublin finds itself as an unexpected capital for smart cities. The smart city program for the city is run by Smart Dublin  an initiative of the four Dublin Local Authorities to engage with smart technology providers, researchers and citizens to solve city challenges and improve city life. It includes Dublinked- Dublin’s open data platform that hosts open source data to smart city applications.

Madrid

Madrid, Spain's pioneering smart city, has adopted the MiNT Madrid Inteligente/Smarter Madrid platform to integrate the management of local services. These include the sustainable and computerized management of infrastructure, garbage collection and recycling, and public spaces and green areas, among others. The program is run in partnership with IBMs INSA, making use of the latter's Big Data and analytics capabilities and experience. Madrid is considered to have taken a bottom-up approach to smart cities, whereby social issues are first identified and individual technologies or networks are then identified to address these issues. This approach includes support and recognition for start ups through the Madrid Digital Start Up program.

Malta

A document written in 2011 refers to 18th century Żejtun as the earliest "smart city" in Malta, but not in the modern context of a smart city. By the 21st century, SmartCity Malta, a planned technology park, is partially operational while the rest is on construction, as a Foreign Direct Investment.

Manchester

In December 2015, Manchester's CityVerve project was chosen as the winner of a government-led technology competition and awarded £10m to develop an Internet of Things (IoT) smart cities demonstrator.

Established in July 2016, the project is being carried out by a consortium of 22 public and private organizations, including Manchester City Council, and is aligned with the city's on-going devolution commitment.

The project has a two-year remit to demonstrate the capability of IoT applications and address barriers to deploying smart cities, such as city governance, network security, user trust and adoption, interoperability, scalability and justifying investment.

CityVerve is based on an open data principle that incorporates a 'platform of platforms' which ties together applications for its four key themes: transport and travel; health and social care; energy and the environment; culture and the public realm. This will also ensure that the project is scalable and able to be redeployed to other locations worldwide.

Milan

Milan, Italy was prompted to begin its Smart City strategies and initiatives by the European Union's Smart Cities and Communities initiative. However, unlike many European cities, Milan's Smart City strategies focus more on social sustainability rather than environmental sustainability. This focus is almost exclusive to Milan and has a major influence in the way content and way its strategies are implemented as shown in the case study of the Bicocca District in Milan.

Milton Keynes

Milton Keynes has a commitment to making itself a Smart City. Currently the mechanism through which this is approached is the MK:Smart initiative, a collaboration of local government, businesses, academia and 3rd sector organizations. The focus of the initiative is on making energy use, water use and transport more sustainable whilst promoting economic growth in the city. Central to the project is the creation of a state-of-the-art 'MK Data Hub' which will support the acquisition and management of vast amounts of data relevant to city systems from a variety of data sources. These will include data about energy and water consumption, transport data, data acquired through satellite technology, social and economic datasets, and crowdsourced data from social media or specialized apps.

The MK:Smart initiative has two aspects which extend our understanding of how Smart Cities should operate. The first, Our MK, is a scheme for promoting citizen-led sustainability issues in the city. The scheme provides funding and support to engage with citizens and help turn their ideas around sustainability into a reality. The second aspect is in providing citizens with the skills to operate effectively in a Smart City. The Urban Data school is an online platform to teach school students about data skills while the project has also produced a MOOC to inform citizens about what a Smart City is.

New York City

New York City is developing a number of smart city initiatives. A notable example is the series of city service kiosks in the LinkNYC network. These provide services including free WiFi, phone calls, device charging stations, local wayfinding, and more, funded by advertising that plays on the kiosk’s screens

San Leandro

The city of San Leandro, California is in the midst of transforming from an industrial center to a tech hub of the Internet of Things (IoT) (technology that lets devices communicate with each other over the Internet). California's utility company PG&E is working with the city in this endeavor and on a smart energy pilot program that would develop a distributed energy network across the city that would be monitored by IoT sensors. The goal would be to give the city an energy system that has enough capacity to receive and redistribute electricity to and from multiple energy sources.

Santa Cruz

An alternative use of smart city technology can be found in Santa Cruz, California, where local authorities analyse historical crime data in order to predict police requirements and maximize police presence where it is required. The analytical tools generate a list of 10 places each day where property crimes are more likely to occur, and then placing police efforts on these regions when officers are not responding to any emergency. This use of ICT technology is different to the manner in which European cities utilise smart city technology, possibly highlighting the breadth of the smart city concept in different parts of the world.

Shanghai

Shanghai's development of the IoT and internet connection speeds have allowed for third party companies to revolutionize the productivity of the city. As mobile ride share giant, DiDi Chuxing, continuously adds more user protection features such as ride recording, and a new quick response safety center, Shanghai is furthering their smart city agenda. During the first China International Import Expo, Shanghai focused on smart mobility and implemented sensors to accept smartphone traffic cards in all metro stations and buses to increase efficiency in the city.

Smart cities in India

It's a retrofitting and urban renewal program being spearheaded by the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India. The Government of India has the ambitious vision of developing 100 cities by modernizing existing mid-sized cities.

Smart Nation Singapore

Despite its size and lack of natural resources, Singapore (a city-state) has overcome many of its challenges in 50 short years to become one of the world's most advanced and livable countries. It has embarked on its next phase of transformation towards a Smart Nation, and endeavors to harness the power of networks, data and info-comm technologies to improve living, create economic opportunities and build closer communities.

Stockholm

The Kista Science City from above.

 

Stockholm's smart city technology is underpinned by the Stokab dark fiber system which was developed in 1994 to provide a universal fiber optic network across Stockholm. Private companies are able to lease fiber as service providers on equal terms. The company is owned by the City of Stockholm itself. Within this framework, Stockholm has created a Green IT strategy. The Green IT program seeks to reduce the environmental impact of Stockholm through IT functions such as energy efficient buildings (minimizing heating costs), traffic monitoring (minimizing the time spent on the road) and development of e-services (minimizing paper usage). The e-Stockholm platform is centered on the provision of e-services, including political announcements, parking space booking and snow clearance. This is further being developed through GPS analytics, allowing residents to plan their route through the city. An example of district-specific smart city technology can be found in the Kista Science City region. This region is based on the triple helix concept of smart cities, where university, industry and government work together to develop ICT applications for implementation in a smart city strategy.

