Smart City v/s Smart Citizen

Over the past few years, the term ‘Smart City’ has grown in intensity and has become part of everyday jargon in Mauritius.  Recently, World Smart City Awards 2017 was organised in Barcelona. 309 cities were nominated from 58 countries and Dubai was allocated a smart city award.

There are thousands of smart cities coming up in the world but the smartest of them all will be those consisting of the smartest citizens. These are going to turn sustainable in the long run.

Mauritius is acclaimed as a beautiful place. Today, this small island is also among the developing African economies. To render Mauritius more profitable, the country has espoused the concept of smart cities.

Currently, Mauritius has eight smart city projects coming up, out of which four of them have started to take shape. But today, we are not going to talk about smart cities.

These cities are smart enough to talk about themselves. Today, we focus on the citizens of this country. How smart are we to adapt to these smart cities coming up all around us? Why do we need cities which are smart and how can we benefit from them? First, let’s understand what is a smart city and why do we need them.

A smart city

A smart city is an urban area that uses different types of electronic data collection sensors to supply information used to manage assets and resources efficiently. This includes data collected from citizens, devices, and assets that are processed and analyzed to monitor and manage traffic and transportation systems, power plants, water supply networks, waste management, law enforcement, information systems, schools, libraries, hospitals, and other community services.

In the Mauritian context

According to Invest Mauritius, the smart cities of Mauritius will have to follow the “live, work and play” concept and will provide amenities for a majority of the residential population to live and work in the same location.

Are we smart?

Let’s look at an example. Mauritius has more than 50 speed cameras installed on the island. And let’s imagine the cost of installing one camera is one hundred thousand rupees. In this context, we have invested around 5 million rupees on the ‘negligent’ attitude of our citizens.

These funds are coming from our own taxes that are derived from our hard earned money. If we had a civic sense of not crossing the speed limit, than this sum of 5 million rupees could have been used for some better, productive causes, hence contributing to the development of the nation.

Who is a smart citizen?

Smart citizens are those who exercise common sense, who respect the law, who understand the city and its requirements and who feel that they have a duty towards the development of the nation.

From India, out of 20 smart cities, Jaipur was nominated for a smart city award. The nodal officer of Jaipur smart city, Mr. Devesh Gupta, who participated in the Barcelona conference, claimed that “the smartest city will be that which will have the smartest citizens. Because this entire set-up is for the citizens of the city, so if they respond well towards the smart opportunities, it will be a success and if they are not a vital part of this project and doesn’t respond well towards the opportunities, it will be a total loss.”

Most important part

Everyone is talking about making their cities smart but no one seems to talk about making their citizens smart. We are upgrading our infrastructure but the first initiative should be modernizing the mindset of our citizens.

Smart cities need to have smart citizens to be fully inclusive, innovative and sustainable. This development clearly requires support from people for whom this whole concept is intended. A smart city realizes that "policy" alone is not enough to reach all goals. A smart city looks for support among its own citizens and local stakeholders in order to achieve its objectives.

Citizens are the most important part of any society, whether smart or not. Participation ensures satisfaction, which in turn ensures maximum efficiency of the proposed technology.

Why we need them?

You cannot be smart without being sustainable. So we need smart solutions, like efficient use of available resources. Awareness about smart solutions plays crucial role in developing true, smart citizens.

For example, energy saving cannot be achieved merely with smart meters in a home. In order to reduce energy consumption and save money on bills, consumers need to not only to monitor their energy use but also make an effort to change the whole family’s daily energy usage behavior.

Countries need to invest in smart people – not merely in smart technologies. Only then will tools like smartphones and mobile applications have the potential to revolutionize city governance and contribute to the making of people-centric smart cities.

Developers’ views- Uniciti

We believe that each smart city project will play an active role in the region it belongs to and will contribute to the economic development of Mauritius as a whole. Each and every Mauritian has a crucial role to play in these large-scale development schemes, which is why our vision is geared towards the empowerment of citizens to become smart citizens.

A smart citizen is one who will be involved in all aspects of the city in a participative role, connected through data, human interaction and knowledge, at the core of Uniciti’s development.
We will work with communities, associations and other organizations that put the people at the center of development.

The development of a city and more specifically for all the smart cities in Mauritius are envisioned on the long and very long terms, so we can expect to see a visible change in the short and midterm in certain aspects only.

Taking the example of Uniciti, which places Education and Higher Education particularly at the forefront of its development through its Uniciti Education hub, we believe that working towards a knowledge-based economy will lead us to create a new generation of thinkers who will inspire change.

By Savita Tiwari