Smart Cities

Many city councils in New Zealand are working towards creating “Smart cities”. Implementing the smart city concept involves a city installing large amounts of cameras and sensors with the aim of data collection, automation, monitoring, and management of the city’s infrastructure. More controversially, the smart city would be used to monitor and managing human populations within those cities. The smart city concept is related to the emerging “Internet of Things” (IoT) concept of networked monitoring devices installed throughout society. Smart cities and “Internet of Things” are associated with surveillance and privacy issues as well as network security risks.

This is how National Geographic Education describes Smart Cities:

“Today, cities are getting “smarter” to provide for improved delivery and quality of services through continuous monitoring of residents and infrastructure, and relatively instantaneous communication of suboptimal performance. To a large extent, this requires heavy reliance on automation, connectivity to the internet, and what is referred to as the “Internet of Things (IoT).” (Internet of Things refers to connecting devices to the internet that can be controlled or can be used to send control information).

A smart city, then, is a city in which a suite of sensors (typically hundreds or thousands) is deployed to collect electronic data from and about people and infrastructure so as to improve efficiency and quality of life. Residents and city workers, in turn, may be provided with apps that allow them to access city services, receive and issue reports of outages, accidents, and crimes, pay taxes, fees, and the like. In the smart city, energy efficiency and sustainability are emphasized.”

15-minute cities and 20-minute cities

“15-minute cities” is a more recent urban planning concept reportedly termed by Professor Carlos Moreno in 2016. In Australia and New Zealand the terms “20-minute city” or “20-minute neighbourhood” are more commonly used by city councils, advocates, and consultants.

Promoters will describe the concept as “The 15-minute city is a new urban model that promotes a human-centric and environmentally sustainable urban future.”Professor Iain White describes it with:

“In simple terms, it is about living locally and aiming to give you most of what you need for a good life within a 20-minute walk, cycle, or public transport trip from home. So things such as local employment, shopping, health and community facilities, education, playgrounds or parks should all be easily accessible by everyone”.

Both proponents and opponents of the 15- and 20-minute city concepts link the concepts to the older “smart city” concept. Despite the nice-sounding wording and proposed benefits used to promote the 15- and 20-minute city concepts, there has been considerable opposition to the concepts in many countries. Much opposition has focused around city councils proposing or implementing restrictions on private vehicle travel.

In the New Zealand context, an engineering/consultancy firm named WSP produced a document called “20-min city in Aotearoa”. This document mostly focused on promoting the potential positive aspects of the urban planning concepts and how the concept could be implemented in local cities. However, this document also contained a section on “Opposition to change” which focused on “identifying mitigation strategies” to manage potential opposition from residents and travellers. This section used international examples and proposes that the issue of “Measures to reduce private vehicle travel are seen as a threat, a loss” could be mitigated by “A staged, gradual model that makes it increasingly difficult to drive or get around by car, with strong alternatives in place”. Similarly, the document proposes a mitigation strategy of “Removal of on street car parking and replaced with public realm installations – playgrounds, cultural events” as a response to the issue of a “Ban on cars seen as too dramatic”. Behind the pleasant, promotional language used to market the 15- and 20-minute concepts to people and officials, a strategy of incrementalism is being used in an effort to reduce public resistance to the longer-term plans of restricting and reducing private automobile travel.