From increasing the supply of affordable housing and efficient transportation to improving public safety and protecting the environment, virtually every city faces many important challenges in the years ahead. To address them, many cities around the world are investing in technology as they attempt to evolve into “smart cities” — those that use data, analytics and automation to address major urban issues. While the immediate challenge for local leaders is to implement the necessary technology to enable a smart city, the long-term one is to create the partnerships necessary to build “learning cities” — networks of smart cities that allow for government agencies to exchange metrics and discover data-driven insights not only from within their own communities but also from their peers in other locales.
