Planning the smart city

"The 100 years from 1950 to 2050 will be remembered for the greatest social, cultural, economic and environmental transformation in history - the urbanisation of humanity. With half of us now occupying urban space, the future of humanity is tied to the city." - Anna Tibaijuka, former UN Under-Secretary-General Today the total population of the world is around 7 billion people, and this figure is growing by approximately 0.7% a year. By 2009 the number of people living in cities exceeded the number in rural areas. By 2050 world population is expected to reach 9.1 billion, of whom almost 70% will live in cities - implying that the urban population will grow by approximately 1.5% a year. This rapid urbanisation creates opportunities, but also a number of challenges to address in the decades to come. Opportunities exist in developing new efficient urban infrastructures optimised in terms of economic activity, energy consumption and environmental impacts. However, only new and emerging cities can truly be made smart; redesigning existing cities will always involve compromises between existing solutions and new activities. In the following sections we look in more detail at the idea of the smart city and discuss a couple of examples.