77 Cities Trying to Get Smarter

It’s smart city and infrastructure month on The Peggy Smedley Show this month, and I’ve been excited to talk about an important program that’s setting the stage for innovation and progress in both of these areas—smart city and infrastructure.

The program is being run by the U.S. DoT (Dept. of Transportation) and it’s called the Smart City Challenge. The contest is still in progress, but the DOT announced the seven finalists this past weekend, although it was supposed to be only five.

Before I delve into the finalists, let’s look at the Smart City Challenge from the beginning. In December, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced the DOT was launching a so-called Smart City Challenge.

The goal, Foxx says, is to create a fully integrated, first-of-its-kind city that uses data, technology, and creativity to shape how people and goods move in the future. The winning city will be awarded up to $40 million from the DOT to implement data-driven ideas that will make transportation safer, easier, and more reliable. Additional awards will include up to $10 million from Paul G. Allen’s Vulcan Inc., a company that invests in new ideas and technologies in numerous areas and vertical markets, to support electric-vehicle deployment and other carbon-emission reduction strategies.

Further, the DOT says Mobileye will outfit the winning city’s fleet of public buses with its Mobileye Shield+ driver-assistance safety technology. The application window closed last month and, apparently, the DOT received an overwhelming response from U.S. cities.

In fact, 77 cities applied for consideration.

In their applications, cities needed to include plans to integrate Internet of Things technologies that anticipate and address the future needs of their communities.

Specifically, the DOT wanted to see that cities have a vision to leverage innovations such as automated vehicles and other technologies that connect citizens to an intelligent transportation system. The challenge is asking cities to imagine a world in which their transportation systems worked better and ran more smoothly.

It asks applicants to imagine a world in which “gridlock” was a thing of the past, that the traffic infrastructure reacted automatically to the needs of the drivers at any given moment, and that vehicles could talk to each other and to the infrastructure to reduce traffic accidents.

Last month, after the application period closed, Secretary Foxx said something that I really resonated with. He said, “This challenge is going to do more than just help one city adopt innovative ideas. Instead, it will serve as a catalyst for widespread change in communities across America.”

Here is where I think the Smart City Challenge has a lot to contribute and is somewhat impressive. I also believe Secretary Foxx was correct in acknowledging smart-city technology right now is something everyone seems to be talking about, but the business models for some of these technologies are just not there yet. It’s simply unchartered territory in many cases.

By getting cities to think about the future and compete for the chance to be an early adopter, the DOT is creating incentives for cities to innovate and drive the space forward.

It really is an ingenious way to prod smart-city adoption. The seven finalists out of the 77 applicants were just announced this weekend at SXSW. Each finalist will receive $100,000 to hone their proposals and develop apps outlined in their applications. The seven finalists announced are:

1. Austin, Texas
2. Columbus, Ohio
3. Denver, Colo.
4. Kansas City, Mo.
5. Pittsburgh, Penn.
6. Portland, Ore.
7. San Francisco, Calif.

I didn’t see the proposals of course, but this looks like a great pool to me. The final selection of the winner is scheduled to take place in June and I’m looking forward to seeing how this all plays out. Consider this, 77 cities applied for the Smart City Challenge and this truly indicates a strong interest level in leveraging technology to make cities smarter. And this is a great sign. What’s more, 77 cities went through the whole application process.

Simply, what this indicates is people in all 77 places sat down and really brainstormed how they could make their cities a better place to live by integrating technology into their transportation systems and infrastructure, which would make their communities better for their citizens. Let’s not forget, in the end, there’s a $40 million grand prize at stake and, of course, a lot of bragging rights.

But consider this, the Smart City Challenge is already a success. The cities that don’t actually win the top prize are actually winners in their own way since they are already way further ahead than they were before, and there’s something to be said for that. And isn’t that something to celebrate?

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