smart cities

Are smart cities just a utopian fantasy?

When cities are designed and deployed as a single unit, they don't carry the cultural vibrancy of a city built organically in response to the needs and desires of its denizens. The piecemeal approach

The 5 technologies that are going to define the next decade in cities

Cities have always been hubs of technological experimentation, shaped by the people who inhabit them and the tools they use. We can still see the marks, both charming and garish, from technologies of

Ford backs massive bike-share expansion in the San Francisco Bay Area

At a press conference in San Francisco today, Ford Motor Co. president and CEO Mark Fields announced that the company had both acquired a rideshare startup called Chariot and made a significant inve

YCombinator makes every SimCity player’s dream reality with new research initiative

Ever wanted to design a city from scratch? All those years tinkering with SimCity and Legos are going to finally start paying dividends for a lucky few. YCombinator is looking for urban mavericks to

Making wearables more useful and smart homes less of a chore

Wearables might be set to get a whole lot more useful in future if research being conducted by Carnegie Mellon University’s Future Interfaces Group is indicative of the direction of travel.

In the singularity, we’ll still be using the same garbage trucks

Our cities face a choice: find creative ways to integrate today's technology into their DNA or have entire systems get left behind. Urban populations are growing, infrastructure is aging and needs are

Chinese tech giant Kuang-Chi harnesses Israeli tech to build smart cities in China

Kuang-Chi, a Shenzhen-based technology conglomerate, recently launched a $300 million Israel fund in Tel Aviv to tap the country's smart-city know-how, according to the company's founder Ruopeng Liu.

Passport raises $8 million to help cities offer pay-by-mobile parking, transit

Passport Inc. raised $8 million in a Series B round of funding to help cities make parking and transportation systems easier for people to use, and harder for them to abuse. MK Capital led the investm

Building Smart City Security

As urbanization intensifies and public sector technology initiatives advance quickly, the once-futuristic promise of “smart cities” is coming to fruition. Cities have always been “smart” to a

GE Spotlights New Smart Street Lamps

GE has a new smart street light in early production, and it hopes that over time, cities and third-party developers will begin to take advantage of the platform to build smart city apps. The light it

Social Parking Startup ParkTag Pulls In $680K To Drive Its Tech Into Urban Planning

We first came across Berlin-based startup ParkTag pitching their parking space swapping community at Disrupt New York's Startup Alley, back in 2013. Today they're announcing a seed investment of €50