Smart Cities and Connected: Where cities are headed post-Pandemic

Smart and Connected cities conjure visions where an algorithm plots daily drives to the store, school, or work — and not soon enough in an autonomous vehicle as one sips coffee and check emails.

Others see it as the seamless integration of urban digital technology populated with buzzwords like blockchain, AI, and Big Data.

Still, many of us see Smart as an ecosystem blending infrastructure, software, and yes, massive amounts of data working its way across a sea of semiconductors — and that’s just in our car or SUV.

Stepping Back

My first experience with the idea of the Smart City reaches back to the mid-2000s when I was fortunate to serve as an advisor to the New York City and the Seoul Gale International teams — the majority partner in the development of Incheon’s Songdo International District.

Envisioned as a Green, high-technology city of the future — at the time it was one of the world’s and Korea’s largest foreign real estate development projects.

Built on reclaimed land and with partners like POSCO, Cisco, and United Technology, the forward-leaning project also showcased some of the first LEED-certified buildings in South Korea and Asia.

At the core, Songdo IBD was designed to be a “ubiquitous city”, a smart city with “ubiquitous” technology: computers built into the buildings and streets, while sensors gather information on traffic flow and…