The beginnings were with Toyota at the CAS Technology Exhibition, where the company presented an imagined model of a future city in which cars are self-driving and do not have any carbon emissions. The idea at that time was to establish a small city on top of a mountain inhabited by a small number of people.
The idea seemed impossible to implement due to the high cost and the lack of importance of the matter to many. It was just a fictional thing that began to appear in science fiction films.
Smart cities are a necessity, not a luxury:
The matter is still relative for many. It is not possible to compare a city suffering from economic problems and disasters and another rich city that has a strong economy and seeks to provide the best for its residents.
Especially since smart cities contribute to finding solutions to climate change, overcrowding in cities, and many other problems that we suffer from, as large cities contribute 70% of carbon emissions and consume about 75% of fuel in the world.
Make people's lives easier:
One of the main goals of smart cities is to make the lives of the people living in them very easy by saving time. For example, they provide solutions for empty places to park a car without the need to search for a long time for a vacant parking space.
The basis of smart cities:
Smart homes:
Which depends mainly on the principle of sustainability to save energy and provide luxury and facilities for living in homes, everything in which is completely controlled via the Internet, so a person can control anything inside his home from anywhere in the world.
Smart cities are based on several basic principles:
artificial intelligence AI:
Artificial intelligence contributes to dealing with a huge amount of data, which helps in organizing traffic, agriculture, and facilities.
The Internet of things IOT:
Which relies on cameras, sensors, and highly efficient devices that are always connected to the Internet to connect devices, exchange data, and create central control systems to improve the organization and rationalize energy consumption.
Fifth generation Internet 5G:
Despite its ambiguity to many, it is the basis because the nature and volume of huge data requires high-speed Internet.
Robots:
It is the basis for smart cities that will provide the required services to the population.
Many countries around the world have begun to realize the importance of smart cities and their effective role, especially since the cost of building a smart city is only 10% higher than the cost of building a regular city, and in the long run, the costs and savings are much greater for smart cities. Therefore, many cities have begun to transform towards smart cities, such as London, Amsterdam, and Barcelona, in addition to many countries that have begun to adopt a strategy to transform their cities into smart cities, such as Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.
The transition to smart cities has become an urgent need to save the amount of energy consumed and reduce spending, like everything in our lives, it has negative aspects, including man’s connection to the digital world more than the surrounding society, and excessive control of people’s lives by knowing all the data and everything people do, although this is also a positive thing, as it will make cities Safer from theft and others.