Technology-driven Smart City dogma invaded World Urban Forum 9 in Kuala Lampur and delivered mostly empty rhetoric. Technology is rightly likened to a Ponzi scheme that will ultimately result in the collapse of cities and societies.
Dr. Parag Khanna, professor at Yew School for Public Policy in Singapore, rightly claims that Singapore is a Technocracy. Note that Smart Cities means a) autonomous transportation, b) remote healthcare, c) cameras and surveillance and d) cashless economy. Singapore truly has applied the "science of social engineering".
The revolutionary 5G technology for cellular connections is inert as any other technology, but Smart-City planners see the opportunity to use it for total surveillance and micro-management of society. As Michael Bloomberg said, "It you cannot measure it, you cannot control it."
The Technocrat's solution to every problem known to man is technology and more technology. This is a false premise from the start because there is no demonstrable evidence that it is true. In other words, dreamers who imagine the future do not create reality merely because they imagine it.
Smart City investment and infrastructure is instrumental in forming a full-blown Technocracy, enabling micro-management of people, systems and societal directions. There is a global frenzy for the money being spent, but most of it will go to giant multinational corporations like GE, Siemens, Nvidia, Cisco, etc. This is not the future that people have chosen, but they will trapped in it nonetheless
As the U.N. drives people into the cities, proposing to micro-managin them like herds of cattle, nobody challenges people like Figueres with the fact that cities are the very engines of pollution and not saviors from it. Technocrats will bend science to any degree to make their 'solutions' fit.
Saudi Arabia is growing into a Technocracy where everything is driven toward Sustainable Development. NEOM promises to be the largest Technate in the world, 33 times the size of New York and built from the ground up as a micro-managed and engineered Smart City.
Technocrats in Silicon Valley think they hold all the keys to the future and that science and technology have the answers for every societal problem. Now they envision creating an entire city as a start-up, using technology to create their Utopia.
Technocrat Smart City architects are turning to AI and systems-theory to automate property zoning. Dr. Parag Khanna was right when he said the 'globalization is the system'.
Columbus demonstrates that old-age cities can be easily converted into Smart Cities that are data-centric and surveillance-heavy. Technocrats at the heart of this technology are bent on their 'Science of Social Engineering' used to monitor and control society.