The Battle for Control of Smart Cities

A Fast Company article from December 2010 highlights a ten-year forecast done by IFTF for the Rockefeller Foundation.

In reference to the report's expert contributors, the report states that:

"Together, they highlight five “technologies that matter” for cities in 2020: (1) mobile broadband; (2) smart personal devices, whether they’re dirt-cheap phones or tablets; (3) government-sponsored cloud computing (modeled on the U.K.’s national “G-cloud” initiative);(4) open-source public databases to promote grassroots innovation, and (5) “public interfaces.” Instead of Internet cafés, imagine an outdoor LED screen and hacked Kinect box allowing literally anyone to access the Net using only gestures.

The report’s centerpiece is a map depicting how these technologies might be applied across 13 scenarios, from something as simple as on-demand census counting (to track the influx of urban immigration) to crowdsourced public services (best exemplified in the U.S. bySeeClickFix, the subject of a profile in the December/January issue of Fast Company) to high-resolution, real-time models of urban processes.

See

http://www.fastcompany.com/1710342/the-battle-for-the-soul-of-the-smart-city

http://www.iftf.org/inclusion