Smart City Survey 2021
An insight into the problems that smart cities solve for their citizens
Smart Cities
Cities survive us, and we survive in cities. In fact, cities are good for us. The level of humanity applied to a wide range of technologies determines how smart cities are in solving everyday problems for visitors and inhabitants alike – in saving, spending and receiving money whilst moving around the city, in doing business in the city and in building a cleaner, safer, happier life. Niche focused projects built on future facing foundations, that interconnect with one another as they grow – with identity and payments at the core – seem to be the way to go in ‘bridging real life to digital’ for citizens around the world.
As we continue to work around the world to empower our clients and make their customers’ lives safer and more convenient, we are delighted to share these insights with you and hopefully inspire you on your journey forward. As per the famed city author Edward Glaeser: “Cities are about people, not structures”. BPC’s 1000 citizens look forward to continue the dialogue with you.
Anatoly Loginov
Chairman & CEO BPC
A passion for Smart Cities
With world-leading cities as role models, delivering a smart city experience is a top priority for government leaders across the globe. Delivering on this vision implies improving the lives of citizens and visitors, in the way they move, commute, experience and live. Mobility often sits at the heart of economic growth and being able to react in both a sustainable as well as an agile manner to the changing needs is of paramount importance to governments and private and public transportation companies.
Asia
Africa
Middle East
Europe
Americas
Kigali Innovation City Kigali, Rwanda
In 2019 this survey covered Rwanda’s ARED ‘mobile smart city’ initiative, which is now expanding into Uganda. Rwanda remains active and focused on leapfrogging many economic and social challenges and the city of Kigali is aspiring to bring together some of the brightest tech talents in Africa. Bundling forces, Kigali and Africa50 envision to create the Silicon Valley of Africa. The Rwandan government valued the project around 2 billion US$ and expects to house world-class universities, technology companies, biotech firms, commercial and retail real estate. The construction project of the Kigali Innovation City will create 50 thousand jobs.
Smart City Konza TechnopoliS Konza, Kenya
Konza Technopolis is the flagship project of Kenya Vision 2030 in the economic development portfolio. The smart city is being built from scratch and started to house its first incumbents in 2020.
Konza will be a city thriving on information, interconnection, and sustainability. Through a reliable infrastructure and a dedicated ICT department, Konza hopes to build a world-class city for the future.
Smart City Hangzhou - City Brain Hangzhou, China
Hangzhou, 180 kilometers southwest of Shanghai and home to over 10 million residents, is a good example of a smart city. The government’s partnerships with listed tech giants is of particular significance. In collaboration with Alibaba, which has its headquarters in the city, Hangzhou creates and improves city smartness. Among other initiatives, Alibaba’s mobile payment app Alipay has turned Hangzhou into a cashless city. Furthermore, Alibaba connects traffic signals, video intersection cameras, and GPS data to the firm’s cloud data lake.
Smart City - geoBingAn Public Return Platform
Taipei, Taiwan
Building Taipei into a livable city, the municipality develops a smart solution-based ecosystem while adapting a sandbox approach - creating a testing environment for new innovative smart city solutions and allowing room for test and fail. The city encourages public participation and public-private partnerships to create new smart solutions by using data and technology.
Smart Nation - TraceTogether Programme
Singapore, Republic of Singapore
Smart City Singapore is probably best known for its SingPass, a 2FA enabled national digital identity initiative that sits at the heart of a range of services. What is very ‘smart’ about Singapore is the way they embrace the end user. For instance, when the app moved to two-factor authentication it offered three methods for users to choose from and citizens like seniors could enroll in digital classes offered in most community centers for free.
Smart city Abu Dhabi - Masdar City Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Established on 7 square kilometers, Masdar City will be home to about 50,000 inhabitants and will cost 22 billion US$. As a hydrocarbon producer, Abu Dhabi has traditionally played a leading role in the world’s energy markets. Its Economic Vision 2030 is committed to developing one of the most sustainable cities in the world, which will also be an attractive and economically flourishing place to live. When fully developed, Masdar City should be self-sufficient, with zero emission and zero waste.
Smart Dubai - The Dubai Blockchain Strategy Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Dubai, one of the Arabian Emirates, is an international hub with a lot of sustainable and smart city activity. The 2019
Survey covered the application Dubai Now, covering government services through a payment infrastructure. Today Dubai Now resides on over 500,000 citizens’ smartphones and with over 7.5 million transactions last year, it is safe to say that the application is well-used in Dubai. As of 23rd of July 2020, the application generated 1,088 billion US$ from its users. If a citizen runs a red light, the invoice is coupled with his/her social security number and this will show in the application leading the payer to an instant payment.
