Enhancing Smart City for The SDG Indonesia One

Context

In 2016, the World Economic Forum in Davos ordained the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a revolution in which the development of digital technology becomes the leader. Consequently, the city of the future will certainly not be separated from the digital development and disruption. Before far imagining how to move forward, let us take a look back in history. In 1933, the Athens Charter has in fact provided clues as to how to form an ideal city. In the Charter, we learn that a city must have dominant green spaces, have a place to engage in creative and cultural activities, and create comfortable pedestrian walks, along with wide and clear routes. Interestingly, these principles seem to be timeless, remain very relevant, yet definitely with wide array of challenges.

In his 8 Mighty Megatrends, Anders Lindgren highlights some of the biggest challenges for cities in the future. These challenges include population boom, rapid urbanization, ferocious consumption, technology rush, digital transformation, enlarged global connectedness, environmental degradation, and increasing wealth inequality. Essentially, in the future, it is possible that human functions will be replaced by machines or, in other terms, capital-intensive. With the evolving digital disruption, how will Indonesia become? How will the cities become in the future?

To shape the future cities in Indonesia, we need a Quadruple Helix combination comprising the government, the private sector, the university, and the community. Digital disruption which, according to Lindgren, is one of the biggest challenges, can be empowered to make a quantum leap to shape the city in the future, with of course, proper functioning of the Quadruple Helix. Physical infrastructure limitations can be overcome by creating digital innovation. With support from the government, the private sector, the campus, and the community, these examples could be scaled up to the national level.

What about most Indonesian cities that are dominated by informality? Once again, the issue is optimizing the role of Quadruple Helix. A study conducted by the University of Sydney on the informality in the shantytown corner of Bandung reveals that this informality, if managed properly, will be able to produce a new balance point in the future, to build and to integrate with the community. Thus, the concept of future city is the concept of smart city, which is able to foster connectivity among citizens, is centered on citizens, and works for them.

Fueling The Sustainable Development Goals

Half the world’s population are already living in urban areas, and making cities work better is a critical challenge for this century. Cities want to provide their citizens with a thriving economy and a great quality of life, and to do this with a reduced environmental impact. Making this possible is a big opportunity for business in Indonesia.

Rapid technological development and innovation has created an exciting array of opportunities for city governments. The technology industry is increasingly working to develop software, devices, network solutions and other tools that meet the specific needs of government agencies, with applications in everything from public safety to energy management to library operations. Collectively, these advancements have come to be known as smart city solutions. The opportunities presented by smart city solutions, however, do not come without risk. Without a clear sense of direction or standards, cities risk wasting money on frivolous or ineffective gadgets. Many cities have struggled with negative reactions due to poorly-considered policies. Other cities have made themselves vulnerable to privacy and public safety threats by maintaining unreliable or insecure networks.

A complex mix of players has emerged in a worldwide Smart City movement. Each player sees the city through a different lens. In the private sector, city engineers and technology companies view the city as a complex system with multiple layers. Architects and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) see the city in terms of people, social inclusion, and a sense of space. Government leaders, on the other hand, view the city in terms of economic growth and new or improved city services supported by policy initiatives designed to effect change. Regardless of their viewpoint, most agree on a common vision: make cities smarter and more sustainable.

The strategic action plan is designed to help the City to identify areas of opportunity, prioritize desired outcomes, and anticipate and mitigate risks. The result is a set of goals and corresponding initiatives around which City leaders will organize their efforts over the next few years.

The objectives in this plan are broadly categorized into four goals:

• Connected City
• Responsive City
• Transparent City
• Innovative City

Each of these four goals comprises multiple corresponding objectives, and each objective includes the top priority initiatives that will help the City meet that objective. The objectives and initiatives are not laid out in a chronological order; much of this work will be occurring simultaneously. Some of the initiatives may be considered “low-hanging fruit” that can be achieved in a period of six months to a year, while other initiatives will require a much longer time horizon.

This report will show an exciting level of ambition for the development of future cities, with a broad focus on the facilitating nature of open data and its role in improving access to information, service delivery and economic development in a city. The challenges are characterized by the need to become more sustainable, while improving quality of life for residents, with growing population and future economic hurdles.

There are five key aspects to smarter approaches that corresponds with the SDGs, which are strongly information driven:

• a modern digital infrastructure, combined with a secure but open access approach to public re-usable data, which enables citizens to access the information they need, when they need it;
• a recognition that service delivery is improved by being citizen centric: this involves placing the citizen’s needs at the forefront, sharing management information to provide a coherent service, rather than operating in a multiplicity of service silos (for example, sharing changes of address more effectively), and offering internet service delivery where possible (at a fraction of the face to face cost);
• an intelligent physical infrastructure to enable service providers to use the full range of data both to manage service delivery on a daily basis and to inform strategic investment in the city/community (for example, gathering and analyzing data on whether public transport is adequate to cope with rush hour peaks);
• an openness to learn from others and experiment with new approaches and new business models; and
• transparency of outcomes/performance, for example, city service dashboards to enable citizens to compare and challenge performance, establishment by establishment.

All in all, the Smart City project will not only having a direct relation with goal no 11 (sustainable cities and communities) but also making a possible conjunction with other goals ranging from well being, clean water, clean energy, decent work and economic growth, industry and innovation infrastructure, responsible consumption and production. The wide arrays of goals are being covered through idiosyncratic structures of smart city (see figure 1). Having this in mind, both tangible and intangible social economic impact for every smart city projects will be immense which therefore deserve to be addressed by the government through creative and collaborative financing.

Fithra Faisal Hastiadi. (2019). Enhancing Smart City for The SDG Indonesia One. SMI Institute, PT Sarana Multi Infrastruktur (Persero). Diakses , dari