AI-generated summary
For decades, cities have used digital tools primarily to manage urban functions, but recently some have advanced to building virtual infrastructures grounded in data, fostering a new form of urbanism. This evolution distinguishes “wise cities” from “smart cities.” While smart cities focus on collecting and sharing data to generate information and knowledge, wise cities go further by applying this knowledge wisely to improve citizens’ quality of life. For example, understanding how asphalt retains heat versus the cooling effect of vegetation can inform policies to expand green shaded areas, enhancing urban livability.
The concept of wise cities is linked to adaptive urban environments that leverage data as a foundational platform, enabling innovative services similar to how apps revolutionized smartphones. These cities face challenges like autonomous vehicles sharing space safely with pedestrians, reducing emissions, and promoting circular resource flows. Wise cities integrate scientific knowledge and municipal data to make informed decisions. Moreover, combining human insight with artificial intelligence enhances problem-solving, resulting in cities that care for their inhabitants while respecting privacy through anonymized data collection.
Citizen participation is also central to wise cities, facilitated by digital tools like participatory budgets and apps that allow residents to report urban issues. These collective inputs transform isolated data into actionable knowledge, empowering communities and governments to collaboratively foster sustainable, responsive urban environments—embodying the principles of wisdom 3.0 in city management.
Intelligence emerged from cities when the dataset was broad enough, wisdom appears as a new emerging layer derived from that intelligence
For decades now, it has been common for cities to apply layers of digital paint that outline management. In recent years, a few cities have been able to go further, building virtual layers on which to build a new type of urbanism. One that rests on data as sidewalks and pipes rest on the ground. What is a wise city and how is it different from a smart city?
Data, information, knowledge, wisdom
If you go out to measure the temperature of the asphalt, you can get a figure (67.5 °C). When many people go out to measure green areas and asphalt at the same time (67.5 °C – 31 °C), they obtain a lot of
Smart cities began by collecting data, which they jealously guarded in digital islands, and later began to use free and shared tools, opening up to transparency and connected systems with which to obtain not only information, but also knowledge. From time to time, local governments find the right key to make the leap from smart to wise, from storing data to using it in a way that improves the quality of life of citizens.
Improved services thanks to previously collected data
As the report indicates Megatrends 2024, adaptive cities will know how to use data wisely, deploying new services on top of data infrastructure just as the app economy did on 3G telephony and the smartphone. Data is a platform, a ground on which to build and build. The Megatrends report itself, connected to ChatGPT 4 on the basis of higher knowledge.
On the horizon is the possibility for cars to drive on their own and live up to the title of automobile sharing space with pedestrians safely, the challenge of reducing global urban emissions, and harnessing resources to create new circular models. Yes, urban space is limited and all activities have a footprint, but there are multiple flows of materials that can connect their outputs to inputs of other flows.
Wise cities will also be those that know how to apply data, information and prior knowledge. We have been scientifically analysing the urban fabric for more than a century, although scientific indications are rarely applied. For some time now, there have been more and more municipal reports that make use of information and knowledge consolidated by academia and universities.
Humans plus AI > Humans and AI: the city that cares
Very soon after the first AIs recognized images, they were used in the detection of melanomas, and it was discovered that, although AI recognized some types of cancers more accurately, humans did the same with others. Humans plus artificial intelligence, working together, were more powerful than each one separately. Exactly the same pattern emerges in wise cities.
A wise city, which knows how to use information, is a city that takes care of its citizens. Although this type of approach often raises questions about the security-surveillance binomial (with cameras there is no theft, but it is difficult to enjoy freedom within a panopticon), there are ways to collect anonymized data to build systems that protect without suffocating.
The cities of collective intelligence
Complaint and suggestion boxes are centuries-old tools, and so are participatory processes. But the digitalisation of these concepts has given rise to a new way of participating and making a city, a way for citizens to be part of institutions and help them make decisions based on their needs.
Participatory budgets, something as simple as a website in the form of a blog in which citizens propose, debate, discuss and vote on proposals that are born from themselves, is an example of the intelligent use of new telecommunications technologies.
Applications for notices to the city council are another gold mine. Through a simple form to enter data (images included) and a GPS reference, the city council has a heat map of all the urban conditions detected by citizens. Isolated, they are data. Together, they are knowledge. Resolved, we have cities capable of applying wisdom 3.0 to the environment.