Criticism

The criticisms of smart cities revolve around:

• A bias in strategic interest may lead to ignoring alternative avenues of promising urban development.
• A smart city, as a scientifically planned city, would defy the fact that real development in cities is often haphazard. In that line of criticism, the smart city is seen as unattractive for citizens as they "can deaden and stupefy the people who live in its all-efficient embrace". Instead, people would prefer cities they can participate to shape.
• The focus of the concept of smart city may lead to an underestimation of the possible negative effects of the development of the new technological and networked infrastructures needed for a city to be smart.
• As a globalized business model is based on capital mobility, following a business-oriented model may result in a losing long term strategy: "The 'spatial fix' inevitably means that mobile capital can often 'write its own deals' to come to town, only to move on when it receives a better deal elsewhere. This is no less true for the smart city than it was for the industrial, [or] manufacturing city."
• The high level of big data collection and analytics has raised questions regarding surveillance in smart cities, particularly as it relates to predictive policing.
• As of August 2018, the discussion on smart cities centers around the usage and implementation of technology rather than on the inhabitants of the cities and how they can be involved in the process.
• Especially in low-income countries, smart cities are irrelevant to the majority of the urban population, which lives in poverty with limited access to basic services. A focus on smart cities may worsen inequality and marginalization.

Ubiquitous computing

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ubiquitous computing (or "ubicomp") is a concept in software engineering and computer science where computing is made to appear anytime and everywhere. In contrast to desktop computing, ubiquitous computing can occur using any device, in any location, and in any format. A user interacts with the computer, which can exist in many different forms, including laptop computers, tablets and terminals in everyday objects such as a refrigerator or a pair of glasses. The underlying technologies to support ubiquitous computing include Internet, advanced middleware, operating system, mobile code, sensors, microprocessors, new I/O and user interfaces, networks, mobile protocols, location and positioning, and new materials.

This paradigm is also described as pervasive computing, ambient intelligence, or "everyware". Each term emphasizes slightly different aspects. When primarily concerning the objects involved, it is also known as physical computing, the Internet of Things, haptic computing, and "things that think". Rather than propose a single definition for ubiquitous computing and for these related terms, a taxonomy of properties for ubiquitous computing has been proposed, from which different kinds or flavors of ubiquitous systems and applications can be described.

Ubiquitous computing touches on a wide range of research topics, including distributed computing, mobile computing, location computing, mobile networking, context-aware computing, sensor networks, human–computer interaction, and artificial intelligence.

Core concepts

At their core, all models of ubiquitous computing share a vision of small, inexpensive, robust networked processing devices, distributed at all scales throughout everyday life and generally turned to distinctly common-place ends. For example, a domestic ubiquitous computing environment might interconnect lighting and environmental controls with personal biometric monitors woven into clothing so that illumination and heating conditions in a room might be modulated, continuously and imperceptibly. Another common scenario posits refrigerators "aware" of their suitably tagged contents, able to both plan a variety of menus from the food actually on hand, and warn users of stale or spoiled food.

Ubiquitous computing presents challenges across computer science: in systems design and engineering, in systems modelling, and in user interface design. Contemporary human-computer interaction models, whether command-line, menu-driven, or GUI-based, are inappropriate and inadequate to the ubiquitous case. This suggests that the "natural" interaction paradigm appropriate to a fully robust ubiquitous computing has yet to emerge – although there is also recognition in the field that in many ways we are already living in a ubicomp world (see also the main article on Natural user interfaces). Contemporary devices that lend some support to this latter idea include mobile phones, digital audio players, radio-frequency identification tags, GPS, and interactive whiteboards. 

Mark Weiser proposed three basic forms for ubiquitous system devices (see also smart device): tabs, pads and boards.

• Tabs: wearable centimeter sized devices
• Pads: hand-held decimeter-sized devices
• Boards: meter sized interactive display devices.

These three forms proposed by Weiser are characterized by being macro-sized, having a planar form and on incorporating visual output displays. If we relax each of these three characteristics we can expand this range into a much more diverse and potentially more useful range of ubiquitous computing devices. Hence, three additional forms for ubiquitous systems have been proposed:

• Dust: miniaturized devices can be without visual output displays, e.g. micro electromechanical systems (MEMS), ranging from nanometers through micrometers to millimeters. See also Smart dust.
• Skin: fabrics based upon light emitting and conductive polymers, organic computer devices, can be formed into more flexible non-planar display surfaces and products such as clothes and curtains, see OLED display. MEMS device can also be painted onto various surfaces so that a variety of physical world structures can act as networked surfaces of MEMS.
• Clay: ensembles of MEMS can be formed into arbitrary three dimensional shapes as artifacts resembling many different kinds of physical object.

In his book The Rise of the Network Society, Manuel Castells suggests that there is an ongoing shift from already-decentralised, stand-alone microcomputers and mainframes towards entirely pervasive computing. In his model of a pervasive computing system, Castells uses the example of the Internet as the start of a pervasive computing system. The logical progression from that paradigm is a system where that networking logic becomes applicable in every realm of daily activity, in every location and every context. Castells envisages a system where billions of miniature, ubiquitous inter-communication devices will be spread worldwide, "like pigment in the wall paint". 

Ubiquitous computing may be seen to consist of many layers, each with their own roles, which together form a single system: 

Layer 1: task management layer

• Monitors user task, context and index
• Map user's task to need for the services in the environment
• To manage complex dependencies

Layer 2: environment management layer

• To monitor a resource and its capabilities
• To map service need, user level states of specific capabilities

Layer 3: environment layer

• To monitor a relevant resource
• To manage reliability of the resources

History

Mark Weiser coined the phrase "ubiquitous computing" around 1988, during his tenure as Chief Technologist of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Both alone and with PARC Director and Chief Scientist John Seely Brown, Weiser wrote some of the earliest papers on the subject, largely defining it and sketching out its major concerns.

