Tomorrow’s ideal cities for living
Smart cities that are the world’s tomorrow cities have different aspects and dimensions. They have smart management since the 20th century’s city management will be inefficient if it does not take advantage of the tools of the 21st century including access to the internet, smart phones, and social media. They will have smart citizens who are familiar with using ITC. However, these cities require smart environment because currently, cities are responsible for 75 percent of the world’s energy consumption, 80 percent of greenhouse gassess emission, and the main waste producers in the world. Thus, ecological footprint of tomorrow’s cities should become small and smaller. 
On the other hand, smart cities have smart infrastructures. One of its important aspect is the issue of transport. Today, there is a direct and strong relationship between dynamism of urban transport an the level of cities’ development. High urban mobility and fluidity of urban traffic lead to urban quality of life and citizens’s satisfaction. Introduction of concepts such as low-carbon cities, green cities, and smart ones has resulted in promoting non-motorized and public transport.
Public transport system in the 21st century is expanding, changing, and innovating more than before. Currently, more than 24 billions travels i.e. equivalent to more than three times of the earth population are done by public transport and more than 13 muillion people are employed in this sector. Globally, if we double the capacity of public transport, 170 million tons oil will be saved. Moreover, doubling the share of public transport would result in avoinding more than half a billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere by 2025 since each kilometer travel by private car produces 3.5 times greenhouse gasses more than public transport.
One of the other aspects of smart city is smart construction. A smart building takes advantage of installation and use of advanced technical systems. This system consists of building automation, security of life, telecommunications, and facility management systems. Functional and practical information about overview of the building or its interior will be available for owners, renters, and building administrator. Today, costly expenses of retrofitting and similar cases can be significantly reduced by using IT, resulting in increase of urban efficiency and sustainability. Cities interested in being smart should enhance data collection tools; they should produce detailed data na dinformation.
Furthermore, tomorrow’s cities should consider siocial issues more seriously. In other words, they are places for social progress. they present high level of quality of life, social cohesion, integrity and balance with security and stability. More importance should be allocated to different classes of the society including seniors, children and the disabled people. In addition, tomorrow’s cities should be a platform for democracy and a place for cultural diversity. For this purpose, urban public spaces, including streets, will be valuable more than before.
Another important issue that should be considered for tomorrow’s cities and city management is promoting social justice in cities.Today, about 30 percent of citizens in the developing countries i.e. more than one billion people, live in slums. In this regard, one of the development purposes of the millennium is to reduce poverty and improve the quality of life of 100 million people living in slums by 2030. City management should also reduce poverty and gap among urban classes. For this purpose, The United Nations proposed 2.5 trillion dollars investment in developing countries for filling the existing gap.
However, it should be noted that tomorrow’s cities will be knowledge-based and knowledge-oriented. In the international arena, many organizations, including UN, EU, OECD, and WB have emphasized that humanity is on the verge of opening a new civilization based on knowledge. In other words, the 21st century has been called knowledge century. |
