Smarter and safer cities

Are we safe in your opinion? Are our cities safe?

This is the question we increasingly ask ourselves when faced with news reports that generate dismay and new concerns about the usability of urban spaces. The technological and digitised society in which we live communicates every event rapidly and without filters and comments on it just as quickly. Through the massive penetration of social networks, everyone becomes an expert, and this induces professionals to specify, correct, contextualise and integrate information, when it has already been consumed, making any in-depth study, any reflection futile. And yet, the official data do not confirm this insecurity and even point to a decrease in criminal phenomena, noting that not everything can be measured with data alone. The technological and futuristic, digital and intangible ground on which we have built our society is, therefore, sometimes shaky. Population growth is slowing down, the average age of our communities has risen and, in an ageing society, change appears an unpredictable threat. It therefore becomes essential to build true Smart Cities, starting with existing technology, changing and integrating its use.

The technologies of the City, no longer a passive tool with traditional uses but, an active element of the territory. At a time of great insecurity, generated also by new modes of protest, by sudden meteorological phenomena, the inadequacy of our structures, the slowness of responses, the perception of the inability to react, to manage, is evident. We need to introduce new design skills, build urban prototypes, models of city parts, inclusive and participatory. Study systems and technologies present in urban contexts and link them to human dynamics, needs, fears; overcome disciplinary bottlenecks by bringing skills into interaction through multifunctional tables.

So what to do in concrete terms? And how?

Digitalise cities, make them smart, make them 'data' by combining the individual advantage of a connected city with the collective advantage of an intelligence that helps monitor processes, predict and analyse risks. Examples and models can be diverse: from cameras with video analytics now part of widespread technology, to smart benches and light poles that monitor the environment, climate, fire, space occupancy. They delimit virtual perimeters, generate alerts, provide help, and sometimes eliminate the fear of being alone. It is now possible to equip what surrounds us, and what we are used to recognising as part of the urban context, with sensors that provide information. Through a concrete example of intelligent coverage of the territory, it is possible to transfer preventive news to the citizen (the now widespread apps), guide behaviour, reassure. Intelligent technology integrated into elements of urban furniture through sensors can help prevent and predict contextual changes. Algorithms of urban space occupation, access flow management, meters with different nature to understand in advance scenario changes and evolutions.

How to do this?

By structuring a proactive institutional supply chain, to innovate rather than renew, to change rather than replicate; to observe experiences, management failures in order to take new paths. The events of these weeks have given us and are giving us a great opportunity, that of understanding that what we are doing is inadequate, the responses are slow, late, while some technological, environmental changes are irreversible. We need new digital skills, sustainable planning, passions, analysis, knowledge, public/private networking, new professionalism to emerge from insecurity, from fear. And we also need many new young people, new talents.

by Giuseppe Calabrese, published in Italia Oggi on 11/08/2023