In November 2024, LOTI organised a delegation of London boroughs to participate in the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona. In this blog, the LOTI team share their reflections and insights gained from the event. 

It’s less about tech

Jay: The narrative around the  ‘smart city’ is getting less tech focused. Throughout the exhibition floor and conference programme a much wider definition of ‘smart city’ could be observed. City officials spoke about intelligent decision making and net-zero cities as smart cities while suppliers, perhaps cynically in some cases, advertised the livability, urban wellbeing and green credentials of their solutions. Overall this is positive as despite the marketing hype that runs parallel to everything ‘smart city’, a focus on solving city problems was clearly at the forefront of much of what was on offer. Elevation of smart concepts such as circular economy which brings together public and private processes with technology, data and behaviour change feels like progress from the days of ‘stick a sensor on it’. More debatable is the attempt to rebrand traditional place making schemes such as planting trees under the banner of ‘smart’. Although in some circumstances planting trees is one of the smartest things cities can do!

Sam: At a smart city conference, there is unsurprisingly a lot of talk about technology, but I was heartened by the amount of attention given to ethics and responsible innovation. I was invited to speak on a panel with the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights (CC4DR), an international network that London is part of, but it was great to also hear talks and panels throughout the conference looking at this topic. I loved the scholar Ruha Benjamin’s call to action keynote on building more inclusive technology imaginations for the future. And I’m really interested in the amazing work that an organisation called Helpful Places have done with cities across the world like Porto, co-designing iconography and engagement materials with residents to build more legible transparency information about smart cities. 

What are other cities doing?

Jay: Augmenting front line workers with city data: A genuinely smart initiative from the Catalunya region is La Meva Energia. On the front end it’s an app aimed at front line workers whose clients face fuel poverty. It helps to gather and analyse information from the client about their bills and circumstances and combines this with other data sources such as the Spanish equivalent of EPC and other open and closed local government data sources to calculate risk factors and offer tailored economic and social support. On the backend it creates a new data source available to the city authorities to use to understand the prevalence of fuel poverty across the city providing granular data to drive the design of new policies and interventions.

Sam: One thing that stood out to me in the stalls with vendors – as well as country or city pavilions – were how companies were adapting to the EU AI Act. One particular example was around facial recognition. The EU AI Act lists facial recognition systems as a Prohibited Practice (Article 5 of the Act), specifically untargeted scraping of facial images from the internet or CCTV and putting special requirements on the use of real-time biometric identification systems in the instances where they can be used. As a result of the new legislation, it was quite startling just how many vendors were advertising their smart surveillance systems as compliant with the AI Act. I lacked the expertise on this technology or legislation to understand if this was a cynical sales ploy or genuine adaptation to legislation however, so readers can decide that for themselves.

What is London’s smart city story?

We were actively part of the congress this year, taking part in the London stand within the UK pavilion alongside London & Partners, SHIFT and Earls Court Development Company, with many members of our delegation speaking on panels and exchanging knowledge with other cities. We were also delighted that our project with Greater London Authority and Good Things Foundation, Get Online London, London’s digital inclusion service won a World Smart City Award 2024 in the  Governance and Economy category. As digital inclusion is fundamental to the success of future smart cities and related technologies. 

London remains a complicated city and as in many areas that poses a challenge when it comes to London as a smart city. Not only do we need to navigate the potential for siloed resident experience and data, we also need to be able to explain to those who wish to work with us how they can best do this. As part of the preparation for this year’s conference we held a workshop with institutional stakeholders from across the London smart City landscape to sketch out the roles that each organisation plays. The result is the London Smart City Ecosystem map. The map was well received at the conference and has sparked a number of conversations about how variants can be taken forward to tell the story of London’s innovation work to different audiences both locally and internationally.

For more information about LOTI’s work on smart cities, visit our project page.