Realising Smart Cities

Cities are spaces of great opportunity and challenge. About half of the population of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and East Asia lives in urban areas, and cities will drive most of the region’s future growth. Economic activities and social interactions are centred around cities, where innovations not only thrive, but also where environmental pressures such as emissions and pollution are prevalent. New technological and digital solutions could relieve these pressures, deliver integrated services efficiently, and maximise social inclusion. Smart cities are where challenges with the second and third unbundling and solutions meet. They are a nation’s centre of trade, innovation, and skills education; and the gateway to globalisation. With Southeast Asia and East Asia rapidly urbanising, cities will grow in importance. In 2017, the ASEAN Smart Cities Network (ASCN) 1 was opportunely established, as more and more cities are exploring smart solutions to address economic, environmental, and social challenges. There are many challenges on this smart city journey, while experimenting with new technological solutions, developing performance indicators, and devising viable financial mechanisms. The urban population is expected to double between 2020 and 2050. This creates urgency to solve our most pressing challenges and create opportunities for reducing communication, trade, travel and meeting costs – enhancing human power by capitalising on migration and accommodating fragmented production costs to enhance the quality of city dwellers’ lives. In this critical reflection looking at the ASCN and other similar movements in China, India, and Japan, this chapter tries to understand whether information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure development at the city level brings smart service delivery or smart cities are part of holistic urban planning solutions that would lead to improve the quality of life.