Are Our Smart Cities Really Smart

Are Our Smart Cities Really Smart

This article was published in the Global Smart Energy Federation's December 2020 Newsletter

Societal trends typically latch onto to a few major themes (problems and potential solutions) and then marches to its own drum beat. Like-minded people join the movement and it transforms into a something “smart”. The Smart Cities movement is one such, which has caught the attention of many globally. It focusses primarily around climate change (GHG reduction). While I am all for it and applaud this initiative, we also need to keep our sights on other critical elements that could potentially derail this GHG objective and its benefits.

Lowering GHG primarily means cutting back or eliminating fossil fuel use (electricity, heat, transport, industry production). This means substituting more renewable energy (fossil fuel displacement) and/or improving energy efficiency (consume less fossil fuel). To do this effectively, one needs to create a larger (denser) user-base, to not only defray (and limit) the new capital investments, but also decrease its ongoing operating costs. Cities often become the best targets for GHG reductions due to their larger population, commercial presence, and economic activities. Thus, the densification and a shared services model, is one of the pillars of smart cities. Today, many technologies (RE, telecom, IoT, sensors, EV) are available to build such smart cities and lower GHG emissions. This technology focus, often becomes the central theme in smart cities with tenets around (a) energy use; (b) connectivity; and (c) clean environment.

To accommodate this higher urban density, more infill/multi-family/multi-purpose build is being encouraged with many new high-rise buildings. The result is that, suburban sprawl is morphing into tight-knit high density cores. This objective in itself, is not bad, but the construction of such high-density cores has attributes that go against the above smart city tenets. These include:

1.     Increased use of concrete (0.9 tons of CO2 per ton of cement production)

2.     Increased roads/pavements (impervious surfaces, rain water run-offs, flooding) 

3.     Increased use of glass curtain walls (entire glass walls at a much lower insulation rating)

4.     Increased use of electric baseboard heat and mini-split A/C cool in each room (avoid HVAC/Duct costs) 

Builders (allowed by building codes) are adopting these, as they are faster and cheaper to execute. The irony is that such smart city build, is investing upfront capital in high-GHG material additions, and then adding further investments in GHG reduction through energy efficiency improvements. This approach is expensive and will take decades to just “recoup” the GHG added, let alone lowering it on a net-basis for the long run. Further, in 15 years, most of the glass curtain walls will lose their already poor insulation values even further (leaky seals, argon gas leaks, moisture ingress) resulting in even higher heating/cooling costs or warrant expensive replacements.  In 2018-20 Toronto/Canada’s downtown core, saw over 400 buildings in the works (each 12 stories or higher) with above attributes. Ironically, the higher costs of energy (both electricity and gas) are being borne by the occupants, not the builders.

At the other end of this spectrum, lies the older buildings that make up 90% of most cities’ building assets. Only less than 1% of such existing stock undergo deep energy efficiency retrofits annually. At this rate it would take “forever” to make them (and the entire city) energy efficient. But smart cities are paying little attention to this conundrum. Landlords/owners shy away from such upgrades unless it leads to revenue growth, quick paybacks, and other financial benefits. There is an urgent need to address this through public policy and make it a priority.

In my view, “a city’s true character lies in its easy-access streets, entertainment and outdoor surroundings”. Hence, mobility and convenience, plays a big part in enabling this experience. But climate-change mitigation in the transportation sector is a hard complex problem to solve. The reduction of GHG emission from public and privately owned multi-vehicular traffic is daunting. Congestion fees, parking, bicycle lanes, pedestrian-only streets and mass transit systems all needed to be weaved together with convenience, affordability and/or commute time. Many cities have successfully integrated airport terminals with transit, while others have multi-level transit systems inside their inner core. Others have greatly enhanced walkability and bicycling. However, noise and tail-pipe pollution has remained a sticky issue thus far. The introduction of e-mobility (battery or hydrogen vehicles) in both public and private transport, offers a good solution to the above noise and pollution problems. However, the “fuel infrastructure” requires careful architecting to manage such “clean fuel” availability to consumers.  Currently it is planned as an add-on to the existing electric and gas infrastructure, which will be a huge burden, as demand grows with adoption. Even the production of such cleaner transport “fuels” needs to come from clean non-GHG emitting sources (a challenge for many countries that rely on coal/oil/gas electricity production).

All of the above components of a smart city (buildings, transit and roads) require increased paved surfaces for access and mobility. The increase in such impervious surfaces causes excess rain water run-offs causing a high stress on storm-drains and snow clearing/melt in cold countries). With increased intensity in rains in recent years (climate change), these often lead to flash floods and water logging in urban streets causing commuter disruptions. Again, an unintended consequence.

Higher densification leads to increased congregated institutional settings (senior homes, hospitals, universities, malls, schools/daycare, offices, condos). The creation of such congregated institutions (albeit efficient), leads to a higher common-mode failure risk (fires, floods, pandemics). So, resiliency and backup alternatives need to be incorporated to mitigate this. The current COVID-19 pandemic and its disproportionate urban impact on such congregated institutions, points to lowering such urban density. This is evidenced from a people impact perspective, i.e. (a) downtown core businesses (55% of city GDP) disproportionally affected versus suburbia locations; (b) tall office buildings essentially sitting empty; (c) disproportionate spread in senior homes, high-rise buildings and universities. Will the COVID experience make us rethink smart city tenets?

All the above (urban density, building materials, paved-surfaces, transit) needs to be addressed comprehensively in smart cities and not just GHG reduction alone. The race to developing urban cities is driving land values up, which in turn is warranting higher densities to make such development economically viable. Currently, smart cities do not imbibe many comprehensive principles. We need to rethink Smart Cities in an entirely new way, one which reflects the following:

(a)   Building Codes - imbibe conservation, energy efficiency and recycled/green building materials

(b)  GHG Emissions - limits in GHG-intensive building materials and not reductions through energy conservation

(c)   Retrofit Focused - affordable and actionable through policy instruments with municipal purchase/aggregations

(d)  Resiliency First – a planned recovery/backup (with capped densities) of congregated institutions

(e)   Greening Outside – open spaces that can absorb surface water easily

Concrete has shaped our cities for decades, now it threatens to shape our future. More such buildings mean more heat islands, more demand for air conditioning/heating, more fossil fuels burnt, more certainty that our climate will change faster and more severely. Over time, the damage will be much worse. Recent trends offer us a pause to rethink (we are at such a crossroad). The very thing we wanted to address (climate change via a lower GHG route), is giving us opposing signals.

This may indeed lead to smaller cities (or well interconnected suburbs and boroughs), but it will be sustainable in the long run. The materials used in such infrastructure builds, must themselves not be high GHG emitting materials (like concrete, cement), but lower GHG and recycled/recyclable long-lasting materials (steel, aluminum, wood, stone, calcium-silicate, MgO, composites, etc.). Such building materials and systems exist, but need to be promoted and incentivized.

In my view, given all that we now know from climate change (drought, floods, fires) and the recent pandemic, we should not attempt to go back to the normal “as we knew”, but rather learn from it and create a “new normal”. This applies to Smart Cities as well!


To view or add a comment, sign in

More articles by Ravi Seethapathy

Insights from the community

Explore topics