James Jeansonne

Thanks for sharing Chand! Really enjoyed how you outlined both benefits and troubles with the concept of smart cities.
One of the biggest smart city initiatives that comes to mind is California’s ban on the sale of gas cars in 2035. Obviously once this ban goes into effect, electric vehicles will become far more common in the state of California. It may also lead to other states to follow the same initiative, which personally – I think would be a good thing. With electric vehicles taking up the road: smart technology would be more prominent for car consumers, but would also be a big step towards reducing our world’s terrible reliance on greenhouse gas emission-vehicles.

Wow! This was really interesting! I had no idea “Smart cities” even existed and were beginning to take shape. I think with this innovations brings many obstacles as you talked about and I am not sure if I am onboard with this. I think it is a great idea but the cons may outweigh the pros. If our technology was more advanced and we were further along I would agree. I think implementing this technology is little pieces would be a great learning experience and also keep us learning more and more about the IoT. I think in the end this would be a great thing for cities to adopt one day but not until our technology and IoT is a little more developed.

As I was reading through your article, I had this feeling of something familiar about. Then I remembered I had read about some trouble Sidewalk Labs (a Google subsidiary) was having with the first ever smart city in Toronto. They were not trying to make the whole city smart, just a small section. They had been having trouble with privacy advocates for awhile. After reading your article I looked it up. They canceled the project as a result of COVID. The pandemic had too large of an impact on the local economy for Sidewalk Labs to turn a profit. I do think we will see a smart city in our life time. I also believe there will be a lot of benefits of a smart city, cost savings, lower crime, lower traffic, to name a few. However, I think the privacy piece is a big hurdle to overcome. People are becoming more aware of their data and how they want it managed. As this trend continues a smart city will have to find the balance between privacy and data usage.

I first heard about smart cities when talking about how IoT is being used in the transportation system. Many cities are implementing technology like this in their traffic lights in order to improve road safety. As technology is becoming more prevalent in our daily lives, the idea of a smart city won’t be a foreign thing. I do see some problems with it as you mentioned in your post. I wonder about the safety of the city as cybercrime and hacking become more advanced, what are some safeguards that would be put in place in order to protect the people who live in those cities.

Chand,

I have not previously put a lot of thought into the concept of smart cities so thank you for bringing this topic to our attention. I think the implication of IoT for the communication of natural disasters could be largely impactful and beneficial to many communities across the world. Yet I also think a road block in the application of this technology to the places that need it most would be a significant struggle. I would argue that the areas most affected by natural disasters lack technical infrastructure, and I think this already affects their awareness of natural disasters today. With the significant increase of tropical storms in the Atlantic this year, I have seen news articles discussing how many of these developing countries were not able to prepare for the events because of the lack of communication to reach all of their citizens.

For this reason I think the need for Iot is apparent, yet the marketing strategy would need to present a this need in order to establish a large amount of funding to make the implementation possible.

I think you did a great overview of smart cities and I wanted to share an interesting example I found for the city of Columbus. The department of transportation invested $90 million on an initiative to achieve the following 5 goals:

1. Connect citizens to services around the city
2. Increase usage of sustainable transportation
3. Have easier access to jobs
4. Reduce congestions using “smart logistics”
5. Provide real-time traffic updates so that commuters can improve their mobility

An example of improving mobility for both residents and visitors was the project that aimed on having a single application that allowed residents to pay for all modes of transportation. This app also allowed users to plan the most cost effective and fastest route as it would have “public transit, parking, bike-sharing, car-sharing, and ride-hailing services” all in one single system.

You can find more information in the resource below:

“NXP to Provide Smart City Technologies to Columbus, OH, Winner of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge: Columbus to use NXP Solutions, Including Real-Time Vehicle-to-Vehicle and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure Communication Systems and Secure Public Transportation Smart Cards for a More Intelligent Urban Transportation System.” NASDAQ OMX’s News Release Distribution Channel Jun 23 2016 ProQuest. 5 Dec. 2020 . Link https://search-proquest-com.libproxy.temple.edu/docview/1799047501?accountid=14270&pq-origsite=primo

As I was reading your post and when I think about IoT in general, I am left feeling torn between the exciting possibilities presented if our seemingly infinite data points generated daily could talk to each other and the fear of just what would be revealed! How much do we really want to know? (Press play on the “You can’t handle the truth!” clip from an Officer and a Gentleman.)
How efficient is too efficient when entire job markets are eliminated? Relative to marketing, I am literally rubbing my hands together loving the idea of being able to profile the market for segmentation and targeting, but the thought of being on the other end of that process still makes me feel less comfortable, yet I am not able to explain why.
I have to hope that not matter how connected our society becomes, we will still make room for differences. I have to hope that if it comes down to choosing technological advancement or the advancement and wellbeing of the human race, we will choose the obvious. I have to hope that the infinite possibilities presented by the internet of things will be used to increase the quality of life for all and allow us to live and work together more harmoniously. At the end of the day, it seems that we are racing towards this new reality, so we shall see…