Smart cities case studies

Introduction:

Smart cities are the future of the way we live, there has been a significant increase in the world population since the last decade. There has been a rise in migration from rural to urban for a better standard of living or from underdeveloped country to a developed country for an increase in the quality of life and lifestyle. For instance, it has been predicted that due to internal migration in India, by the year 2050 the country’s population would reach to 1.7 billion. On the other hand, China also has a large population and the growth of population is increasing rapidly and it has been forecasted that by the year 2050 the country’s population would reach to 1.34 billion (Eremia, Toma & Sanduleac, 2017). The concept of smart cities was given by Rudolph Giffinger in 2007 who formed a smart city consisting of seventy cities in the European Union on the bases of urban features and producing city portfolios. These portfolios encompassed of 6 smart traits that are economy, the citizens, mobility, ecological system, governance and the living along with thirty one elements divided throughout the traits utilizing seventy five economic statistical pointers in order to produce an ultimate ranking (Repko & De Broux, 2012). 

History of the Innovative Product:

The idea of smart city first came up in 1627 in New Atlantis written by Francis Bacon in which he stated that modernism has taken its roots a century before Renaissance. In 1620 a book was written, The Novum Organum in which it was stated that science in terms of technology that can control nature according to the desire of the people. Bacon’s book portrays an island in which multiple scientists are working together for an entity known as Solomon’s House. This house is seen as a big laboratory in which the members work day and night to produce innovative products through technology. This book serves as a base for the future innovation and the writer gave an ideology about technological advancements of the traditional cities that would entail self driving automobiles, flying devices, under water transportation. Moreover, it directed towards the advancement of the environment that can be controlled through technology and can adjusted as humans desire (Curgurullo, 2018). As mentioned in the introduction the name smart city was coined by Rudolph Giffinger on the bases of six traits of the cities. The reason why this concept came into being because traditional cities are the main reason for ecological unrest due to the increase in the population all over the world. There have been many other writers who sought to find a solution to decrease the changes in the environment, to make the world green again and to transform the slums into an advanced area where everyone can be benefited with the endless opportunities. The work of the writers include Le Corbusier published “the city of tomorrow and its planning” in 1929 and Gottlieb Eliel Saarinen wrote “the city: its growth, its decay, its future” in 1943. These two books had a significant impact on the cities of Europe and North America (Eremia et al., 2017). The components of smart city include smart population, smart building, smart transport, smart governance, smart health care, smart energy and smart infrastructure. These components can contribute to advancement and development as well as maintaining the technical productivity of a smart city. The qualities of a smart city include Sustainability, Quality of Life, Urbanization and Smartness. The themes of it includes Community, Ecological System, Economy and Governance whereas the infrastructure of a smart city include Services, Physical and Information and Communication Technology (Mohanty, Choppali & Kougianos, 2016).

Linking Concepts to the Innovative Product:

Dominant Design:

The concept of dominant design is defined as an innovative product’s design that introduce a whole new category revolving around that product (Sirinivasan, Lilien & Rangaswamy, 2005). The technological advancement in the smart cities have enabled them to emerge themselves as a dominant design. A dominant design of smart city had been introduced for the individuals to have an idea what can be done to life a better life. Moreover, there has been some new features added to the smart cities that allow other investors to invest in that design rather than the original dominant design of the smart city. The original dominant design of a smart city was that through technological advancement the city includes six features in which other components were also added like smart health care and smart infrastructure. Moreover, tourism experience has been enhanced as it can influence the economic growth and the economy of the city (Curry, Dustdar, Sheng & Sheth, 2016).