In an article by Eric Dusablon, Dimonoff looks at how cities are using technology to improve services and operational efficiency for their citizens, with Singapore highlighted as a leading example of what a smart city can achieve. Citing IoT Agenda, the article defines a smart city as a municipality that uses information and communication technologies to increase operational efficiency, share information with the public, and improve the quality of government services and citizen welfare.
Singapore’s innovations span several sectors. For water independence, the city developed a desalination process that uses electrodes to remove dissolved components from seawater, making it drinkable. To boost food self-sufficiency, it operates indoor farms that grow produce without soil by controlling water, oxygen, light, and temperature. To ease traffic congestion, Singapore has introduced delivery drones capable of carrying packages of up to 4 kilograms, with recipients picking items up at designated mailboxes.
Singapore has also adopted blockchain technology in banking to protect against fraud, distributing financial records across multiple ledgers so that any discrepancy can be flagged and corrected, and to help speed up cross-border transactions. Dimonoff concludes that a smart city’s potential is shaped less by technological limits than by the imagination of its innovators and thinkers.