Smart Cities

5Smart City in Action

To this day, smart cities remain an ideal since none exist, except for Singapore perhaps, but there are many experiences that show that, on the one hand, the process has started, and on the other hand, the transition towards smart cities beyond its current market is a legitimate and obtainable objective. These experiences are the results of both intentional projects of constructing a smart city and unintentional creations since a smart city can grow organically. However, within the context of the third industrial revolution, radical innovations will be better valued in deliberate pilot projects.

5.1. Two cities that should not exist: Norilsk and Singapore

Two examples of cities that represent the divergence in cities founded on political impetus are Norilsk and Singapore. These two cities would have no reason to exist if nature had been left to its own devices. They are located in unlikely areas: Singapore is on the Equator, there is no drinking water, it has a humid, hot and unpleasant climate year-round and there was only one activity when it was founded in 1965, that is, the port left by the British. A typical example of a monotown! Today it is one of the most prosperous city-states in the world.

5.1.1. Norilsk, the most polluted and polluting city in the world

Stalin decided to build Norilsk in the 1930s, a city he wanted to be “as beautiful as Leningrad”, in the Russian Arctic: 280 days of extreme cold, 130 days of snow-storms and 45 days of the ...