With its population of 9 million inhabitants, set to increase to 11 million by 2050, London represents one of the biggest economic and financial hubs in the world.
To ensure economic growth and development in the coming years, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan launched in 2016 “Smarter London Together”, a three-year roadmap for the period 2018-2021 with the objective of making London a smart city: “a better place to live, work, and visit for everyone”, leading the advancement of the city through innovation, data sharing and smart infrastructure.
The roadmap develops around 5 main goals:
- Providing more user-designed services
- Ensuring better data-sharing, security, governance and ethics at a city-wide level
- Promote world class connectivity and smarter streets
- Enhance digital skills developing the talent needed for the future
- Improve city-wide collaboration
In the era of IoT and AI, London positions itself as the tech capital of Europe both by size (worth around $44bn) and level of investments, entailing great opportunities for new technologies to be employed in the development of sustainable infrastructures and the facilitation of data sharing.
The decision to leverage the tech-savvy nature of the city to drive innovation and ensure that traditional networks and services are made more efficient with the use of digital solutions has been proved to be successful: London has now reached an international standing as smart city and is ranked very highly across the world according to numerous independent studies.
The re-election of Mayor Sadiq Kahn in 2021 has widened the horizon for the roadmap to be further improved and further goals are set to be reached in the upcoming 3 years.
A great focus will be on the Green New Deal, and the need to tackle the current climate and ecological emergencies. London is currently leader in smart mobility among European cities, but it has set an ambitious plan to become one of the greenest and smartest cities in the world: the goal is to achieve 80% of city journeys and commuting by bicycle, by public transport and by foot by two decades.
Sadiq Khan administration set to invest £10m in the improvements of the infrastructures, to facilitate the city journeys to pedestrians and cyclists, and the construction of new buildings in accordance with the principle of sustainability. At the same time, in order to meet the climate change target, the car traffic needs to be reduced by 27% in London by 2030. The aim is to double the size of London’s green economy to accelerate job creation, as well as transforming London into a zero-carbon and pollution-free city by 2030 and zero-waste by 2050.
Businesses and citizens will therefore continue benefit from London’s innovation ecosystem where technology innovation and sustainability are set both as drivers and as goals for the future.
Maja Tamiazzo
Photo by Julia Sadowska on Unsplash
