See how Ali and Google layout smart cities

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the steam era and the electrical era came one after another. The railway network and the power network brought explosive growth to the cities and regions, and they also brought the theoretical paradigms of industrial cities and rural cities. At the beginning of the 20th century, the popularity of automobiles, highways, elevators, etc., the wide-acre city and the glorious city became the prototype genes of modern cities, and almost integrated into the blood of all urban planning.

After the war, the development of science and technology was changing with each passing day. The informationization and Internet eras reached their peak in just one generation. Cloud computing, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence have successively become the focus of new technologies. High-speed interoperability of information, surpassing human computing and manufacturing capabilities. Compared with the previous technological revolutions, this change seems to have a more sufficient reason to reshape the urban form while dramatically changing people's lifestyles. Although we were guessing twenty years ago, whether the city no longer has the premise of agglomeration, is about to usher in the collapse of the form. However, in fact, even if we sit at home today, we can purchase all goods and services through Taobao. We can also connect friends from any corner of the world through WeChat video, but the city continues to grow and gather.

In the last decade, after the concept of “smart city” was proposed, ICT (InformationCommunicationsTechnology) companies have been used as a packaging marketing tool for their industry information solutions, stealing concepts into computing and storage capabilities, or cameras and large screens. Thousands of cities at home and abroad have announced the ambition to build a “smart city”, but there are few cases worthy of praise.

In 2017, AlphaGo and AlphaZero's victory in humans caused people to pay attention to artificial intelligence, and the commercial use of NB-IoT low-power Internet of Things also ushered in the dawn of the Internet of Everything. Urban application technologies such as biometrics, MEMS microsensors, edge computing, and driverless are nearing maturity. Smart cities have also ushered in a new round of construction hotspots driven by Internet technology companies such as Google and Ali.

One of the most representative ones is Ali's brains in Hangzhou, Suzhou, Zhangzhou and Macao, and announced cooperation with Xiong'an New District; the other is the name of the company's SidewalkLabs company announced in the waterfront of Toronto. An emerging community for SidewalkToronto: Try to actively explore the challenges of solving urban challenges, including how to build inclusive and climate-friendly communities, improve people's quality of life and rebuild public spaces. The Xiong'an City Brain and the Toronto Waterfront are exciting initiatives that may be the two starting points for the future of the new city era.

Xiong'an City Brain

Among the Xiong'an smart city projects, the most interesting thing is the ET city brain. Ali said that the brain of ET City is a new infrastructure to support the sustainable development of the future city. The core is to use real-time and full-scale urban data resources to optimize urban public resources globally, and to correct urban operational defects in real time, to achieve the following three breakthroughs:

1. Breakthrough in urban governance mode: improve government management capacity, solve outstanding problems in urban governance, and realize intelligent, intensive and humanized urban governance;

2. Breakthrough in urban service mode: More accurate and convenient service for enterprises and individuals anytime, anywhere, the city's public services are more efficient, and public resources are more economical;

3. Breakthrough in urban industrial development: Open urban data resources are important basic resources, play a role in promoting industrial development, and promote the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries.

The ET city brain traffic module is currently based on data fusion calculations such as traffic cameras and signal lights. It attempts to use the data brain as the core to monitor and analyze road traffic in real time and automatically switch based on dynamic traffic data. And the time of the signal light, even in the huge traffic section, the green light does not stop.

Urban brain innovation practice

In the construction of the ET city brain, Ali continued the normal thinking of domestic smart city construction, played the role of system integrator, integrated existing IT solutions with engineering thinking, and was already trying to solve the pain points of the city. Of course, as an Internet company, its light asset thinking can easily position itself at the “brain” level with the highest value chain, focusing on “cloud”, “data” and “algorithm”, namely integrated computing platform, data resource platform, IT service. Platform, while vertical industry hardware and software solutions are provided by partners.

With the strong capital and marketing capabilities of the Ali brand, the city's brain is quickly promoted. But apart from the already mature smart traffic, which is only the signal timing, other urban data links are still far from being opened. This is an embarrassing situation. A "brain" without limbs, senses and a complete nervous system cannot achieve the goal of fully realizing the construction of a smart city.

Urban brain IT desk

Urban brain value

The emerging community of Google's SidewalkToronto

Google and SidewalkLabs are more far-sighted. The Toronto Waterfront Planning is a typical smart city top-level design that is jointly completed by planners and technology companies. The idea is to use software and hardware integration technology to connect the layers of transportation, construction, public space, and pipe network infrastructure through technology and data to achieve subversion of urban planning mode. It is also equipped with the most advanced limbs and sensory systems for the city.

SidewalkLabs first proposed the development goals of its smart community and the logical starting point for the entire program:

1. Build a complete community (Completecommunity) to provide a high quality of life for a diverse range of residents, workers and visitors;

2. Provide an ideal environment for people, businesses, entrepreneurs and local organizations trying to solve urban challenges to address issues such as energy use, housing affordability and transportation;

3. Make Toronto the center of a new industry that is innovating in the rapidly emerging cities of the world;

4. Make the project a model for sustainable communities in Toronto and the world.

All the technologies in the plan are based on the needs of the “people”, that is, the specific urban users of the community and residents, workers, and visitors, to solve the problems they will face.

By building a city platform, SidewalkToronto provides a combination of physical layer and digital layer, and standardizes the standardlayer to provide the necessary conditions for urban innovation.

At the physical level of Sidewalk, four core concepts will be introduced to create a more flexible and open urban space:

1. Flexible construction – more adaptable buildings and new construction methods make housing and retail space more affordable;

2. People-first street – through people-oriented street design and a series of convenient transportation methods, people can enjoy a cheaper, safer and more convenient public transportation system to reduce the use of private cars;

3. More inclusive public spaces - creating public spaces allows people to enjoy the outdoor environment and strengthen community connections;

4. Open-use underground infrastructure - reduce the cost of inspections and maintenance and the impact on the normal operation of the city, and also reserve space for future technology or system upgrades.