Smart Cities: Accelerating Sustainable Development Agenda

Continuing with my previous editorial notes on smart cities and technology advancement, this note discusses how smart cities can be enablers to achieving sustainable development agendas. Smart cities harness technological and digital solutions to address urban challenges and continuously improve citizens’ quality of life. The key benefits of smart cities include maximizing benefit optimization and resource efficiency, creating sustainable built environments and infrastructure, increasing citizens’ productivity, and producing better social, economic, and environmental benefits. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) for actionable insights into improving the planning, construction, and operations of city development has provided citizens with more efficient, integrated, and sustainable city services. Smart cities promote equitable access to education, healthcare, and social services, creating a more inclusive and resilient society. Smart cities are able to deliver better services to their citizens. Big data—data collection and utilization—for different areas of public services are integrated, secured, and constantly updated to solve city problems and create faster solutions. Through the Internet of Things (IoT), sensors, and online platforms, the city can be continuously monitored and measured. This allows any policy and required action to be quickly decided upon to ensure a sustainable, positive impact on the city and its residents. Surveillance systems, early warning systems, and citizen collaboration platforms are among the pathways that are capable of preserving the city’s ecosystem and environment. For example, part of the ongoing development of Indonesia’s new capital, Nusantara, is dedicated to building a smart, sustainable forest city. Besides infrastructure and physical buildings as the city’s backbone (hardware) and integrated systems that enable the city to operate by connecting physical buildings through digital technology (software), they aim to build the capacity and capability of human resources through technological advancement (brainware). The six sectoral domains of the Nusantara smart city include smart governance, smart transportation and mobility, smart living, smart natural resources, smart industry and people, and smart built environments and infrastructure. Innovative technology use is required to balance economic advancement and environmental regeneration for social well-being. Science and technology play a significant role in achieving sustainable smart cities by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of new ways of development. Investments in green technology, streamlined processes, safer materials, and improved performances and outcomes are some of the results of such development. Technological investments in utilizing renewable energy resources, building urban water systems and sustainable public infrastructure, increasing food production, and producing environmentally friendly materials and products are the pathways through which smart technology will significantly contribute to achieving sustainable development targets.