How Smart Is Your City?

How many Urban Planning 101 courses have begun with the instructor asking the class, “What is a Smart City?” It’s a question that’s sure to set the stage for a semester’s worth of theories, lectures, papers and exams aimed at introducing the students to the many notions and practices they will encounter and perhaps improve on in their budding careers in the field.

It’s not a new notion. City planners and engineers have long been incorporating high-tech traffic sensors, data-driven energy management, use of the Internet of Things for infrastructure and other planning purposes and improved connectivity for citizens and city administration agencies. Our cover story, “Smarter Cities,” brings the discussion in a new direction: An excerpt of “New Industrial Urbanism: Designing Places for Production,” by MIT Professor Eran Ben-Joseph and co-author Tali Hatuka, makes the case that an urban location can give industry a competitive advantage.

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