Jun 24, 2024
Every year since 2019, the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) has created a Smart City Index (SCI), and every year American cities have been falling further and further behind. (The IMD, in case you weren’t aware, is a prestigious business school located in Sweden, that counts a panoply of international CEOs, Chairmen, Board Members, Prime Ministers, and Cabinet Members among its alumni.) This year, for the first time since the index’s inception, there isn’t a single American city in the top 20.
The IMD’s criteria for “smart cities” goes beyond the data-driven, mechanistic approach most “smart” technologies are beholden to (think “smart homes,” or “smart phones,” or “smart cars”). Of course they consider the ways in which the cities in its index use technology to enhance the day-to-day lives of its citizens, but they also analyze economic factors, and what they describe as the “‘humane dimensions’ of smart cities … [including] quality of life, environment, and inclusiveness).”
In keeping with that focus on “humane dimensions,” the SCI incorporates both objective and subjective metrics: it uses information provided by the United Nations (such as their Human Development Index) in addition to data on access to public transportation and green spaces; but it also relies on local surveys, asking 120 citizens in each of the analyzed cities for their input and observations.
GeoSure also uses a combination of data streams – some purely statistical, some more observational – in an effort to help create “safe cities,” providing a valuable adjacency to smart city data. There are the cold hard facts provided by local statistics regarding crime rates, access to health care, environmental stability, and the degree to which political freedoms are protected. But we also rely on the insights, or perceptions, of our users, which provide us with the granular, hyperlocal information that makes GeoSure’s Safety Scores so unique and so precise.
In that regard, there are some parallels between the approach the IMD takes, and the approach we take. But our goals, though complementary, are very distinct. We aren’t trying to gauge the relative “smartness” of the cities we cover: instead we’re invested in making the citizens of those cities smarter, by providing hyper-local insight into the neighborhoods and communities they live in, work in, and visit. The IMD takes a bird’s-eye view when it comes to the safety of the cities it covers, but as anyone who’s lived in a major metropolis will tell you, the character of the city can only be vaguely sketched with such broad strokes. Because every neighborhood, every community, and even every street has a different character — and different risk factors.
That’s why GeoSure has developed its singular methodology of analyzing and assessing them. Because it’s only by providing our users with that granular level of insight that they can confidently navigate their surroundings wherever they go, in any given city.
Climate change, post-covid shifts, and other dramatic changes are going to change the face of cities, and to navigate them successfully, people need to become smarter than ever. That’s why we’re constantly evolving and adapting our approach to address these changes, and help our users be more aware with their surroundings. After all, a city is only truly safe when the people who inhabit it feel that way: when they have a full understanding of the neighborhoods they live and work in. And, have the ability to engage and help change safety, themselves.
