This is the conclusion of MIT Technology Review’s latest report in collaboration with global media and digital marketing communications leader, Dentsu Aegis Network. The report, “Connectivity and QoL” looks at how digital consumer habits and ubiquitous technology are driving smart city development in
This is the conclusion of MIT Technology Review’s latest report in collaboration with global media and digital marketing communications leader, Dentsu Aegis Network. The report, “Connectivity and QoL” looks at how digital consumer habits and ubiquitous technology are driving smart city development in Asia Pacific.
The report is based on extensive in-market research efforts across eight key markets in the region – Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. It includes some two dozen in-depth interviews with senior executives in the economic development, communications services, information technology, and advertising and media industries. Key findings include:
- Asian governments and businesses are in many ways more willing to invest in experimental models that exploit new technologies, business models, and urban planning design, with “anchor” service sectors such as health care that can serve wider communities.
- Municipal governments in Asia are engaging the private sector in uniquely collaborative ways to build smart cities, based on a ‘value exchange’ where firms can meet their own branding and marketing objectives, while still contributing to the efficiency and quality of public service delivery.
- Leading Asian technology firms such as China’s Alibaba or Japan’s Panasonic are also using smart cities as R&D platforms, to experiment with new technologies - such as big data analytics or IoT and business models.
- Smart cities in Asia still face some development challenges: “greenfield” smart cities with no established commercial or social infrastructure often suffer from a lack of people willing to live in them, while making existing cities ‘smarter’ can prove extremely complex.
- Yet, concurrently pursuing both “green-” and “brown”-field initiatives means that economies in Asia will be able to develop urban environments which are more compelling for their current and future knowledge workers.
Examining the smart city efforts of eight Asian economies, the report found several best practices emerging in specific markets, including:
- Leveraging the cloud: Cloud computing infrastructure that enables fast and cost-effective application development is an essential foundation for smart cities is being developed regionally, particularly Mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore and increasingly India.
- Creating “open” ecosystems: Sydney, Australia, has been a leader in the promotion of public data as a common resource for smart city developers, as has Singapore.
- Consumer-driven application development: Creating open “sandbox” environments is a key to creating and prototyping applications that a city’s residents would find useful, many involving existing services like public transportation “powered” by advertising.
- IoT and sensor-based platforms: Established technology and device exporters such as Korea, Japan, and Taiwan are investing heavily in sensor- and device-based management to detect leaks, theft, or security breaches and to facilitate better, more personalized services for all consumers.
- Cashless economies: Efforts to migrate transaction payment to mobile platforms or frictionless card- or chip-based applications are emerging in Singapore, Taiwan, and India, and are growing particularly fast in China, driven by pervasive and powerful social media applications like WeChat.