Admittedly, I’ve been a bit of a sucker for many of the smart-city ideas that I’ve heard over the years. Putting sensors in public garbage cans, so cities can be more efficient about scheduling pickups? Cool! Lampposts on streets being used for car-charging or cellphone transmission points? Ooh, multi-tasking! Open-data collection that allows anyone to map the neighbourhoods making the most calls about coyote sightings or parking gripes? I like! Computer modelling programs that tell officials where crowds are likely to form at major public events, so they can plan how to contain or disperse them? That idea, used during the 2010 Winter Olympics, seems . . . well, smart.
But I’ve also been unnerved by the smart-city hype that has flooded my inbox for the past ten years: the invitations to international conferences focused on all the new tech, along with the glowing reports of how this or that thing, produced by this or that company, is revolutionizing life for the...
Frances Bula has covered Vancouver city politics and development for the last thirty years. Her reporting regularly appears in BCBusiness and the Globe and Mail.
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