Recognizing the effects of extending processing power

Recognizing that the extension of processing power into everyday scenarios would necessitate understandings of social, cultural and psychological phenomena beyond its proper ambit, Weiser was influenced by many fields outside computer science, including "philosophy, phenomenology, anthropology, psychology, post-Modernism, sociology of science and feminist criticism". He was explicit about "the humanistic origins of the 'invisible ideal in post-modernist thought'", referencing as well the ironically dystopian Philip K. Dick novel Ubik. 

Andy Hopper from Cambridge University UK proposed and demonstrated the concept of "Teleporting" – where applications follow the user wherever he/she moves.

Roy Want, while a researcher and student working under Andy Hopper at Cambridge University, worked on the "Active Badge System", which is an advanced location computing system where personal mobility that is merged with computing. 

Bill Schilit (now at Google) also did some earlier work in this topic, and participated in the early Mobile Computing workshop held in Santa Cruz in 1996.

Ken Sakamura of the University of Tokyo, Japan leads the Ubiquitous Networking Laboratory (UNL), Tokyo as well as the T-Engine Forum. The joint goal of Sakamura's Ubiquitous Networking specification and the T-Engine forum, is to enable any everyday device to broadcast and receive information.

MIT has also contributed significant research in this field, notably Things That Think consortium (directed by Hiroshi Ishii, Joseph A. Paradiso and Rosalind Picard) at the Media Lab and the CSAIL effort known as Project Oxygen. Other major contributors include University of Washington's Ubicomp Lab (directed by Shwetak Patel), Georgia Tech's College of Computing, Cornell University's People Aware Computing Lab, NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, UC Irvine's Department of Informatics, Microsoft Research, Intel Research and Equator, Ajou University UCRi & CUS.

Examples

One of the earliest ubiquitous systems was artist Natalie Jeremijenko's "Live Wire", also known as "Dangling String", installed at Xerox PARC during Mark Weiser's time there. This was a piece of string attached to a stepper motor and controlled by a LAN connection; network activity caused the string to twitch, yielding a peripherally noticeable indication of traffic. Weiser called this an example of calm technology.

A present manifestation of this trend is the widespread diffusion of mobile phones. Many of mobile phones supporting high speed data transmission, video services, and mobile devices with powerful computational ability. Although these mobile devices are not necessarily manifestations of ubiquitous computing, there are examples, such as Japan's Yaoyorozu ("Eight Million Gods") Project in which mobile devices, coupled with radio frequency identification tags demonstrate that ubiquitous computing is already present in some form.

Ambient Devices has produced an "orb", a "dashboard", and a "weather beacon": these decorative devices receive data from a wireless network and report current events, such as stock prices and the weather, like the Nabaztag produced by Violet Snowden.

The Australian futurist Mark Pesce has produced a highly configurable 52-LED LAMP enabled lamp which uses Wi-Fi named MooresCloud after Moore's Law.

The Unified Computer Intelligence Corporation has launched a device called Ubi – The Ubiquitous Computer that is designed to allow voice interaction with the home and provide constant access to information.

Ubiquitous computing research has focused on building an environment in which computers allow humans to focus attention on select aspects of the environment and operate in supervisory and policy-making roles. Ubiquitous computing emphasizes the creation of a human computer interface that can interpret and support a user's intentions. For example, MIT's Project Oxygen seeks to create a system in which computation is as pervasive as air:

In the future, computation will be human centered. It will be freely available everywhere, like batteries and power sockets, or oxygen in the air we breathe...We will not need to carry our own devices around with us. Instead, configurable generic devices, either handheld or embedded in the environment, will bring computation to us, whenever we need it and wherever we might be. As we interact with these "anonymous" devices, they will adopt our information personalities. They will respect our desires for privacy and security. We won't have to type, click, or learn new computer jargon. Instead, we'll communicate naturally, using speech and gestures that describe our intent...

This is a fundamental transition that does not seek to escape the physical world and "enter some metallic, gigabyte-infested cyberspace" but rather brings computers and communications to us, making them "synonymous with the useful tasks they perform".

Network robots link ubiquitous networks with robots, contributing to the creation of new lifestyles and solutions to address a variety of social problems including the aging of population and nursing care.

Issues

Privacy is easily the most often-cited criticism of ubiquitous computing (ubicomp), and may be the greatest barrier to its long-term success.

An article by Linda Little and Pam Briggs on this privacy issue, states that: "These are the kinds of privacy principles that have been established by the industry – but over the past two years, we have been trying to understand whether such principles reflect the concerns of the ordinary citizen. Some of the key research questions we have been addressing are: What are users' key concerns regarding privacy management in a ubiquitous context and do they reflect 'expert' privacy principles? Do these concerns vary as a function of context? Will users have enough confidence in privacy management procedures to hand-over management and administration of their privacy preferences? Motahari, et al., (2007) argue people do not have a complete understanding of the threats to their privacy. While users of ubicomp systems are aware of inappropriate use of their personal information, legal obligations and inadequate security they are less aware of setting preferences for who has access and any social inferences that can be made by observations by other people. They further argue a holistic approach is needed as traditional approaches and current investigations are not enough to address privacy threats in ubiquitous computing. Recognizing – in line with a number of other researchers (Harper & Singleton, 2001; Paine, et al., 2007) – that privacy concerns are likely to be highly situation-dependent, we have developed a method of inquiry which displays a rich context to the user in order to elicit more detailed information about those privacy factors that underpin our acceptance of ubiquitous computing".

