There is no rulebook for how to turn a city of today into a city of tomorrow. Only a few scarcely adopted guidance documents for the Internet of Things (IoT) have been created in recent years — most of them in Europe — with the idea of creating governance around a concept that has so far been a playground for technologists whose primary interest is experimentation in the civic space.
Less planning can be productive. Less planning can lead to more experimentation. But the zeal of such an approach can also lend itself to disorganization, unforeseen legal issues or privacy concerns. Sticking government-operated cameras and microphones everywhere and then hooking them up to machine-learning algorithms without so much as a vote or single governing policy document isn’t everyone’s idea of an ideal city of the future. For some, such a proposition is a nightmare.
Source: Nightmare scenario: smart cities that are actually dumb
