Economic development in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region has seen a higher number of people moving from rural to urban areas in the region. A concept note released by the ASEAN secretariat estimates that about 90 million more people are likely to move to urban areas by 2030. The major share of this population is expected to move to cities having a population of between 200,000 and 2 million. These cities are expected to account for 40 per cent of the region’s growth.
This population flow will create a number of challenges for these cities. These include lack of adequate residential infrastructure, increasing traffic congestion, increasing air and water pollution, and increasing threats to the safety and security of citizens. To ensure that these challenges are dealt with, many ASEAN cities such as Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia are taking initiatives to develop into smart cities. The ASEAN also houses one of the leading global smart cities in Singapore, which can be considered as a role model for other cities to replicate.
Elements for a city to be smart
To develop a smart city, technological and other initiatives have to be undertaken to enhance the quality of life of residents and improve their access to the necessary services. A smart city is one that is able to use technology to gather data from multiple sources and convert it into actionable insight to manage the city efficiently and sustainably. Generally, to qualify as a smart city, a city must take initiatives across a number of areas that include expanding its digital connectivity, improving healthcare services, upgrading its existing transportation network, improving its physical infrastructure, and driving transparency and good governance by making public datasets freely available, etc. To take an example, Singapore has taken a range of initiatives to improve services related to healthcare, housing, transportation, open data, and e-governance. Technology forms the backbone of all these initiatives.
The perceived benefits of these initiatives include visible improvements in core areas such as waste management, water management, energy management, transportation services, digital connectivity, etc. They will also improve the overall efficiency of the city administration and help smart cities improve the efficiency and lower the cost of city services by eliminating redundancies and streamlining individual responsibilities.
This has already been implemented in smart cities developed in Europe. For example, the payment system installed in the bus and subway systems in London allows commuters to swipe a bank card on the fare box to transfer the fare directly to the transportation company from their personal bank account. This allows for a quick, convenient and easy way to pay and eliminates the scope for any error or the need to issue any special smart cards.
Other major benefits of a smart city include reduction in environmental damage from developmental activities and an improvement in the overall quality of life for citizens.
ASEAN Smart Cities Network
The proposal to develop an ASEAN Smart Cities Network (ASCN) was shared by Singapore at the 32nd ASEAN Summit in April 2018. It envisages creating a platform where up to three cities from each ASEAN member state, including their capitals, work towards the goal of developing a smart and sustainable cities. This will help improve the lives of citizens in these cities.
The ASCN aims to facilitate cooperation among the ASEAN member states for smart city development. It also plans to engage the private sector for bankable project development while assisting cities in mobilising funds for their projects. It is based on the following core elements.
The ASCN proposes to begin its initial phase with 26 cities being selected as pilot cities under the initiative. This includes major cities in the region including capital cities, which have rapid population growth. The proposed timeline for the launch of the ASCN is November 2018.
Case study: Singapore Smart Nation
Singapore has been one of the leading smart cities globally. The Singapore Smart Nation as it is called, has been developed based on three plans which form the three pillars working together to support Singapore’s Smart Nation goals. These are the Digital Economy Framework for Action, the Digital Government Blueprint and the Digital Readiness Blueprint.
The Digital Economy Framework for Action aims to accelerate the digitalising of all industries to increase productivity and efficiency, and ensure overall economic growth. It proposes complete integration of the existing business ecosystem under a digital umbrella and empowers the information communication and media industry to be a key growth driver of Singapore’s digital economy. The Digital Government Blueprint shares the Singapore government’s ambition to better leverage data and harness new technologies to build a digital economy and digital society to support the growth of the Singapore Smart Nation. The Digital Readiness Blueprint highlights Singapore’s commitment to keep people at the heart of all its development initiatives. It lays the blueprint to empower the citizens of Singapore with access to technology along with the skills needed to use that technology.
Singapore has undertaken key strategic national projects, which are the enablers for the development of a smart nation. The government has supported this by putting in place appropriate policies and legislations to facilitate innovations by the public and the private sector. This includes policies around sharing of public data sets, boosting the industrial and start-up ecosystem, ensuring cybersecurity and data privacy, and adoption of digital technologies at all levels.
The city has developed a number of mobile applications such as Beeline, Customs@SG, HealthHub and NLB Mobile to allow citizens to access city services digitally whenever required. Singapore’s achievements coupled with its ability to impact the life of its citizens catapulted it to the top position on the Global Smart City Performance Index 2017.
Other upcoming smart cities in ASEAN
Vietnam has chalked out a plan to develop Ho Chi Minh City as a smart city. The plan which was unveiled on November 26, 2017 plans to make Ho Chi Minh City a smart city by 2020. In the first phase, from 2017 to 2020, the city is planning to focus on cloud computing infrastructure, big data analysis, building a shared data warehouse, construction of data centres and developing an open data ecosystem. Smart solutions will be implemented in the areas of health, food safety, education, traffic management, flood control, and law and order. In Phase II, from 2020 to 2025, smart solutions launched during Phase I will be further expanded and their implementation will be synchronised. In Phase III, after 2025, existing technologies will be strengthened to improve their processing and storage capacity, safety, security and overall intelligence. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) has agreed to provide assistance for the development of Ho Chi Minh City as a smart city. Ho Chi Minh City signed a cooperation agreement with the IFC in late 2017.
Another city which is being developed as a smart city in ASEAN is Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The area around Greater Kuala Lumpur, which is one of the 12 national key economic areas of the Economic Transformation Programme (ETP), has been identified to be developed as a smart city. Malaysia is adopting the cloud computing service offered by Alibaba called “City Brain” for this purpose. Under the smart city initiatives, Malaysia plans to expand and enhance its digital infrastructure, strengthen and expand broadband coverage, and strengthen infrastructure and services. The smart city initiatives are being aligned with Malaysia’s 11th plan for the years 2016 to 2020. Automation and data are being kept as a backbone for deploying these technologies.
The way forward
ASEAN is one of the fastest growing regions in the world. The region has one of the highest population growth rates in the entire world and is seeing massive migration from rural to urban areas. This necessitates the development of urban areas into smart cities to ensure an improvement in the quality of life of urban residents. The region has shown significant potential for this and a number of cities such as Ho Chi Minh City and Kuala Lumpur have already chalked out plans for being developed as smart cities. Going ahead, the region’s development is expected to be led by Singapore, which should act as a lighthouse city for other cities in ASEAN to replicate. Considering this backdrop, the ASEAN region is expected to house a number of smart cities in the future.