Public policy problems are often "preceded by long shadows, long trains of activity", emerging slowly, over decades or even the course of a century. There is a need for a long-term view to guide policy decision making, as this will assist in identifying long-term problems or opportunities related to the ubiquitous computing environment. This information can reduce uncertainty and guide the decisions of both policy makers and those directly involved in system development (Wedemeyer et al. 2001). One important consideration is the degree to which different opinions form around a single problem. Some issues may have strong consensus about their importance, even if there are great differences in opinion regarding the cause or solution. For example, few people will differ in their assessment of a highly tangible problem with physical impact such as terrorists using new weapons of mass destruction to destroy human life. The problem statements outlined above that address the future evolution of the human species or challenges to identity have clear cultural or religious implications and are likely to have greater variance in opinion about them.

Urbanization

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Global urbanization map showing the percentage of urbanization per country in 2015

 

Guangzhou, a city of 14.5 million people, is one of the 8 adjacent metropolises located in the largest single agglomeration on earth, ringing the Pearl River Delta of China.

 

Mumbai is the most populous city in India, and the eighth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 18.4 million.

 

Urbanization refers to the population shift from rural to urban residency, the gradual increase in the proportion of people living in urban areas, and the ways in which each society adapts to this change. It is predominantly the process by which towns and cities are formed and become larger as more people begin living and working in central areas. Although the two concepts are sometimes used interchangeably, urbanization should be distinguished from urban growth: urbanization is "the proportion of the total national population living in areas classed as urban", while urban growth refers to "the absolute number of people living in areas classed as urban". The United Nations projected that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008. It is predicted that by 2050 about 64% of the developing world and 86% of the developed world will be urbanized. That is equivalent to approximately 3 billion urbanites by 2050, much of which will occur in Africa and Asia. Notably, the United Nations has also recently projected that nearly all global population growth from 2017 to 2030 will be absorbed by cities, about 1.1 billion new urbanites over the next 13 years.

Urbanization is relevant to a range of disciplines, including urban planning, geography, sociology, economics, and public health. The phenomenon has been closely linked to modernization, industrialization, and the sociological process of rationalization. Urbanization can be seen as a specific condition at a set time (e.g., the proportion of total population or area in cities or towns), or as an increase in that condition over time. So urbanization can be quantified either in terms of, say, the level of urban development relative to the overall population, or as the rate at which the urban proportion of the population is increasing. Urbanization creates enormous social, economic and environmental changes, which provide an opportunity for sustainability with the “potential to use resources more efficiently, to create more sustainable land use and to protect the biodiversity of natural ecosystems.”

Urbanization is not merely a modern phenomenon, but a rapid and historic transformation of human social roots on a global scale, whereby predominantly rural culture is being rapidly replaced by predominantly urban culture. The first major change in settlement patterns was the accumulation of hunter-gatherers into villages many thousand years ago. Village culture is characterized by common bloodlines, intimate relationships, and communal behavior, whereas urban culture is characterized by distant bloodlines, unfamiliar relations, and competitive behavior. This unprecedented movement of people is forecast to continue and intensify during the next few decades, mushrooming cities to sizes unthinkable only a century ago. As a result, the world urban population growth curve has up till recently followed a quadratic-hyperbolic pattern.

Today, in Asia the urban agglomerations of Osaka, Karachi, Jakarta, Mumbai, Shanghai, Manila, Seoul and Beijing are each already home to over 20 million people, while Delhi and Tokyo are forecast to approach or exceed 40 million people. Cities such as Tehran, Istanbul, Mexico City, São Paulo, London, New York City, Lagos and Cairo are, or soon will be, home to over 10 million people each.

History

Historical global urban/rural population trends

 

From the development of the earliest cities in Mesopotamia and Egypt until the 18th century, an equilibrium existed between the vast majority of the population who engaged in subsistence agriculture in a rural context, and small centers of populations in the towns where economic activity consisted primarily of trade at markets and manufactures on a small scale. Due to the primitive and relatively stagnant state of agriculture throughout this period, the ratio of rural to urban population remained at a fixed equilibrium. However, a significant increase in the percentage of the global urban population can be traced in the 1st millennium BCE. Another significant increase can be traced to Mughal India, where 15% of its population lived in urban centers during the 16th–17th centuries, higher than in Europe at the time. In comparison, the percentage of the European population living in cities was 8–13% in 1800.

With the onset of the British agricultural and industrial revolution in the late 18th century, this relationship was finally broken and an unprecedented growth in urban population took place over the course of the 19th century, both through continued migration from the countryside and due to the tremendous demographic expansion that occurred at that time. In England and Wales, the proportion of the population living in cities with more than 20,000 people jumped from 17% in 1801 to 54% in 1891. Moreover, and adopting a broader definition of urbanization, we can say that while the urbanized population in England and Wales represented 72% of the total in 1891, for other countries the figure was 37% in France, 41% in Prussia and 28% in the United States.

As labourers were freed up from working the land due to higher agricultural productivity they converged on the new industrial cities like Manchester and Birmingham which were experiencing a boom in commerce, trade and industry. Growing trade around the world also allowed cereals to be imported from North America and refrigerated meat from Australasia and South America. Spatially, cities also expanded due to the development of public transport systems, which facilitated commutes of longer distances to the city centre for the working class.

Urbanization rapidly spread across the Western world and, since the 1950s, it has begun to take hold in the developing world as well. At the turn of the 20th century, just 15% of the world population lived in cities. According to the UN, the year 2007 witnessed the turning point when more than 50% of the world population were living in cities, for the first time in human history.

Yale University in June 2016 published urbanization data from the time period 3700 BC to 2000 AD, the data was used to make a video showing the development of cities on the world during the time period.

Causes

Population age comparises between rural Pocahontas County, Iowa and urban Johnson County, Iowa, illustrating the flight of young adults (red) to urban centers in Iowa.

 

The City of Chicago, Illinois is an example of the early American grid system of development. The grid is enforced even on uneven topography.

