Is Cambridge a smart city?

The world is becoming increasingly urban, with the UN estimating that 70% of the global population will live in cities by 2050. Making sure that cities can cope with the unprecedented pressure on their resources is therefore critical. Hence the idea of smart cities that interconnect infrastructure, services, technology and culture for the benefit of citizens and visitors alike.

Technology is at the centre of this, providing a platform to make lives easier for everyone and vitally, letting them interact in new ways. At a basic level sensors can collect real time data to make day to day activities (from monitoring air quality to finding a parking space) easier, ensuring there is a reliable, predictable and efficient infrastructure. And, more importantly, using this platform brings people together to enable the free exchange of ideas, letting people interact in new ways and create surprising stuff.

From the outside Cambridge has many of the ingredients of a smart city – a highly educated population, strong technology industry, lots of bright ideas and is concentrated in a relatively small area. So, last week’s Cambridge Festival of Ideas debate discussing “Is Cambridge a smart city?” looked like it might go either way.

But peel back the surface and Cambridge’s smartness seems to be currently focused in people’s heads. Making the case for the motion, the best efforts of Alex van Someren of Amadeus Capital and Claire Ruskin of the Cambridge Network seemed to revolve around having some signs that tell you when the next bus is due and a desire by many geeks to patronise the arts.

In contrast, the speakers against Smartness had an array of arguments. Andrew Nairne of Kettle’s Yard pointed to the fact that Cambridge should be a city of potential and imagination and clearly isn’t delivering, while the divides between town and gown, city and countryside highlighted the lack of a common feeling between groups in the population. And that’s before people got onto transport planning, the cost of housing and a lack of joined up vision as impediments to smartness. Unsurprisingly the motion failed, with 82% voting against it.

So what does Cambridge need to become smart? It has the brains, but from what I’ve seen it comes down to not having a single, unified vision that everyone buys into. There are a lot of disparate groups in a small population – nearly 25,000 of the 125,000 residents are students, while you also have the University of Cambridge and its colleges (which own most of the land), those involved in tech businesses, tourists and the general public. And as the limited space available in the city mean that a large number of people can’t afford to live in Cambridge, you have a sizeable commuting population. Cambridge isn’t even a unitary authority, so there isn’t even one public body to represent the city.

All of these groups have different ideas for what would make Cambridge smart, but there isn’t a single agency that joins up all their needs and provides a dynamic vision for the future. It is time for this to change if everyone is to benefit from Cambridge’s success going forward.