The Smart City Connect Conference in Austin started out this week, discussing the latest trends, technologies and difficulties to tackle to make the shift to smarter cities. As the smart city movement has mainly focused on core infrastructures, sensors, braoadband and such, there seemed to be a shift in the discussion on what makes cities smart. It is the most important element in fact, people. Austin’s mayor Steve Adler found strong words, addressing this issue: “At its very core, a smart city is a city that has been able to look inside and identify what its challenges are — what its people and residents need to have the quality of life they want to have — and to craft unique solutions that enable the city and the community to deal with those challenges,” he said. “That truly is what a smart city is.” He mentions that the main focus must be to identify and serve the needs and expectations of the people- when a company puts its customers in the center of their design thinking principles, governments need to do the same with residents’ needs.
GovTech
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