Building Smarter Cities: A Video Documentary
People in the poorest nations take a risk anytime they drink from an open-water source. Is it clean today, or is it swimming with raw sewage? This app helps to identify which wells and streams are relatively clean by letting users report pollution sources that they happen to encounter, like leaking sewer pipes, overflowing sewage outflows and unmarked defecation fields that could send bowel-twisting microbes into the water the next time it rains.
Ghana launches technology city project | SmartPlanet
Another African country is building a city from scratch focused on information and communication technology.
Ghana broke ground this week on its $10 billion Hope City project on an empty parcel of land outside the capital city of Accra.
A simple idea can help build a smarter planet. Check out this one, A flashing Zebra crossing.
Technologies Every Smart City Should Have

You think cities are crowded now? By 2030, more than 5 billion people will live in urban settings. But before we get to that kind of population density, we have to optimize our cities. We need to make them smarter and better; technology can help.
Cities all around the world work with developers and contractors to make city living better, whether it’s improving the timing of traffic lights or creating a useful app, which becomes more powerful as smartphone penetration continues to increase. Apps and well-implemented technology can help cash-strapped governments save money and, be more efficient. Check out this list of 25 Technologies Every Smart City Should Have.
5 Ways The Smart City Will Change How We Live In 2012
‘A city’s infrastructure is comprised of a number of systems, including transportation, sewage, utility, and public and private buildings. Urbanization and proliferation of these systems are key to quality of life, but also create a significant toll on the sustainability, energy efficiency and capacity level of a city. Smarter buildings technologies can help the government make it possible to better “listen” to the abundance of information emitted from buildings. This includes thousands, if not millions, of data points produced each week from a proliferation of embedded technologies in data centers, water delivery systems, heating and air-conditioning, security devices, and office equipment.’
Tech and urban life
“Impact of technologies in urban life” Created and curated by Manu Fernandez
via humanscalecities:
Digital Urban Renewal
Retro-fitting existing cities with smart solutions is the urban challenge of the 21st century
New tools created by the ICT industry have the potential to help city governments address the growing range of challenges that they are facing. However, the tools themselves are not a “silver bullet” that will solve urban problems in one stroke. Deploying them will require a new discipline of digital urban renewal and a philosophy that incorporates both political leadership and open collaboration.
via humanscalecities:
Lansing, Michigan - a rising technology powerhouse
I have lived in Lansing for 30 years and have watched recently change from an aging, auto centric area to one of the most thriving dynamic incubators for new technology! With its cost of living relatively inexpensive compared to either coast Lansing is rapidly becoming THE place for new enterprises.
