A Truly Smart City Is Not a City at All

Over at HuffPo, author John M. Eger wrote an insightful piece about Smart Cities and the Internet of Things that starts out:

Every city it seems, wants to be a “Smart City” by using technology to solve our current problems of water use and supply, energy consumption, transportation efficiency, mobile healthcare, police, fire, and safety; and to lay the foundation — certainly the bandwidth — for future savings of the city and increased revenues for businesses and individuals.

credit: Huffington Post

His call to action is something the Bay Area has historically and fiercely resisted:

Now more than ever, cities and counties within regions must work together to do joint governmental planning and development, and provide police, fire and safety services, land use, transportation and telecommunications systems as well. The cities within a region, the county, federal and state government agencies in the area, and for that matter all schools and hospitals, and non-profit agencies can build the new information infrastructures, as waterways, railways and highways were in an earlier era, and deploy them to offer vital public services.

Interestingly, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee is in. The fiber loop can play a part in this as well, as we reach out to connect our neighboring Cities. What of all our other regional neighbors?