Global Resources and Promising Practices for Building and Refining Accessible and Inclusive Smart Cities from Darren Bates LLC.
Can technology help? Can machines or apps make life easier for a person with a disability? And are these industries doing enough to make their products – and the world – accessible to all? Of course and here’s how Anyone who uses the London Underground will recognise the monotonous tone of the robotic voice that tells us all to “mind…
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The term “smart city” is interesting yet not important, because nobody defines it. “Smart” is a snazzy political label used by a modern alliance of leftist urbanites and tech industrialists. To deem yourself “smart” is to make the NIMBYites and market-force people look stupid.Smart-city devotees all over this world will agree that London is particularly smart. Why? London is a…
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Smart Cities Need Technology That Understands All Humans Cities need to be accessible to all, including those with hearing and sight impairments, and restricted mobility The world’s cities and their populations are growing at an unprecedented rate. The United Nations predicts that by 2050, 66 percent of the world’s population will live in urbanized areas, compared to just a…
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The greatest advantage cities provide is the efficient utilization of resources- human, capital, land, water, and others- to achieve liveability objectives and also monetize the resources. The essence of the smart city concept is to achieve ‘more for less’. The proliferation of technology in the form of smartphones and super-fast wireless connectivity over the past decade has made it possible to give a technological angle to normal urban products and services….
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The nascent plans for a smart neighbourhood on Toronto’s eastern waterfront may sound exciting from an urban-planning perspective, but the high-tech project poses fundamental governance problems that we need to solve now.
Smart cities are largely an invention of the private sector – an effort to create a market within government. They offer tech companies opportunities to generate profits by assuming functions traditionally carried out by the public sector and by selling cities technologies they may or may not need. The business opportunities are clear. The risks inherent to residents, less so….
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ITU’s suite of accessible publications for people with disabilities is now more readily than ever — available on a dedicated online portal. With over 60 titles available, and many translated into different languages, this is one of many ways ITU is working to advance digital inclusion.
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Many have attempted, and failed, to integrate technology into urban planning. and now Sidewalk Labs is trying it again in Toronto. tml-version=”Sidewalk Labs, the urban innovation start-up owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, has announced a partnership with the City of Toronto to develop a new waterfront precinct. Time to ask Google: Can you build a city? The Quayside precinct,…
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Technology provides a new dimension to urban development, which has often been overlooked by government, businesses and municipal bodies- the engagement and participation of citizens. As cities grow, they tend to cluster into districts with each having its own identity, cultural dimension, and character. These factors play a big part in the provision and appreciation of infrastructure and services. For example, if the majority of citizens in a city district oppose the development of overhead electricity transmission lines for safety or aesthetic reasons, and reach consensus on a solution to share a private land with the government to construct underground electricity cables, then it makes perfect sense to take those perceptions and consensus into account….
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In June 2015, the ministry of urban development came out with guidelines for a smart city. These guidelines were divided into six key areas with solutions to various everyday problems in each of these categories. Smart facilities under e-Governance and Automated Citizen Services include public information, grievance redressal, electronic service delivery, citizen engagement, citizens’ eyes and ears, and video crime…
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This issue: A journalist paralyzed for more than twenty years uses a high-tech exoskeleton to walk, new glasses enable a man born without optic nerves to read the abundance of text in his environment, and accessible computer applications provide a voice to a young college author and presenter with cerebral palsy. The suits center around claims that credit unionsâ…
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