Cities are getting smarter, but do their citizens care?

Introduction

Understanding citizen or consumer interest in so-called "smart city" initiatives can be critical for city governments looking to achieve a return on investment for their technology deployments. With smart cities enabled by new digital technologies dedicated to enhancing the quality of life by providing new services, citizen opinion offers valuable insight into the deployment calculus. Although some smart-city initiatives aim to provide insight or management on a citywide operations level, the goal of all smart-city efforts is ultimately to enhance efficiency and improve the quality of life for individual citizens.

Here we compare data on the smart-city deployments reported from government respondents in 451 Research's Voice of the Enterprise: Internet of Things, The OT Perspective, Use Cases & Outcomes 2021 survey with consumer interest data collected from our Voice of the Connected User Landscape: Endpoints & IoT, Smart Cities, Services 2022 survey. The survey responses show that smart street lighting, intelligent transportation (roads and parking) and environmental initiatives have the greatest citizen demand but lag in current city deployments.

While cities vary widely in their geography and access to the funding needed to deploy smart-city technology initiatives, citizens' perspectives offer valuable insight into the appeal of various use cases. Prioritizing deployments that generate widespread interest, no matter the size and scope, could help cities better manage resources and provide citizen-focused services. While some current smart-city deployment priorities reflect significant consumer interest, other use cases generated outsized interest from respondents, presenting an opportunity for cities and technology vendors to target these areas and generate critical deployment wins.

Smart-city sweet spot: Low deployment, high interest

Areas in which consumers express interest that essentially outstrips current deployment levels represent a sweet spot that can inform cities or technology vendors looking for valuable initiatives to pursue. Use cases with high levels of citizen interest but relatively low levels of deployment include:

Smart street lighting. A common first deployment for cities, IoT-enabled streetlights led all other use cases in terms of appeal among survey respondents, with 43% of consumers expressing interest. Yet just 21% of cities reported deploying smart streetlights. That represents the largest mismatch between the demand for and deployment of a smart-city use case. With its ability to pay for itself over time in reduced energy costs and increased automation, smart lighting is a use case that could pave the way for cities looking to begin an overall digital transformation.

Smart parking. The ability to find and pay for parking spots with mobile devices was of interest to 25% of respondents, yet deployed by only 8% of cities. More flexible parking options have gained increased focus as cities look to manage their congestion in the wake of COVID-19's impact on curbside dining and delivery.

Intelligent transportation/smart roads. These use cases refer to a breadth of technologies that help optimize vehicle experiences by predicting traffic flows to reduce periods of extremely high and low use of roadways. While one-quarter of cities reported deploying technologies to enhance transportation, 30% of consumers expressed interest in smart transportation, especially for its ability to save time and reduce emissions.

Environmental efforts and sustainability. Our Voice of the Connected User Landscape survey respondents expressed strong interest in environmental monitoring (36%), including the capture of information on air quality, fires, floods and other factors. That said, just 27% of cities reported environmental IoT technology deployments. As cities aim to align with national, state and private sustainability efforts, monitoring current conditions is often the first step in reducing CO2 emissions from traffic specifically and orienting city efforts toward sustainability.

A note of caution: High deployment, low interest

The single-use case where deployment outstripped interest in our survey data was smart waste management. While optimizing trash pickup and minimizing truck rolls is a valuable cost-saving measure for cities — 31% of surveyed city governments have deployed technology for smart waste management — citizens expressed slightly less interest in the initiative, with just one in four finding it appealing. Use cases that optimize city operations, like open access to citywide data or timely removal of waste, are often deployed at a higher rate than consumers are necessarily interested in, despite playing a valuable role in city operations.

Equilibrium: Where citizen interest/city plans match

Consumer interest and current municipal deployments roughly "matched" for three use cases: video surveillance, public transport management and public health tracking. While these use cases varied in the appeal they generated, reported deployment mirrored interest.

Video surveillance. Deployed by 43% of cities, this technology topped all other use cases for government deployments while generating the second-most appeal among citizens (41% of respondents). Video surveillance, most often used to monitor public safety or traffic, has gained a certain amount of notoriety in cities and will likely remain a widely deployed use case due to its relative cheapness and replicability.

Public transport management. This was an area of interest for about one-third of consumer survey respondents and deployed by about one-third of cities surveyed. As cities aim to lure riders back onto public transit and shift away from car dependence to reduce emissions, investing in efficient public transportation and expanding multimodal transit networks are trends we expect to grow in coming years.

Public health tracking. While public health tracking — selected by about one-quarter of respondents in both surveys — can be valuable to help reduce the spread of disease and promote public safety, consumers appeared less interested in it relative to other use cases. This is perhaps due to the perceived invasiveness of tracking activities such as temperature screening and collection of personal information.

^{451 Research's quarterly U.S. consumer population representative survey polls consumers about connectivity-related devices, services, digital media and applications. The Smart Cities 2022 survey was fielded from April 4-25, 2022, among approximately 5,000 respondents. 451 Research's Voice of the Enterprise: Internet of Things: Operational Technologies Perspective Use Cases and Outcomes survey focuses on OT insights into IoT use-case deployments and their impact on business outcomes. This survey was fielded from July 7-22, 2021, among 600 OT professionals, including 96 government respondents.}