 

Urbanization occurs either organically or planned as a result of individual, collective and state action. Living in a city can be culturally and economically beneficial since it can provide greater opportunities for access to the labor market, reduce the time and expense of commuting and transportation better education, housing and safety conditions. Condition like density, proximity, diversity, and marketplace competition are elements of an urban environment that deemed positive. However, there are also negative social phenomena that arise, alienation, stress, increased cost of living, and mass marginalization that are connected to an urban way of living. Suburbanization, which is happening in the cities of the largest developing countries, may be regarded as an attempt to balance these negative aspects of urban life while still allowing access to the large extent of shared resources.

In cities, money, services, wealth and opportunities are centralized. Many rural inhabitants come to the city to seek their fortune and alter their social position. Businesses, which provide jobs and exchange capital, are more concentrated in urban areas. Whether the source is trade or tourism, it is also through the ports or banking systems, commonly located in cities, that foreign money flows into a country. 

Many people move into cities for the economic opportunities, but this does not fully explain the very high recent urbanization rates in places like China and India. Rural flight is a contributing factor to urbanization. In rural areas, often on small family farms or collective farms in villages, it has historically been difficult to access manufactured goods, though the relative overall quality of life is very subjective, and may certainly surpass that of the city. Farm living has always been susceptible to unpredictable environmental conditions, and in times of drought, flood or pestilence, survival may become extremely problematic. 

Thai farmers are seen as poor, stupid, and unhealthy. As young people flee the farms, the values and knowledge of rice farming and the countryside are fading, including the tradition of long kek, helping neighbors plant, harvest, or build a house. We are losing what we call Thai-ness, the values of being kind, helping each other, having mercy and gratefulness. — Iam Thongdee, Professor of Humanities, Mahidol University in Bangkok

In a New York Times article concerning the acute migration away from farming in Thailand, life as a farmer was described as "hot and exhausting". "Everyone says the farmer works the hardest but gets the least amount of money". In an effort to counter this impression, the Agriculture Department of Thailand is seeking to promote the impression that farming is "honorable and secure".

However, in Thailand, urbanization has also resulted in massive increases in problems such as obesity. Shifting from a rural environment to an urbanized community also caused a transition to a diet that was mainly carbohydrate based to a diet higher in fat and sugar, consequently causing a rise in obesity. City life, especially in modern urban slums of the developing world, is certainly hardly immune to pestilence or climatic disturbances such as floods, yet continues to strongly attract migrants. Examples of this were the 2011 Thailand floods and 2007 Jakarta flood. Urban areas are also far more prone to violence, drugs, and other urban social problems. In the United States, industrialization of agriculture has negatively affected the economy of small and middle-sized farms and strongly reduced the size of the rural labour market.

These are the costs of participating in the urban economy. Your increased income is canceled out by increased expenditure. In the end, you have even less left for food. — Madhura Swaminathan, economist at Kolkata’s Indian Statistical Institute

Particularly in the developing world, conflict over land rights due to the effects of globalization has led to less politically powerful groups, such as farmers, losing or forfeiting their land, resulting in obligatory migration into cities. In China, where land acquisition measures are forceful, there has been far more extensive and rapid urbanization (54%) than in India (36%), where peasants form militant groups (e.g. Naxalites) to oppose such efforts. Obligatory and unplanned migration often results in rapid growth of slums. This is also similar to areas of violent conflict, where people are driven off their land due to violence. Bogotá, Colombia, is one example of this.

Cities offer a larger variety of services, including specialist services not found in rural areas. These services requires workers, resulting in more numerous and varied job opportunities. Elderly people may be forced to move to cities where there are doctors and hospitals that can cater for their health needs. Varied and high quality educational opportunities are another factor in urban migration, as well as the opportunity to join, develop, and seek out social communities. 

Urbanization also creates opportunities for women that are not available in rural areas. This creates a gender-related transformation where women are engaged in paid employment and have access to education. This may cause fertility to decline. However, women are sometimes still at a disadvantage due to their unequal position in the labour market, their inability to secure assets independently from male relatives and exposure to violence.

People in cities are more productive than in rural areas. An important question is whether this is due to agglomeration effects or whether cities simply attract those who are more productive. Economists have recently shown that there exists a large productivity gain due to locating in dense agglomerations. It is thus possible that agents locate in cities in order to benefit from these agglomeration effects.

Dominant conurbation

The dominant conurbation(s) of a country can benefit to a greater extent from the same things cities offer, making them magnets for not just the non-urban population, but also urban and suburban population from other cities. Dominant conurbations are quite often primate cities, but do not have to be. For instance Greater Manila is rather a conurbation than a city: its 20 million overall population (over 20% national population) make it very much a primate city, but Quezon City (2.7 million), the largest municipality in Greater Manila, and Manila (1.6 million), the capital, are not. A conurbation's dominance can be measured by output, wealth, and especially population, each expressed as a percentage of an entire country. Greater Seoul is one conurbation with massive dominance over South Korea, it is home to 50% of the entire national population.

Though Greater Busan-Ulsan (15%, 8 million) and Greater Osaka (14%, 18 million) exhibit strong dominance in their respective countries, they are losing population to their even more dominant rivals, Seoul and Tokyo respectively.

