Global Site Search
Our third-annual Smart Cities Week D.C. is coming up Oct. 3-5 in Washington, D.C. The world’s leading smart cities experts will converge there, sharing advice and practical steps you can take to make your city more livable, workable and sustainable....
Article - 09/15/2017
Active Region(s): North America
Category: Examples and case studies
Citizen mobility is one of the key issues in a city like Pune. The city relies solely on buses for public transportation, but the average number of buses per lakh population is only 37! Additionally, buses in Pune have issues with availability (...
Article - 07/27/2017
Active Region(s): India
Category: Transportation, Citizen engagement, Connectivity, Data management, Examples and case studies
Smarter use of technology is helping Seattle making significant progress in everything from moving people through the city’s downtown core to more effectively dealing with storm water. Michael Mattmiller, who has served as the city’s Chief...
Article - 09/06/2016
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Examples and case studies
GE has just set up a demonstration street light in New York that talks to passers-by. Yes, it's a bit of a gimmick — in actual deployments, the street lights will talk to your smartphone, not to you in person.But it's a valuable gimmick. First, it's...
Article - 12/02/2015
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Citizen engagement, Computing resources, Interoperability, Examples and case studies
Urban planning is often an exercise in extrapolation. We extend current trends to guess where they will be in the future. But that may not work for traffic planning, at least according to a survey of Boston professionals. The younger generation...
Article - 11/13/2015
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Transportation, Examples and case studies
The London Underground planned on five weeks of tests to see how much energy it could collect when the trains braked on their approach to a substation. Just one week into the trial, the potential benefits of recycling energy were so strong that the...
Article - 10/02/2015
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Examples and case studies
Kamikatsu, a small village in the mountains of Shikoku Island in south-west Japan, aims at being the country's first 'Zero Waste' community by 2020. And going by the pace of implementation so far, it seems that the Japanese' town is very much on the...
Article - 09/07/2015
Active Region(s): India
Category: Smart City Concepts, Waste management, Citizen engagement, Examples and case studies
The Thane Municipal Corporation has undertaken a host of initiatives across various sectors to improve the quality of life of residents.Solid waste management (SWM)Solid waste generation in the TMC area is around 650 MT per day. In addition to...
Article - 09/01/2015
Active Region(s): India
Category: Examples and case studies
Once called the dirtiest city in India, Surat achieved a remarkable transformation in less than two years after the plague of December 1994 owing to improved municipal management and strong leadership. Following the outbreak of the plague in the...
Article - 09/01/2015
Active Region(s): India
Category: Examples and case studies
The Navi Mumbai Airport Influence Notified Area, or NAINA, was created after the Ministry of Environment and Forest lay down 53 conditions to be met before it granted clearances for the Navi Mumbai Airport. Among them was that Navi Mumbai’s...
Article - 09/01/2015
Active Region(s): India
Category: Examples and case studies
As we age, we tend to get a little self-conscious about how we look. That’s also a bit true of Singapore, which is turning 50 this month. And it’s celebrating with a truly extreme makeover –- reinventing itself inside and out.The city state is going...
Article - 08/05/2015
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Economic development, Analytics, Examples and case studies
How would you replace your old streetlights with new LEDs for just $1 apiece? That’s the deal some cities are getting and it’s helping to further reduce the already short payback period on the energy-efficient lights.In Massachusetts, Andover city...
Article - 07/24/2015
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Energy, Public safety and security, Examples and case studies
Whether forced to by severe weather or a collapsing economy, or voluntarily by a desire to live with less impact, a number of cities are trying to transform themselves. Here are five inspiring projects from among the dozen that make up EcoDistricts’...
Article - 05/01/2015
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Built environment, Economic development, Citizen engagement, Examples and case studies
From instantaneous business information to solutions that put data in the fog and pull insights out, Council partners demonstrated a variety of technologies at the Smart Cities Now event in Charlotte, NC -- technologies that are already paying off...
Article - 03/27/2015
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Connectivity, Examples and case studies
Looking for money to help fund a smart cities initiative? You may already have it. It just may be going down the drain.Itron CEO Philip Mezey told participants at the Council's Smart Cities Now forum in Charlotte, North Carolina this week that North...
Article - 03/25/2015
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Economic development, Water and wastewater, Citizen engagement, Policy and leadership, Examples and case studies, SCC Spotlight Cities
Sorting trash is certainly a dirty job. Thanks to a project that’s already in the prototype phase, however, it may not have to be for much longer.Council Associate Partner Veolia is testing a new remote operated sorting system where a touch screen...
