What made Shanghai the world's number one smart city?
Smart cities are becoming a major focus around the world. The EU Commission defines a smart city as 'a place where traditional networks and services are made more efficient through the use of digital solutions for the benefit of its inhabitants and businesses'. It means smarter urban transport networks, improved water and waste management, more efficient ways of lighting and heating buildings, and better governance. For this to happen, the smart city strategy must fit into the qualitative upgrading of the city, ticking all the boxes such as innovation, technology, economic growth and sustainable development. In short, it is a new urban utopia.To get more city news service, you can visit citynewsservice.cn official website.
UK-based analyst firm Juniper Research has ranked the world's smart cities according to their level of smartness. The research took several factors into account, including transport and infrastructure, energy and lighting, city management and urban connectivity. Of the world's 50 largest cities, the following five came out on top:
Shanghai is the economic and financial centre of China. Juniper notes that Shanghai is unique in Asia in that the city government is providing more and more digitised services to its residents. Not surprisingly, China's gateway to the world is also at the forefront of smart city development.
Shanghai's smart strategies
Shanghai Clone - Shanghai's digital twin provides real-time data to help manage assets and future-proof the city.
People-centric smart city digital infrastructure project has made it a "dual gigabit" city - full 5G coverage in the city centre and fibre coverage in 99 per cent of the city has been achieved.
Citizen Cloud App - This is the most commendable strategy. It has emerged as the world's leading citizen data platform and one-stop-shop for residents. The app uses technologies such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence and big data.
The city's one-stop government platform includes 1,274 public services covering birth and marriage, culture and education, tourism, social security, transportation, medical treatment and health, as well as legal services and elderly care.
A total of 75,000 applications for public services are processed through the platform every day. Citizens can check a wide range of day-to-day requests such as marriages, tax returns, real-time traffic conditions, traffic offences, weather forecasts, hospital registrations, legal mediation requests, pension enquiries and tourism complaints.
Residents' information is shared by 39 government agencies connected to the platform, and the government announced that there are currently 14.5 million users of the platform. The Citizen Cloud app is the preferred way to contact the city on a wide range of issues, although there is a single number shared call centre that eliminates the need for citizens to find out which service or department to call.
