The Next Stage for Smart Cities: Metrics to Spur an Evolution to Efficient Cities

Abstract: The Smart Cities movement is about a decade old, energized by the USDOT Smart Cities grant that sparked cities to dream big. Now, 10 years later, and multitudes of conferences and papers later, the biggest question regarding Smart Cities is whether any progress has been made? Smart Cities forums are typically led by the technology sector, either telecommunications, internet access, or most recently artificial intelligence (AI) concerns. Each of these areas have grown and found new applications in the context of Smart Cities, however, these technology applications are just tools toward ends. Do digital communications and assistance enable or foster improved access to real, tactile, non-virtual goods and services such as food, housing, trash removal, health care, education, social interaction? These and other topics are not ‘big tech’, but are each critical to quality of life outcomes and are day-to-day necessities, comprising many of the touch points through which citizens interact with municipal agencies. Regarding Smart Cities, relationships have not been fully refined as to how best to merge the emerging generation of technology with more mundane but essential requirements of tactile services. How should municipal managers and operators bring the range of new technology tools to bear to improve functions serving real- physical- non-virtual needs? How do we make cities more efficient in providing equitable access to these real services? This paper examines the current Smart City movement, and the need to put metrics with respect to the delivery, access, and provision of real-life needs. Using a few case studies of past, present, and projected future scenarios, this paper attempts to bring Smart Cities into the real cities domain, perhaps pushing the moniker away from ‘Smart’ to ‘Efficient’ – something that can be measured, counted, and assessed. Through the consideration of the next stage of the evolution of cities from ‘Smart’ to ‘Efficient’, the combined efforts and experience of multiple researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and their network of collaborators highlights the need for updates metrics that can be used to start guiding efforts toward productive initiatives to improve quality of life.