Smart city governance
At June 21th, I attended the conference Next generation cities: Who owns the city. This conference was part of the five-day WeMakeThe.City festival in…
Governance and economy
Amsterdam: better than ‘smart’
Since November 2016 I am curator of Amsterdam Smart City. I’ve shared impressions and opinions through a series of blog posts, here on Smart…
The role of cities in the pursuance of the Paris Agreement
The C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group is already in existence for more than 12 years and represents 96 of the world’s greatest cities with together more…
What is a Digital City Brand?
The term “digital city brand”, which we have coined, is made up of the three separate terms “digital”, “city” and “brand”, which are also…
PlanIT Valley: The smartest city never been built
History is filled with urban utopias. A very recent one is PlanIT Valley, a dreamed smart city in Portugal near Porto. My interest was…
Privacy in Smart Cities
This morning I told my 15 year old daughter that I was reading about privacy problems that may arise in Smart Cities and…
Smart city: smart story?
On November 4th 2011, the trademark ‘smarter cities’ was officially registered as belonging to IBM. It marked a period in which the company succeeded in…
India’s 100 Smart Cities Mission is flawed
Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai and Beijing compete with London, Paris and New York for the top of the global city ranking. Do…
NEOM or the glow of a Saoudi-Arabian spring?
During a recent meeting of the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyad the 32 year old crown prince of Saoudi-Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, announced…
Google’s Sidewalk Labs takes the lead in ‘smart city’ development in Toronto
Recently, I wrote how Google’s Sidewalk Labs – formally operating under the umbrella of Alphabet – is preparing a key role in smart city development….