Article - 03/11/2015
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Waste management, Examples and case studies
As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, cities are having to make dramatic infrastructure improvements to support all of their new citizens. That’s costly, but cities have no choice but to find the funding. The New Cities Foundation says cities...
Article - 02/25/2015
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Finance and procurement, Policy and leadership, Examples and case studies
The Australian city of Adelaide in June launched AdelaideFree, a wholesale makeover of its free citywide WiFi network. This public-private joint venture involved installing nearly 200 new wireless access points from SCC Lead Partner Cisco. Another...
Article - 08/27/2014
Active Region(s): Main, Australia - New Zealand, North America
Category: Built environment, Connectivity, Policy and leadership, Examples and case studies
It seems like an odd assortment of issues, but Chicago officials say the Internet of Everything is helping them solve everything from crime and traffic congestion to staffing challenges and pest control.Chicago got a chance to show off this week at...
Article - 07/25/2014
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Built environment, Public safety and security, Transportation, Analytics, Connectivity, Examples and case studies
The city of Suzhou in China's Jiangsu Province won the 2014 Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize, which honors outstanding contributions towards creating livable and sustainable urban communities around the world. The prize is named after Singapore's first...
Article - 04/04/2014
Active Region(s): Main
Category: Built environment, Economic development, Health and human services, Public safety and security, Examples and case studies
By Charlene ParksWalk through the streets of San Francisco and you'll see an inordinate number of recycling bins. San Francisco has earned the highest recycling rate in the U.S., reusing nearly 80 percent of its waste. "Innovative policies,...
Article - 03/05/2014
Active Region(s): Main
Category: Built environment, Transportation, Waste management, Examples and case studies
Everywhere you go, you read advice telling cities to use social media (we say it here at Smart Cities Council all the time). But using social media is one thing. Getting citizens to read it is another. The Governing.com post summarized below has...
Article - 10/16/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Public safety and security, Citizen engagement, Connectivity, Policy and leadership, Examples and case studies
Glasgow, Scotland competed with 29 other UK cities to win the Future Cities Demonstrator designation from the UK's Technology Strategy Board, along with roughly $38 million to help finance its ideas. What were the ideas that brought Glasgow to the...
Article - 09/25/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Energy, Health and human services, Public safety and security, Transportation, Analytics, Examples and case studies
Take a look at the remarkable progress of China's Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP). China's Ministry of Commerce ranks SIP as the most competitive industrial park in the country. I think it's the most competitive in the world. I predict you will agree...
Article - 09/23/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Built environment, Economic development, Connectivity, Data management, Policy and leadership, Examples and case studies
You may realize that a smart grid is an essential part of a smart city. You may even have heard of smart meters, which measure the amount of power used by a customer and report back to the utility. But the meter is not the only part of the electric...
Article - 09/19/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Energy, Instrumentation and control, Examples and case studies
You will enjoy the video below and this post from ArchDaily, the world's most visited architecture site. They describe a "smart highway" project that won a prestigious design award. I walked away with two reminders. First, we already have plenty of...
Article - 09/04/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Transportation, Analytics, Data management, Instrumentation and control, Examples and case studies
As you may know, the Smart Cities Council is preparing Version 1.0 of its Readiness Guide for launch in fall 2013. In that handbook, we warn cities that technology is not an end in itself. Rather, technology should be in service to a city's larger...
Article - 08/14/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Economic development, Policy and leadership, Examples and case studies
As you will see from the announcement below, cloud computing is making it possible for virtually any city to have big-boy computing capabilities. Previously, a city had to have a large IT staff and racks of servers to create enterprise-scale...
Article - 06/18/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Economic development, Computing resources, Examples and case studies
We see it over and over again. The real breakthroughs come not merely from technology but from technology guided by strong leadership and comprehensive citizen engagement. That's why you'll want to read this short piece that highlights the...
Article - 06/10/2013
Active Region(s): Main
Category: Transportation, Citizen engagement, Policy and leadership, Examples and case studies
If you have been following the progress of urban transformation over the past few years, then you have undoubtedly encountered the story of Zappos.com and its plan to renew Las Vegas old downtown area.Many publications have documented the project,...
Article - 05/21/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Built environment, Economic development, Health and human services, Finance and procurement, Examples and case studies
Microsoft's foray into smart building management represents the holy grail -- namely, an application that improves sustainability and improves resident satisfaction while also paying for itself. If we can help cities get started with high-payoff...
Article - 04/23/2013
Active Region(s): Main, North America
Category: Built environment, Energy, Analytics, Data management, Instrumentation and control, Examples and case studies