What is a Smart City?
To first get a better understanding and appreciation of what a smart city is and how it would be great to live in one, let's first paint a picture of what most of us usually go through in daily life.
You ready? Okay, let's start!
Imagine yourself driving to the store to pick up some groceries for dinner. It's a Monday and you just got off from a VERY stressful day at work. A few minutes into the drive, you find yourself stuck in the middle of a heavy traffic jam.
Thirty minutes later, you've only managed to move about 20 feet. You start to get frustrated until you finally reach the intersection and find the cause of the traffic jam. Right in the middle of the intersection, three cars are locked together in a three-way metal bending accident.
You're anger at this point turns to worry as you see that one of the drivers seem to be badly hurt and there are no paramedics in sight. You do see a traffic enforcer to the side barking orders into his radio so you assume that help is on the way and continue driving to the store.
When you finally arrive, you are confronted by another problem... Where do you park? You spend the next 20 minutes circling the parking lot until you finally come across an empty parking space. You let out a sigh of relief and park your car.
You are in the grocery store now, walking down the isles with a basket in hand. You pick up a few things on your list until you come across the most important item that you cant seem to find. You search everywhere until you finally decide to ask one of the merchandisers for assistance. He informs you that they are out of stock already but they might have stocks in their smaller branch opposite the direction you drove from the office. You groan and tell yourself that you knew you should have just gone to the other store since it was closer to your house, but you thought the bigger branch would have more stocks on everything.
You pay for your items and leave the store. You decide to stop by the other store tomorrow and head home. On the way the traffic seems to have cleared up a bit, but is still moving pretty slow. As you sit in the car, you can't help but to gag and roll your windows up, fast, because in front of your car, is a garbage truck. You get pretty upset about the garbage truck route and the location of the city dump. Why does it have to be here at this time when a lot of people can smell the foul odor?
You finally reach your house, prepare and eat your dinner, and call it a night. As you settle into bed, the power goes out... again. Figures, you whisper to yourself. Why do regulated power outages have to be at a time when people are at home? You drift off to sleep thinking: this day was pretty bad, but not unlike other days you've had before. If only you lived in a city that were better, and more efficient. Not just with traffic, but with everything. Electricity, parking, accident response, etc. Maybe in the future I will.
Part 2 will be coming out soon so stay tuned!
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