Government’s Role in Growing a Smart City

Abstract

Our planet is urbanizing at a staggering rate: more than half the human population live in cities today, and the number is growing.¹ Today’s urban space is changing rapidly, as digital technologies and pervasive networks integrate with physical space. “Ubiquitous computing names the third wave in computing, just now beginning,” once noted Mark Weiser, Xerox Parc pioneer. “First were mainframes, each shared by lots of people. Now we are in the personal computing era, person and machine staring uneasily at each other across the desktop. Next comes ubiquitous computing, or the age of calm technology, when technology recedes into the background of our lives.”² Ubiquitous computing, with its so-called Internet of Things³ corollary, is creating a new urban condition: the smart city.