Why we need smarter cities, not bandaid solutions

Nick Austin is Founder and CEO of Divvy Parking, a platform that connects commuters with underutilised parking spaces in CBD commercial office towers, first in Australia, and soon in Asia. Divvy will soon introduce industry changing mobile access technology that will unlock these hidden spaces and make better use of existing infrastructure in our cities, cutting down congestion and increasing connectivity. Nick is an advocate for Smart Cities.

Another day, another story about the latest crackdown on on-street parking bandits.

At the start of the year one of the local councils in Australia proclaimed it would pilot the use of Google Glass, giving its parking inspectors superhuman powers to monitor and fine residents and visitors overstaying allotted times in the area. More recently, another council  introduced sensors which make it easier than ever to issue fines. The intent is supposedly to increase turnover by preventing people from sitting in their cars on their phone or feeding the metre for extra time.

Illegal parking isn’t just an issue for Australia; it’s a problem across most major cities in Asia.  Drivers in highly populated cities face a daily battle to find legal, affordable and reliable long term parking options in the CBDs, and governments and local councils are taking a number of different approaches in attempts to discourage them from parking illegally instead. Earlier this year Shanghai’s traffic law enforcement team shut down a total of 45 parking operations across the city and in Taipei, the city government is exploring the possibility of installing surveillance cameras for ticketing purposes in big problem areas.

While we can understand these responses, are these really the smart solutions we need? Aside from a few more slaps on the wrist for parkers, what do they achieve and where do they leave us in the long term?

Take for example the decision in Australia to trial sensors in parking bays; I’m all for data driven tech solutions, but initiatives like this are more likely to increase revenue than turnover of parkers, and ignore the bigger problems at hand. They certainly don’t remove the need for more affordable or convenient parking options. This type of sensor technology could actually worsen congestion, increasing the number of cars circulating the streets with people forced to move spaces regularly. In the same way, installing surveillance cameras for monitoring parkers (for ticketing, not safety purposes) doesn’t suddenly open up more alternative ‘legal’ spaces.

Where sensors do work is where they have the ability to notify commuters of vacant spaces, reducing the number of people driving around high density areas looking for parking. Outside of large shopping centres, Australia is lagging behind in this area. Moscow on the other hand, is ahead of the game with 20,000 smart parking spaces, and traffic jams have allegedly reduced since the technology was introduced. Russian company Sistema JSFC is actually currently looking at how it can use its expertise to replicate the Moscow city model in India, which has now kicked off its 100 smart cities project. The objectives? Ease congestion, improve traffic management systems and cut down on energy consumption and costs. In many parts of Asia where the soil quality can make constructing new car parks (particularly those underground) a very expensive process, using technology to make the most of underutilised resources makes a lot of sense, for governments and citizens.

If we want to combat the current pressures on our infrastructure and resources in the region, we need the private and public sector to start seriously considering how we can approach smart city projects. We need to start thinking about how technology can be used to make traditional processes and services more efficient … for the benefit of residents.

The conversation is definitely heating up across the region, and improving the connectivity for people travelling and working in our cities will only become more important over time. In fact, Tokyo, Seoul, Hong Kong and Singapore each claimed four of the top ten spots in the CIMI 2015 Report ranking the world’s smartest cities. London and New York sit at number one and two, and Paris, Amsterdam, Vienna, Geneva and Munich also made the list.

Across Asia we’re seeing pockets of innovation where startups and larger private companies are pushing for technology solutions that make our lives easier, but so often they are met with red tape and a list of reasons why these things can’t happen, this month, this year or in this neighbourhood.

We don’t need ad hoc, bandaid solutions for issues like congestion and competition for parking; the governments in major cities in the region need to step back and look at the big picture in the same way that cities like Moscow and Amsterdam have done already.

We need to accelerate the local conversation and make sure the right people are listening up. In the UK, more than 1 in 3 young people surveyed stated they are passionate about their closest city becoming a ‘smart city’ and would consider jumping ship to a ‘‘smarter city’ than the one they live in. I’d bet good money that most young Australians wouldn’t be confident defining a ‘smart city’ and if we want young people to become familiar with the ideas, we need to keep injecting it into regular debate and discourse.