Making Cities Smarter

Making Cities Smarter:
How citizens' collective intelligence
can guide better decision making

Making cities smarter: How citizens' collective intelligence can guide better decision makingCopyright © 2017 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved. 2
What would you do if you were an urban planner in charge of
putting walkways in a newly built city park?
A smart planner may just discover paths naturally created by
foot traffic, instead of using a complicated design.
Similarly, a truly smart city often leverages technology
to elicit the wisdom of its citizens.
Tapping into the wisdom of the crowd…

Top-down or Bottom-Up Approach?
Focusing exclusively on the hardware
of smart cities could leads to an
incomplete vision.
Data science and Internet technology
promise not just smarter things, but
also smarter decisions.
Hence, the focus may need to shift
away from the top-down approach
of optimizing physical infrastructure
before thinking about the people in
the smart city model.

What would the wise planner do?
Perhaps, her decision will be based on the emergent order
resulting from the aggregated knowledge and preferences of the
crowd
“There is no logic that can
be superimposed on the
city; people make it, and it
is to them, not buildings,
that we must fit our plans.”
- Jane Jacobs

Digital
The intersection of these
three is where the real
transformation can happen
A possible solution? The 3Ds approach…
Can enable smarter
decisions, that are less
centralized and more
empirically informed
technologies

How can data help?
Big
Data
Storage
Databases
Petabytes
Sets
Networks
Information
Predictive Analytics
Programming
Applications
Data Transfer
Software
Systems
Data extraction
Datamining
Examples
Probability
Risk
Open source
Reports
Process
Propensity matching
Public Data
Scoring
Results
Large datasets
Data scientist
Insights
Structured data
Unstructured data
Computing
Algorithm
Insights
Coding
Statistical
Analysis
Smart cities make data publicly available to help governments,
public agencies and citizens make more informed decisions
City data + smart citizens = more informed decisions

For instance…
The New York City Department of
Buildings was able to radically improve
inspection efficiency using predictive
analytics
By inspecting the riskiest properties
first, inspections had more impact. In
2015, NYC had ZERO fire deaths for
the first time in 100 years!
Source: FDNY Foundation

How can design help?
Behavioral “nudges” and the science of choice architecture
believes that designs should be based on users’ psychology
rather than engineer’s preferences
For instance, to reduce
accidents along the
Lake Shore Drive in
Chicago, the city
created a succession of
shrinking lines that give
the drivers a visual
illusion of speeding up,
prompting them to slow
down before the curve

z
What is the role of digital technologies?
Internet and cloud computing are
opening up possibilities of achieving
novel forms of collective intelligence
by using the concept of
citizens-as-sensors
Waze, a navigation
app, can help drivers
find the most efficient
routes around the
world. Users map out
traffic in real time,
pinpointing congestion,
speed traps, and other
hazards.

More examples…
Boston’s Street Bump app uses sensors
in phones to map bumpy roads and
empowers drivers to report potholes
themselves.
Buenos Aires’ mobile based app to
register citizen complaints has reduced
average time of resolution from 600
days in 2011 to 42 days in 2015*.
The Smart Santander project involves
20,000 sensors to measure traffic flow,
parking spaces, noise, pollution,
temperature and moisture levels.
* Source: smartcity.deloitte.com

The ultimate transformation goal
Ultimately, the aim is to adopt a people-centric design to make
cities a better place to live
The promise of a smart city is more than Wi-Fi hotspots and
talking trashcans…

To learn more, please visit
Deloitte University Press
Deloitte Review: Making Cities Smarter

William D. Eggers
Executive Director, Deloitte Center
for Government Insights
Deloitte Services LP
+1 571 882 6585
weggers@deloitte.com
Michael Greene
Senior Manager
Deloitte Consulting LLP
+1 617-851-3064
migreene@deloitte.com
Jim Guszcza
Specialist Leader
Deloitte Consulting LLP
+1 310-883-4042
jguszcza@deloitte.com
Meet the authors
Share your thoughts with the hashtags #SmartCity #DeloitteReview
Follow @DU_Press and @DeloitteGov on Twitter

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