Economic effect

Crowded people on Siam BTS Station on the rush hour in Bangkok, Thailand

 

As cities develop, effects can include a dramatic increase and change in costs, often pricing the local working class out of the market, including such functionaries as employees of the local municipalities. For example, Eric Hobsbawm's book The age of revolution: 1789–1848 (published 1962 and 2005) chapter 11, stated "Urban development in our period [1789–1848] was a gigantic process of class segregation, which pushed the new laboring poor into great morasses of misery outside the centers of government and business and the newly specialized residential areas of the bourgeoisie. The almost universal European division into a 'good' west end and a 'poor' east end of large cities developed in this period." This is likely due the prevailing south-west wind which carries coal smoke and other airborne pollutants downwind, making the western edges of towns preferable to the eastern ones. Similar problems now affect the developing world, rising inequality resulting from rapid urbanization trends. The drive for rapid urban growth and often efficiency can lead to less equitable urban development. Think tanks such as the Overseas Development Institute have proposed policies that encourage labor-intensive growth as a means of absorbing the influx of low-skilled and unskilled labor. One problem these migrant workers are involved with is the growth of slums. In many cases, the rural-urban low skilled or unskilled migrant workers, attracted by economic opportunities in urban areas, cannot find a job and afford housing in cities and have to dwell in slums. Urban problems, along with infrastructure developments, are also fueling suburbanization trends in developing nations, though the trend for core cities in said nations tends to continue to become ever denser. Urbanization is often viewed as a negative trend, but there are positives in the reduction of expenses in commuting and transportation while improving opportunities for jobs, education, housing, and transportation. Living in cities permits individuals and families to take advantage of the opportunities of proximity and diversity. While cities have a greater variety of markets and goods than rural areas, infrastructure congestion, monopolization, high overhead costs, and the inconvenience of cross-town trips frequently combine to make marketplace competition harsher in cities than in rural areas.

In many developing countries where economies are growing, the growth is often erratic and based on a small number of industries. For young people in these countries barriers exist such as, lack of access to financial services and business advisory services, difficulty in obtaining credit to start a business, and lack of entrepreneurial skills, in order for them to access opportunities in these industries. Investment in human capital so that young people have access to quality education and infrastructure to enable access to educational facilities is imperative to overcoming economic barriers.

Environmental effects

The existence of urban heat islands has become a growing concern over the years. An urban heat island is formed when industrial and urban areas produce and retain heat. Much of the solar energy that reaches rural areas is consumed by evaporation of water from vegetation and soil. In cities, where there is less vegetation and exposed soil, most of the sun's energy is instead absorbed by buildings and asphalt; leading to higher surface temperatures. Vehicles, factories and industrial and domestic heating and cooling units release even more heat. As a result, cities are often 1 to 3 °C (1.8 to 5.4 °F) warmer than surrounding landscapes. Impacts also include reducing soil moisture and a reduction in reabsorption of carbon dioxide emissions.

In his book Whole Earth Discipline, Stewart Brand argues that the effects of urbanization are primarily positive for the environment. First, the birth rate of new urban dwellers falls immediately to replacement rate, and keeps falling, reducing environmental stresses caused by population growth. Secondly, emigration from rural areas reduces destructive subsistence farming techniques, such as improperly implemented slash and burn agriculture. 

In July 2013 a report issued by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs warned that with 2.4 billion more people by 2050, the amount of food produced will have to increase by 70%, straining food resources, especially in countries already facing food insecurity due to changing environmental conditions. The mix of changing environmental conditions and the growing population of urban regions, according to UN experts, will strain basic sanitation systems and health care, and potentially cause a humanitarian and environmental disaster.

Water quality

The occurrence of eutrophication in bodies of water is another effect large urban populations have on the environment. When rain occurs in these large cities, the rain filters down the pollutants such as CO₂ and other green house gases in the air onto the ground below. Then, those chemicals are washed directly into rivers, streams and oceans, causing a decline in water quality and damaging marine ecosystems.

Eutrophication is a process which causes hypoxic water conditions and algal blooms that may be detrimental to the survival of aquatic life. Harmful algal blooms, which produce dangerous toxins, thrive in eutrophic environments that are also rich in nitrogen and phosphorus. In these ideal conditions, they overtake surface water, making it difficult for other organisms to receive sunlight and nutrients. Overgrowth of algal blooms causes a decrease in overall water quality and disrupts the natural balance of aquatic ecosystems. Furthermore, as algal blooms die, CO₂ is produced, causing a more acidic environment, a process known as acidification.

The oceans surface also has the ability to absorb CO₂ from the earths atmosphere as emissions increase with the rise in urbanization. In fact, it is reported that the ocean absorbs a quarter of the CO₂ produced by humans. This has been useful to the environment by decreasing the harmful effects of greenhouse gases, but also further perpetuates acidification. Changes in pH inhibit the proper formation of calcium carbonate, a crucial component for many marine organisms to maintain shells or skeletons. This is especially true for many species of mollusks and coral. Regardless, some species have been able to instead adapt or thrive in a more acidic environment 

Food waste

Rapid growth of communities create new challenges in the developed world and one such challenge is an increase in food waste  also known as urban food waste. Food waste is the disposal of food products that can no longer be used due to unused products, expiration, or spoilage. The increase of food waste can raise environmental concerns such as increase production of methane gases and attraction of disease vectors. Landfills are the third leading cause of the release of methane, causing a concern on its impact to our ozone and on the health of individuals. Accumulation of food waste causes increased fermentation, which increases the risk of rodent and bug migration. An increase in migration of disease vectors creates greater potential of disease spreading to humans.

Habitat fragmentation

Urbanization can have a large effect on biodiversity by causing a division of habitats and thereby alienation of species, a process known as habitat fragmentation. Habitat fragmentation does not destroy the habitat, as seen in habitat loss, but rather breaks it apart with things like roads and railways This change may affect a species ability to sustain life by separating it from the environment in which it is able to easily access food, and find areas that they may hide from predation.  With proper planning and management, fragmentation can be avoided by adding corridors that aid in the connection of areas and allow for easier movement around urbanized regions. 

Depending on the various factors, such as level of urbanization, both increases or decreases in "species richness" can be seen. This means that urbanization may be detrimental to one species but also help facilitate the growth of others. In instances of housing and building development, many times vegetation is completely removed immediately in order to make it easier and less expensive for construction to occur, thereby obliterating any native species in that area. Other times, such as with birds, urbanization may allow for an increase in richness when organisms are able to adapt to the new environment. This can be seen in species that may find food while scavenging developed areas or vegetation that has been added after urbanization has occurred i.e planted trees in city areas 

Health and social effects

When cities don’t plan for increases in population it drives up house and land prices, creating rich (ghettos) and poor ghettos. "You get a very unequal society and that inequality is manifested where people live, in our neighborhoods, and it means there can be less capacity for empathy and less development for all society." — Jack Finegan, Urban Programme Specialist at UN-Habitat

In the developing world, urbanization does not translate into a significant increase in life expectancy. Rapid urbanization has led to increased mortality from non-communicable diseases associated with lifestyle, including cancer and heart disease. Differences in mortality from contagious diseases vary depending on the particular disease and location.

