Event at USP debates and questions if “Cities” can be called “Smart”

Experts and researchers discuss the challenges and opportunities towards the so-called Smart Cities, that is, the cities “with effective integration of physical, digital, and human systems in building up an environment designed to provide a sustainable, prosper, and inclusive future for their citizens.”

Currently, Cities can be understood as complex systems characterized by massive numbers of interconnected citizens, businesses, different ways of transportation, communication nets, and services and utilities.

However, there is no unanimity over the classification used (smart, intelligent, virtual, ubiquitous, or digital cities), nor over the concept of Smart City, or the coverage of its meaning. This casts doubts whether the “Smart Cities” are really intelligent.

Although there is no formal and widely accepted definition, the final objective is to make a better use of public resources, increasing the quality of services rendered to the citizens, reducing the operational costs of the public administration in an environmentally sustainable manner. However, the debate remains open, and, aiming to disclose it, the Study Center Society and Technology (CEST) together with the Internet Lab held a seminar about the subject at the Polytechnic School of Engineering, USP, on June 23, at 8.30am.

According to Prof. Dr. Clovis Alvarenga-Netto, researcher of the subject and CEST collaborator, the concept and implications towards the citizens’ lives are still little consolidated in several places, among which is Brazil. That is why the debate must take place. “One can analyze the degree of intelligence of a city according to the parameters of economy, human capital, technology, environment, mobility and transportation, governance, urban planning, and public administration. The focal point of those dimensions is the fact that they are all turned towards the improvement of services rendered to the society, which can be called “Servitization” (approximate translation, “Servicing”), aiming to the sustainable development”, he said.

Several companies and governments are already aware of this process, may the perspectives of which be economical, environmental, social, of market, of technology, and of knowledge. The technical, juridical, urbanist, and organizational difficulties related to the Smart Cities, as well as the opportunities and challenges related to the sustainable development and even to the academic research are shown to the public. A concrete case of a city citizen is the driving force of the debate, and from it the implications and actions necessary to each one of the actors of this big stage of the City are discussed.

Panelists/debaters in the areas of Engineering, Law, Urbanism, Communications, Psychiatry, Rules and Standards, professionals of the academic world, Ministry of the Cities, and companies such as Google and Microsoft participated in the event. “Two prominence points of recent researches are that: 1) the geographical variables demonstrate that each local place has its own strategy of intelligence; thus, exporting “better practices” cannot easily happen; 2) there seems to be no correlation between intelligent initiatives and the size of population; but with the demographic density. This provokes new challenges for big populational agglomerations such as São Paulo”, said Alvarenga-Netto.