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[T]here is a more basic concern when it comes to smart cities: They will be exceedingly complex to manage, with all sorts of unpredictable vulnerabilities. There will always be a place for new technology in our urban infrastructure, but we may find that often, “dumb” cities will do better than smart ones.
As we know all too well from our personal lives, tech products have a short reliable life span. We accept regular disruptions in internet and cellphone function as a fact of life. Technology ages rapidly, with glitches increasing common only a couple of years into its life. But would we accept the same rate of disruption in, say, our water and power services?1
New technology in 2015 will be outdated before 2020. If we widely deploy smart tech in cities, we need to be prepared to replace it every few years, with the associated disruption and cost. But who will assume those costs?
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- 1. City infrastructure, especially in high-income countries, is designed to last decades or centuries and must always work. Bridges are built to last 100 years, tunnels longer.