Introduction
The digital revolution has brought about numerous changes in the urban realm. In turn, these changes have brought about tangible solutions to a range of issues ranging from social, economic, political and environmental issues. For instance, in the social realm, there is much progress in achieving inclusivity and equity in terms of housing, provision of services like waste management, distribution of resources like water, energy and in provision of health services. Economically, the digital revolution has inspired numerous innovations like car sharingāwhich is now widely adopted across various geographies and amongst others, it has inspired the emergence of digital financial transaction, influenced new innovations in the tourism industry, in the conservation and consumption of cultural heritage and art to name a few. These revolutions, in turn, have influenced the creation of new businesses, provided new opportunities for job creation, and allowed local and national governments to expand their revenue bases. On the environmental front, there are numerous initiatives like the adoption of alternative energy, the greening of cities, the ability to predict and monitor weather conditions in real-time among other things that are helping conserve the environment.
Those positive impacts have been experienced progressively, even as urban concepts continued to change; moving from the initial concept of Global city, to Sustainable City, the Resilient City, to the Creative City and to, most recently, Smart Cities (Hatuka et al. 2018). The Smart City concept is seen to be the most progressive of those concepts, and it has been around for a few years. For instance, it is argued that it started in 2009 in the city of Santander, Spain with over 20,000 sensors distributed throughout its urban landscape (Hartwig 2020). However, its adoption has been slow, and has been criticized for various reasons. One reason that critiques have cited is the emphasis on making everything new in the city. This ideology goes against the concept of sustainability and the need for connectedness that are attributed to smart cities. That is, in the pursuit of newness, Jacobs (1961) has shown that most well-thought traditional infrastructures, building and streets among others are compromised. In most cases, they are demolished to give way for new developments and this renders cities into āhuman trapsā as they end up with no physical linkage between people; thus, constricting human physical relationships, which can be further accentuated with the aid of technology. For instance, McSpadden (2018) argues that in a city like Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, a population of over 13 million people is controlled by just a few people sitting in a room full of screens showing images obtained from thousands of cameras and sensors installed a cross the city. On this, Weber (2019) highlights that, of importance, urban managers need to be concentrating on making urban residents smarter, and this would help achieve concept of smart city quicker, that it would when relying on data.
While its adoption has shown potentials in various areas, it remains a prominent challenge for policy makers to implement the Smart City concept. In most cases, this has been left in the hands of ICT corporations whose missions and goals are seen to primarily maximize their revenues. Thereby, they ensure that the smart products they install in most cities are customized to ride on individual platforms that seldom support open data sharing; thus, making it hard for product cohabitation among various systems. This has then led to increased calls for standardization of protocols and networks to allow the unlocking the true potential for smart cities (Allam and Jones 2020; Allam 2019). Doing this would allow for unfettered installation of emerging technologies like IoT and 5G among others. With many of these, Norman (2018) highlights that the emergence of a new concept āAutonomous Citiesā may be in the offing, and with this, cities would not only collect data from the various smart devices and technologies but would also have the ability to process them for insights and in some cases, enact on those decisions. However, this concept will need bridging on already existing barriers both in legislation, policy, and politics as this will mean giving the city the power to remediate on emerging issues and concerns without the need for human interventions.
While automating cities would have numerous benefits, including increasing efficiencies, increasing potential to install smart technologies, and providing new business frontiers like in the tourism sectors, they would have some negatives that need to be addressed. First, as noted above, such a concept needs to be regulated by having ample and appropriate legislations and policies that would among other things define the boundaries within which such a concept can be actualized. This, as noted by Frank et al. (2018), is important as automating cities may lead to the compromise of numerous humanistic aspects like liveability, human physical interactions and the āwholenessā that should come along with built fractals. On this, (Kamel Boulos et al. 2015) add that automation of cities may in some instances lead to mechanical environments that only increase human seclusion and dilute the intended outcomes of having a vibrant and liveable urban environment. Hawksworth et al. (2018) argue that automation would also have some negative bearing in the employment sector, with a sizeable number of people employed in areas like waste management, transport sectors, and other service industries facing the reality of being rendered jobless. This point affirms the need for proactive legislation and policies that would ensure that as those peopleābeing replaced in their job areas by machines, the urban environment, are provided with a robust mechanism allowing them to transition to other, or secure new, job opportunities.
However, on the positive side, automation of urban fabric is hailed for the potential it holds in areas like addressing transportation challenges that numerous cities face, especially due to the high urban population that are always on the move. The concept has the potential in helping urban areas solve the ever increasing waste management challenges, and in turn help promote areas like circular economy, which in the long-run, would help in better addressing joblessness by encouraging job transitions after the automation of this sector. The environment is also among the main beneficiaries of automation, as the circular economy that will be promoted as a result will help in, among other things, minimizing waste, emphasize the adoption of renewable sources and promote upcycling and recycling of materials. Anttiroiko et al. (2014) note that the achievement of such benefits would be accentuated, especially with the application of Artificial Intelligent (AI) technologies that are at the heart of smart city concepts, and also that are expected to play a key role in automated cities concepts.
One prominent area that automation of city is expected to play a key role is in addressing the challenge of climate change. Murali (2020) notes that through digitization, cities are becoming smart in areas like energy consumption, waste management, resource consumption, compact building among others, and these are expected to get better in automated cities. To sum the benefits, improvements and efficiencies in those areas are expected to have positive bearings in reduction of emissions, destruction of natural resources and excessive exploitation of the ecology. By achieving these, urban areas are then seen as source of the solution to climate change. For instance, in the recent past, it has become normal for people to work from home due to the availability of cutting-edge technologies, allowing for video conferencing, and remote access to workplaces. Such approaches reduce vehicular activities, which in turn means a reduction in the amount of emissions, and energy consumption; all to the good of the environment.
The issue of climate change, however, is intricate and would require concerted efforts from different stakeholders. For cities, the issue of connectivity needs to be robust and void of issues like unstandardized protocols and networks that make it hard for devices to communicate or share data. Therefore this book emphasizes the need for enactment of legislations and policies that would help lift the lid in data sharing. Such also need to ensure that contracted ICT corporations are not after their own profit-oriented interests, but are in tandem with the objectives of helping urban areas achieve the goal of being smart, more so by not only installing said technologies, but also by getting returns, beyond monetary forms, from such investments. In addition, the concept of Smart Cities being pursued should assist cities be more cohesive, inclusive, sustainable, and safe as anticipated in the SDG 11 and in the New Urban Agenda document.
Some of the ideas (like those of automated cities) discussed in this book may seem futurist, but, they may be well close to being actualized; hence, underlining the urgent need for discussions on the matter. On this, this book has taken heed to introduce the topic, discuss the numerous potentials the use of technology has on the actualization of Smart City concept and highlighted some of the potential areas of concerns. In this regard, this book is organized such that the Chap. 2 discusses how different technologies like Big Data, AI and others are aiding in the rise of autonomous Smart Cities. Chapter 3 discusses in depth how those technologies help achieve complexity and connectivity in the Smart cities which Chap. 4 delve deeper in showing how achieving the āSmartā agenda in a city help in uplifting the economic aspect of the city and its residents and how that could be affected if the concept of capitalism, more so ...