Urban health levels are on average better in comparison to rural areas. However, residents in poor urban areas such as slums and informal settlements suffer "disproportionately from disease, injury, premature death, and the combination of ill-health and poverty entrenches disadvantage over time." Many of the urban poor have difficulty accessing health services due to their inability to pay for them; so they resort to less qualified and unregulated providers.

While urbanization is associated with improvements in public hygiene, sanitation and access to health care, it also entails changes in occupational, dietary and exercise patterns. It can have mixed effects on health patterns, alleviating some problems and accentuating others.

Nutrition

One such effect is the formation of food deserts. Nearly 23.5 million people in the United States lack access to supermarkets within one mile of their home. Several studies suggest that long distances to a grocery store are associated with higher rates of obesity and other health disparities.

Food deserts in developed countries often correspond to areas with a high-density of fast food chains and convenience stores that offer little to no fresh food. Urbanization has been shown to be associated with the consumption of less fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and a higher consumption of processed foods and sugar-sweetened beverages. Poor access to healthy food and high intakes of fat, sugar and salt are associated with a greater risk for obesity, diabetes and related chronic disease. Overall, body mass index and cholesterol levels increase sharply with national income and the degree of urbanization.

Food deserts in the United States are most commonly found in low-income and predominately African American neighborhoods. One study on food deserts in Denver, Colorado found that, in addition to minorities, the affected neighborhoods also had a high proportion of children and new births. In children, urbanization is associated with a lower risk of under-nutrition but a higher risk of overweight.

Asthma

Urbanization has also been associated with an increased risk for asthma as well. Throughout the world, as communities transition from rural to more urban societies, the number of people effected by asthma increases. The odds of reduced rates of hospitalization and death from asthmas has decreased for children and young adults in urbanized municipalities in Brazil. This finding indicates that urbanization may have a negative impact on population health particularly affecting people’s susceptibility to asthma.

In low and middle income countries many factors contribute to the high numbers of people with asthma. Similar to areas in the United States with increasing urbanization, people living in growing cities in low income countries experience high exposure to air pollution, which increases the prevalence and severity of asthma among these populations. Links have been found between exposure to traffic-related air pollution and allergic diseases. Children living in poor, urban areas in the United States now have an increased risk of morbidity due to asthma in comparison to other low-income children in the United States. In addition, children with croup living in urban areas have higher hazard ratios for asthma than similar children living in rural areas. Researchers suggest that this difference in hazard ratios is due to the higher levels of air pollution and exposure to environmental allergens found in urban areas.

Exposure to elevated levels of ambient air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), carbon monoxide (CO), and particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers (PM_2.5), can cause DNA methylation of CpG sites in immune cells, which increases children’s risk of developing asthma. Studies have shown a positive correlation between Foxp3 methylation and children’s exposure to NO₂, CO, and PM_2.5. Furthermore, any amount of exposure to high levels of air pollution have shown long term effects on the Foxp3 region.

Despite the increase in access to health services that usually accompanies urbanization, the rise in population density negatively affects air quality ultimately mitigating the positive value of health resources as more children and young adults develop asthma due to high pollution rates. However, urban planning as well as emission control can lessen the effects of traffic-related air pollution on allergic diseases such as asthma.

Crime

Historically crime and urbanization have gone hand in hand. The simplest explanation is that areas with a higher population density are surrounded by a greater availability of goods. Committing crimes in urbanized areas is also more feasible. Modernization has led to more crime as well. There is a greater awareness of the income gap between the rich and poor due to modern media. This leads to feelings of deprivation which can lead to crime. In some regions where urbanization happens in wealthier areas, a rise in property crime and a decrease in violent crime is seen.

Data shows that there is an increase of crime in urbanized areas. Some factors include per capita income, income inequality, and overall population size. There is also a smaller association between unemployment rate, police expenditures and crime. The presence of crime also has the ability to produce more crime. These areas have less social cohesion, and therefore less social control. This is evident in the geographical regions that crime occurs in. As most crime tends to cluster in city centers, the further the distance from the center of the city, the lower the occurrence of crimes are.

Migration is also a factor that can increase crime in urbanized areas. People from one area are displaced and forced to move into an urbanized society. Here they are in a new environment with new norms and social values. This can lead to less social cohesion and more crime.

Physical activity

Although urbanization tends to produce more negative effects, one positive effect that urbanization has impacted is an increase in physical activity in comparison to rural areas. Residents of rural areas and communities in the United States have higher rates of obesity and engage in less physical activity than urban residents. Rural residents consume a higher percent of fat calories and are less likely to meet the guidelines for physical activity and more likely to be physically inactive. In comparison to regions within the United States, the west has the lowest prevalence of physical inactivity and the south has the highest prevalence of physical inactivity. Metropolitan and large urban areas across all regions have the highest prevalence of physical activity among residents.

Barriers such as geographic isolation, busy and unsafe roads, and social stigmas lead to decreased physical activity in rural environments. Faster speed limits on rural roads prohibits the ability to have bike lanes, sidewalks, footpaths, and shoulders along the side of the roads. Less developed open spaces in rural areas, like parks and trails, suggest that there is lower walkability in these areas in comparison to urban areas. Many residents in rural settings have to travel long distances to utilize exercise facilities, taking up too much time in the day and deterring residents from using recreational facilities to obtain physical activity. Additionally, residents of rural communities are traveling further for work, decreasing the amount of time that can be spent on leisure physical activity and significantly decreases the opportunity to partake in active transportation to work.

