Smart cities in China

$70bn allocated for China’s ‘smart cities’
April 12, 2013, 8:32 am

The government has set up 90 smart city demonstration areas [Xinhua]

China’s ministry of housing and urban-rural development (MOHURD) has announced that banks and investors have promised a major credit line of at least $70.3 billion for China’s “smart city” projects.

After the China Development Bank announced in January that it would offer at least 80 billion yuan in credit for building smart cities over the next three years, two other commercial banks promised at least the same amount of credit for such projects, according to information released at a MOHURD seminar held on Wednesday.

Other institutional investors also signed an agreement in early April to extend another 200 billion yuan in credit for building smart cities, the ministry said.

The names of the institutions or the banks are not yet revealed.

The concept, proposed by IBM, is based on technologies such as the internet of things and cloud computing, and embraces transportation, healthcare and public security.

China has promoted the concept of smart cities, including the application of information technology in urban management and the construction of low-carbon architecture, amid the country’s renewed urbanisation drive.

The government has set up 90 smart city demonstration areas and more applications are under review, the MOHURD said.

Investment in smart city projects might exceed 1 trillion yuan ($159 billion) by 2015, smart city specialist Jiang Defeng said.

Source: Xinhua

Beijing prepares to get smart

By Hugh Langley and Chen Nan ( China Daily)

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For many, the term "Smart City" denotes eco-friendly urban spaces with streets of driverlesselectric cars and houses powered by used drink cans. But as the recent Beijing Design Weekdemonstrated it's much more than that. Smart City is about completely open innovation.

While the week brought a vast array of ideas from designers around the world, Geo-City SmartCity, curated by the China Millennium Monument Museum of Digital Arts, was the focus feature,displaying 82 projects from 14 countries.

GeoPulse Beijing, the Beijing-focused pilot demo by ARS Electronica of Austria, was one of theChinese applications of this model on display, and its overall message was clear: Smart citiesare the way of the future, and now is Beijing's time to embrace it.

Some predict that by 2050, between 70 and 85 percent of the global population will live incities, but the problems of over-urbanization — pollution, traffic, overcrowding — are alreadystarting to show. The idea of GeoCity is to put government and citizens' fingers on the urbanpulse, and show how they can solve these problems.

The solution? Big Data. In the modern world, the magnitude of open data from social networks,smartphones and other means is phenomenal, yet barely any is being harnessed. According tothe GeoCity initiative, if this data is collected, processed and understood, the possibilities forhelping urbanization are huge.

"The first time we had it developed for the city of Linz (in Austria) in its first phase, it was a toolfor the citizens," said Michael Badics, director of AE Solutions at ARS Electronica."From kids tothe elderly, everyone could access this data. But we saw there was so much more potential init."

Smart Cities will also give governments the ability to access information about the city and solveproblems more efficiently. But to be understood, the data must be visual and accessible, andthat's where the project's second proposal comes in: Big Design. ARS Electronica has pairedwith the Academy of Arts and Design at Tsinghua University, among others, to find ways ofmapping urban mobility that's visually stimulating and easy to understand.

"Visually telling stories gives us the possibility to explain things and make them open forpeople," Badics said during his keynote speech during the design week."Out of the data hiddenin the city, you can tell stories. And you can tell stories in a way that people can reallyunderstand how the things are connected."

According to Fu Zhiyong, vice-director of Information Art and Design Department at Academy ofArts and Design, Tshinghua University, information visualization has grown quickly in Chinaduring the past 10 years.

"It's all about navigating and delivering the message, which gets people participating andmakes the city smart," he says.

Oliver Senn, a senior research engineer with Singapore-MIT, gave an example of how datacollection could be used by taxi drivers. Drivers could be warned when it is going to rain andshown a visualization of where the most potential passengers are located.

But GeoPulse Beijing is more than a convenient idea － it's a way of understanding aninevitable future. The question is, will Beijing embrace the idea with open arms? Yang Lei,curator of the GeoCity exhibition, seems to think so.

"It's already started. We used this exhibition to launch some pilot demos," he says."In China,everything is happening so fast. In the next three to five years this data-based Smart Citymovement will really take off."

Contact the writer at chennan@chinadaily.com.cn

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