The government has just launched a consultation paper on the development of Macau as a Smart City. As happens so often with ‘trendy’ terms the non-initiated may have trouble deciphering exactly what they mean. None other than our most often useful Wikipedia warns us ‘it is difficult to distil a precise definition of a Smart City.’
We are further advised that ‘other terms that have been used for similar concepts include cyberville, digital city, electronic communities, flexicity, information city, intelligent city, knowledge-based city,’ to name but a few. But the current favourite is ‘Smart City,’ and that is the one we must retain.
Indeed, nobody wants a ‘Dumb City’ – but what do we mean to achieve with the ‘Smart City’? If meaning uncertainty exists, we would be well advised to start by defining the expression before we start to determine what we want to achieve with it. If the definition is an open matter, the document should start by clarifying its meaning and scope. That is not the case.
The first chapter – entitled merely ‘Vision’ – amounts to a single three-line paragraph. It states: ‘Having the population as a foundation, through technological innovations, we will build Macau as an intelligent centre for tourism and leisure, able to develop sustainably and become a city that favours housing, employment, movement, tourism, and leisure.’ It is a rehash of common techno-babble with the word ‘intelligent’ thrown in.
We live in a time of labels, and labels sell – services if nothing else. Some words become ubiquitous; everyone keeps quoting or mentioning them. But recurrent recitation alone is not enough to distil a shared and precise meaning.
Is it that they make everyone feel smart and modern, possibly because it is difficult to define what they stand for? Or that they provide the comforting feeling that there is a consensus, that everyone shares a common mindset? That, deceptive as it may be, is not without merit – but seems insufficient to justify a consultation process. Just a commitment to sound urban management might be fitting, without the consultation costs.
Or maybe the ‘Smart City’ topic just became ‘fashionable,’ so we had to talk about it. The introduction to the consultation paper opens with these words: ‘The Smart City is the new fashion for municipal development and planning in the 21st Century’. There it is!
Then again, it raises fresh misgivings: such is the nature of fashion to be short-lived.
*Economist and permanent contributor to MNA