Neighborhoods and communities with nearby fitness venues, a common feature of urbanization, have residents that partake in increased amounts of physical activity. Communities with sidewalks, street lights, and traffic signals have residents participating in more physical activity than communities without those features. Having a variety of destinations close to where people live, increases the use of active transportation, such as walking and biking. Active transportation is also enhanced in urban communities where there is easy access to public transportation due to residents walking or biking to transportation stops.

In a study comparing different regions in the United States, opinions across all areas were shared that environmental characteristics like access to sidewalks, safe roads, recreational facilities, and enjoyable scenery are positively associated with participation in leisure physical activity. Perceiving that resources are nearby for physical activity increases the likelihood that residents of all communities will meet the guidelines and recommendations for appropriate physical activity. Specific to rural residents, safety of outdoor developed spaces and convenient availability to recreational facilities matters most when making decisions on increasing physical activity. In order to combat the levels of inactivity in rural residents, more convenient recreational features, such as the ones discussed in this paragraph, need to be implemented into rural communities and societies.

Mental health

Urbanization factors that contribute to mental health can be thought of as factors that affect the individual and factors that affect the larger social group. At the macro, social group level, changes related to urbanization are thought to contribute to social disintegration and disorganization. These macro factors contribute to social disparities which affect individuals by creating perceived insecurity. Perceived insecurity can be due problems with the physical environment, such as issues with personal safety, or problems with the social environment, such as a loss of positive self-concepts from negative events. Increased stress is a common individual psychological stressor that accompanies urbanization and is thought to be due to perceived insecurity. Changes in social organization, a consequence of urbanization, are thought to lead to reduced social support, increased violence, and overcrowding. It is these factors that are thought to contribute to increased stress. It is important to note that urbanization or population density alone does not cause mental health problems. It is the combination of urbanization with physical and social risk factors that contribute to mental health problems. As cities continue to expand it is important to consider and account for mental health along with other public health measures that accompany urbanization.

Changing forms

Different forms of urbanization can be classified depending on the style of architecture and planning methods as well as historic growth of areas.

In cities of the developed world urbanization traditionally exhibited a concentration of human activities and settlements around the downtown area, the so-called in-migration. In-migration refers to migration from former colonies and similar places. The fact that many immigrants settle in impoverished city centres led to the notion of the "peripheralization of the core", which simply describes that people who used to be at the periphery of the former empires now live right in the center. 

Recent developments, such as inner-city redevelopment schemes, mean that new arrivals in cities no longer necessarily settle in the centre. In some developed regions, the reverse effect, originally called counter urbanization has occurred, with cities losing population to rural areas, and is particularly common for richer families. This has been possible because of improved communications, and has been caused by factors such as the fear of crime and poor urban environments. It has contributed to the phenomenon of shrinking cities experienced by some parts of the industrialized world.

When the residential area shifts outward, this is called suburbanization. A number of researchers and writers suggest that suburbanization has gone so far to form new points of concentration outside the downtown both in developed and developing countries such as India. This networked, poly-centric form of concentration is considered by some emerging pattern of urbanization. It is called variously exurbia, edge city (Garreau, 1991), network city (Batten, 1995), or postmodern city (Dear, 2000). Los Angeles is the best-known example of this type of urbanization. In the United States, this process has reversed as of 2011, with "re-urbanization" occurring as suburban flight due to chronically high transport costs.

Rural migrants are attracted by the possibilities that cities can offer, but often settle in shanty towns and experience extreme poverty. The inability of countries to provide adequate housing for these rural migrants is related to overurbanization, a phenomenon in which the rate of urbanization grows more rapidly than the rate of economic development, leading to high unemployment and high demand for resources. In the 1980s, this was attempted to be tackled with the urban bias theory which was promoted by Michael Lipton.

...the most important class conflict in the poor countries of the world today is not between labour and capital. Nor is it between foreign and national interests. It is between rural classes and urban classes. The rural sector contains most of the poverty and most of the low-cost sources of potential advance; but the urban sector contains most of the articulateness, organization and power. So the urban classes have been able to win most of the rounds of the struggle with the countryside...". — Michael Lipton, author of urban bias theory

Most of the urban poor in developing countries unable to find work, can spend their lives in insecure, poorly paid jobs. According to research by the Overseas Development Institute pro-poor urbanization will require labour-intensive growth, supported by labor protection, flexible land use regulation and investments in basic services.'

Urbanization can be planned urbanization or organic. Planned urbanization, i.e.: planned community or the garden city movement, is based on an advance plan, which can be prepared for military, aesthetic, economic or urban design reasons. Examples can be seen in many ancient cities; although with exploration came the collision of nations, which meant that many invaded cities took on the desired planned characteristics of their occupiers. Many ancient organic cities experienced redevelopment for military and economic purposes, new roads carved through the cities, and new parcels of land were cordoned off serving various planned purposes giving cities distinctive geometric designs. UN agencies prefer to see urban infrastructure installed before urbanization occurs. Landscape planners are responsible for landscape infrastructure (public parks, sustainable urban drainage systems, greenways etc.) which can be planned before urbanization takes place, or afterward to revitalize an area and create greater livability within a region. Concepts of control of the urban expansion are considered in the American Institute of Planners. 

As population continues to grow and urbanize at unprecedented rates, new urbanism and smart growth techniques are implemented to create a transition into developing environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable cities. Smart Growth and New Urbanism’s principles include walkability, mixed-use development, comfortable high-density design, land conservation, social equity, and economic diversity. Mixed-use communities work to fight gentrification with affordable housing to promote social equity, decrease automobile dependency to lower use of fossil fuels, and promote a localized economy. Walkable communities have a 38% higher average GDP per capita than less walkable urban metros (Leinberger, Lynch). By combining economic, environmental, and social sustainability, cities will become equitable, resilient, and more appealing than urban sprawl that overuses land, promotes automobile use, and segregates the population economically.