Digital City
Rec, Barcelona Social Currency
Barcelona, Spain
As one of the most important touristic and economic cities of Spain, Barcelona exceeds expectations on levels of smartness, which it will also need to deploy to face the impact of the pandemic. With around 2.1 million inhabitants, different smart aspects of the city are efficiently managed by the municipality. From managing lighting to trash bins, parking spots or even commencing with new ‘social currencies’, Barcelona has definitely earned a place of honour in the Smart City Survey 2021.
Smart City Zurich - LoRaWAN
Zurich, Switzerland
The city of Zurich inhabits 1,383 million people and was the runner-up in the Smart City Challenge 2019. The Swiss city’s smart project covers multiple functionalities, which are linked to their Zurich citizen account. The city wants to thrive through innovation and as such Smart City Zurich encompasses various projects within the city that empower the innovation and “smartening” of Zurich. The guiding principles are people-centered, connected and collaborative, open and sovereign.
Smart City Helsinki - Whim
Helsinki, Finland
Helsinki is repeatedly ranked as one of the most livable cities in the world and has one of the highest standards of living. Last year’s Smart City Survey already included Helsinki, recognizing their environmental consciousness, urban cleantech, smart living innovation labs (Smart Kalastama),
and smart mobility solutions (Forum Virium). In particular, Helsinki’s public transport system is well organized, including around 290 bus lines, 11 tram lines, transportation to the off-shore islands, and an ultra modern central train station. It is no surprise that private car traffic accounts for only 21% of transportation.
Americas
Europe
Middle East
Africa
Asia
Cleantech San Diego - Smart Port
San Diego, USA
Cleantech San Diego is an initiative set up by entrepreneurs of the California region. Close to the tech capital of the world Silicon Valley, Cleantech San Diego is a global leader in the cleantech economy and the smart cities movement. Contrary to other smart city initiatives, this is not a government owned initiative but a non-profit organization where members can join on different levels. The organization has the goal to innovate, educate, advocate, and collaborate. Interesting is the organization’s key performance indicator, which is measured in the number of jobs supported.
Ruta-N
Medellín, Colombia
Colombia’s multiple awarded second city Medellin is home to over two million people and held until the mid-nineties the badge of being the most dangerous city in the world. Yet, long before smart cities became the ‘it-thing’, Medellin embarked on a journey, aiming to bring about massive social change and opportunity on the back of a tough fight on crime. Since then the homicide rate has gone down to 5% (one-twentieth) of what is was before. More importantly, virtually everyone in the city (75% mobile adoption rate) now has full free access to healthcare, education, transportation, cultural activities and a range of economic initiatives such as buildings, online services, financing etc.
Smart City Austin - The Smart City Challenge
Austin, USA
Until recently, Austin’s infrastructure was not able to cope with the long commutes. But Austin decided to turn this challenge into an opportunity to make the city smarter. The Smart City Challenge includes several pilots and programs that improve economic opportunity, mobility, and innovation. The Affordable Housing project, for instance, uses data to analyze the housing market and demographics, and developed an online tool for citizens to search for affordable housing options. Furthermore, the Mobility Marketplace is the first step towards Mobility as a Service and a network of intelligent sensors is being installed to help transportation agencies to prevent monitor and solve traffic issues.
Around the world
special contributers
Tom groenfeldt
In his article Tom gives us collected views about the impact on cities from around the globe and where history might bring comfort.
Tom Groenfeldt (Sturgeon Bay, US) is a well- known and well-traveled journalist and author on all matters tech and fintech (Economist, New York Times, Forbes, International Finance Magazine, Banking Technology Magazine, e.g.). His pieces are mostly thought-provoking opening up new avenues of exploration, rather than closing them with firm conclusions. His keen interest in the arts and history make for a broad world view and an interesting read for experts and laymen alike.
Celent’s analyst Kieran Hines builds the bridge between smart city development and the technologies we have today and how they can cross fertilise each other. No payments without identity, and as such no government services without a payment infrastructure.
Kieran Hines
Of all the technology-led disruptions that have occurred over the past 20 years, one of the most influential has been the emergence of digital commerce. The convenience of being able to buy goods and services via mobile devices in particular upended the retail industry and its impact has since rippled across all sectors of the economy. Ultimately, this has led to consumers coming to expect that they can manage large parts of their lives through a mobile device. Banking, payments, utilities, and education are all industries that have been changed immeasurably as a result.
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Increasingly, mobility needs are linked to payments, identity and other public services. O-CITY brings these domains together in one knowledge and technology platform, with the aim to transform cities into smart eco-systems and networks. By now O-CITY operates in over 130 cities, from Nur-Sultan to Nairobi and Moscow handling 1 in 5 contactless payments made in public transport worldwide.
