G20 Foundation Publications Turkey 2015 | Page 114

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CLIMATE CHANGE & SUSTAINABILITY
CREATING THE
INFRASTRUCTURE FOR
THE RISE OF SMART CITIES
Michel Sudarskis, Secretary General
International Urban Development Association – INTA
managed separately. For example,
coordinating street design with
building layout can create new
possibilities for energy and
transport efficiency.
The very high-speed
networks and smart
grid infrastructure is a
constant concern in the
development of cities and
agglomerations: services
offered to businesses,
universities and citizens all
rely on these infrastructure
forming the basis of
any approach to digital
development.
However, urban infrastructure
systems need to be interconnected.
Changes or disruption in one
service often affects the provision
of others. Electricity outages
affect water supply, heating and
cooling, communications and even
transport. The high complexity
of interconnected urban systems
requires integrated management,
spatial design, land use, mobility
and building design to make it
possible to identify efficiencies
and opportunities that may be
overlooked when each sector is
Until few years ago smart grids
infrastructure was hailed as
the ultimate solution to energy
transition and better mobility:
the grid – and the interlocking
of different grids with different
sources of energy plus smart
metering - was to better distribute
and manage energy leading to
significant savings and reduction
of consumption. The notion of
smart grid was also applied to the
management of traffic, connecting
signals and street lights regulating
the flows of pedestrian, bikes, cars
and public transport and signalling
parking places. Spanish Santander
with its 10 000 sensors over the
city illustrate the importance given
to the grids in the rise of the smart
cities.
Today we witness a shift of the
problematic from an infrastructure-
led logic to a service-led economy.
We are becoming less dependent
from infrastructures: web, mobility,
cloud computing helped to
overcome the constraints of the old
client / computing server relation;
and a modern browser has become
the universal interface between
all access points to information:
smartphones, tablets or laptops,
and applications.
The availability of smart solutions
for cities has risen rapidly over the
last decade. As a result, technical
solutions exist for every city to
become smarter. The challenge
today is primarily to implement
appropriate solutions efficiently,
rather than only focusing on new
technology or new and expensive
infrastructure development.
And the shift continues
were priority is no longer
building connected and