“A smart city is an urban development vision to integrate multiple information and communication technology (ICT) and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions in a secure fashion to manage a city’s assets – the city’s assets include, but are not limited to, local departments’ information systems, schools, libraries, transportation systems, hospitals, power plants, water supply networks, waste management, law enforcement, and other community services…ICT allows city officials to interact directly with the community and the city infrastructure and to monitor what is happening in the city, how the city is evolving, and how to enable a better quality of life. Through the use of sensors integrated with real-time monitoring systems, data are collected from citizens and devices – then processed and analyzed. The information and knowledge gathered are keys to tackling inefficiency.” – Smart City, Wikipedia
We’d like to thank the Fforde Foundation for grant funding this project. We’re also grateful to the Fictional Cities Catapult for ongoing advice and support.
In this post we share some insights from early work by our lead researcher Thursday Next. Thursday has recently been leading a team carrying out an assessment of Mega-City One against our smart city maturity model.
Housing
Homelessness is rare among the official citizenry of Mega City One. Considerable investment has been made in building homes for its rapidly growing population. Self-contained city blocks encourage close-knit communities who identify very strongly with their individual blocks.
Citizens enjoy the ability to live, shop and socialise together. Some even choose to spend their entire lives within the secure environment provided by their home block, each of which can house up to 50,000 people. Block provides immediate access to hospitals, gyms, leisure activities, schools and shopping districts. Everything a citizen needs is available on their doorstep.
Transport
Meta-City One boasts a huge variety of transportation systems, covering every form of travel. Pedestrians are able to use Eeziglide and Pedway systems, whilst mass transit is provided by Sky-Rail and other public transit systems.
Roads are adequately sized and are home to a range of autonomous vehicles. Indeed these vehicles are so spacious and reliable that many citizens choose to live in them permanently.
Transport in Mega-City One is reliable, efficient and typically only faces issues during large-scale emergencies (e.g. the Apocalypse War, robot uprising and dark judge visitations).
Education and training
While education is freely available to all citizens, there is little need for many to follow a formal education pathway. Ready access to robot butlers and high levels of automation mean that citizens rarely need to work. Many citizens choose to embrace hobbies and follow vocational training, e.g. in human taxidermy or training as professional gluttons.
But, for those citizens that display a strong aptitude, there are always opportunities in the Justice Department. A rigorous programme of physical and education training is available. Individualised learning pathways mean that citizens can find employment in a variety of public sector roles.
Leisure
Leisure is the primary pursuit of many citizens and there are many opportunities and means of participating. A culture of innovation surrounds the leisure sector which includes a range of new sports including Sky surfing, Batgliding and PowerBoarding.
Citizens are able to quickly learn of new opportunities meaning that crazes often sweep the city (see, for example, Boinging).
Health
Mega-City One is almost completely self-sufficient. Food is primarily created from artificial or synthetic sources. Popular brands like Grot Pot, provide a low-cost balanced diet. These are supplemented with imported produce such as Munce, which is sourced from artisan-lead Cursed Earth communities.
Environmental Services
Weather data and control infrastructure in Mega-City One is highly developed. Justice Department have long had control over local weather and climate conditions, allowing them to provide optimum conditions for citizens. Weather has also factored into policing, e.g. during large scale rioting and other disasters.
There is a strong culture of recycling in Mega-City One and there have been citizen-led movements encouraging greater environmental awareness. The cities Resyk centres ensure that nothing (and nobody) goes to waste.
Policing and Emergencies
Little needs to be said about Mega-City One’s crime and justice department. It is an exemplar of integrated and optimised policing solutions. The Justice Department are able to react rapidly to issues and are glad to offer a personalised service for citizens.
While data from homes, public areas and “eye in the sky” cameras are fed into central systems, actual delivery of justice is federated. Sector Houses provide local justice services across the city. This is supplemented with Citi-Def forces that handle community policing and enforcement activities in individual city blocks. Mega-City One has also embraced predictive policing through its small but effect Psi Division.
We hope this post has helped to highlight a number of important smart city innovations. Exploring how these have been operationalised and optimised to deliver services to citizens will be covered in future research. Please get in touch if you’d like us to undertake a maturity assessment of your fictional city!
Lost Boy 