Smart City - geoBingAn Public
Return Platform
Taipei, Taiwan
Building Taipei into a livable city, the municipality develops a smart solution-based ecosystem while adapting a sandbox approach - creating a testing environment for new innovative smart city solutions and allowing room for test and fail. The city encourages public participation and public-private partnerships to create new smart solutions by using data and technology.
Konza Technopolis is the flagship project of Kenya Vision 2030 in the economic development portfolio. The smart city is being built from scratch and started to house its first incumbents in 2020. Konza will be a city thriving on information, interconnection, and sustainability. Through a reliable infrastructure and a dedicated ICT department, Konza hopes to build a world-class city for the future.
Smart City Konza TechnopoliS
Konza, Kenya
In 2019 this survey covered Rwanda’s ARED ‘mobile smart city’ initiative, which is now expanding into Uganda. Rwanda remains active and focused on leapfrogging many economic and social challenges and the city of Kigali is aspiring to bring together some of the brightest tech talents in Africa. Bundling forces, Kigali and Africa50 envision to create the Silicon Valley of Africa. The Rwandan government valued the project around 2 billion US$ and expects to house world-class universities, technology companies, biotech firms, commercial and retail real estate. The construction project of the Kigali Innovation City will create 50 thousand jobs.
Kigali Innovation City
Kigali, Rwanda
Dubai, one of the Arabian Emirates, is an international hub with a lot of sustainable and smart city activity. The 2019 Survey covered the application Dubai Now, covering government services through a payment infrastructure. Today Dubai Now resides on over 500,000 citizens’ smartphones and with over 7.5 million transactions last year, it is safe to say that the application is well-used in Dubai. As of 23rd of July 2020, the application generated 1,088 billion US$ from its users. If a citizen runs a red light, the invoice is coupled with his/her social security number and this will show in the application leading the payer to an instant payment.
Smart Dubai - The Dubai Blockchain Strategy Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Established on 7 square kilometers, Masdar City will be home to about 50,000 inhabitants and will cost 22 billion US$. As a hydrocarbon producer, Abu Dhabi has traditionally played a leading role in the world’s energy markets. Its Economic Vision 2030 is committed to developing one of the most sustainable cities in the world, which will also be an attractive and economically flourishing place to live. When fully developed, Masdar City should be self-sufficient, with zero emission and zero waste.
Smart city Abu Dhabi - Masdar City Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
As one of the most important touristic and economic cities of Spain, Barcelona exceeds expectations on levels of smartness, which it will also need to deploy to face the impact of the pandemic. With around 2.1 million inhabitants, different smart aspects of the city are efficiently managed by the municipality. From managing lighting to trash bins, parking spots or even commencing with new ‘social currencies’, Barcelona has definitely earned a place of honour in the Smart City Survey 2021.
Digital City
Rec, Barcelona Social Currency
Barcelona, Spain
The city of Zurich inhabits 1,383 million people and was the runner-up in the Smart City Challenge 2019. The Swiss city’s smart project covers multiple functionalities, which are linked to their Zurich citizen account. The city wants to thrive through innovation and as such Smart City Zurich encompasses various projects within the city that empower the innovation and “smartening” of Zurich. The guiding principles are people-centered, connected and collaborative, open and sovereign.
Smart City Zurich - LoRaWAN
Zurich, Switzerland
Until recently, Austin’s infrastructure was not able to cope with the long commutes. But Austin decided to turn this challenge into an opportunity to make the city smarter. The Smart City Challenge includes several pilots and programs that improve economic opportunity, mobility, and innovation. The Affordable Housing project, for instance, uses data to analyze the housing market and demographics, and developed an online tool for citizens to search for affordable housing options. The Mobility Marketplace is the first step towards Mobility as a Service and a network of intelligent sensors is being installed to help transportation agencies to prevent traffic issues.
Smart City Austin - The Smart City Challenge
Austin, USA
Colombia’s multiple awarded second city Medellin is home to over two million people and held until the mid-nineties the badge of being the most dangerous city in the world. Yet, long before smart cities became the ‘it-thing’, Medellin embarked on a journey, aiming to bring about massive social change and opportunity on the back of a tough fight on crime. Since then the homicide rate has gone down to 5% (one-twentieth) of what is was before. More importantly, virtually everyone in the city (75% mobile adoption rate) now has full free access to healthcare, education, transportation, cultural activities and a range of economic initiatives such as buildings, online services, financing etc.
Ruta-N
Medellín, Colombia