(Continued from Aug. 26, 2021)
SEEING what happened in the past, it would be a good idea to have these trams in the smart cities of the future, provided of course that the source of power would be renewable.
To some extent, it could be said that having electric powered cars is a smart idea, and all smart cities should have these cars. Smart as it appears to be, if would actually be a dumb idea if these cars are plugged into electric charging stations that are not powered by renewable energy.
In contrast, it would be considered very smart if the source of the electricity that is being used in these charging stations would come from solar panels, for instance. What would even be smarter is for these electric cars to be powered by batteries that are already directly recharged by solar panels that are built into these cars. It may just be a matter of semantics, but it would be more accurate to call these vehicles solar powered cars.
Obviously, a city should not even think of proclaiming itself to be smart, if it would not have a sustainable supply of safe water. Although safe water would appear to be a separate challenge by itself, its availability in the future would largely be dependent also on the availability of cheap power.
In the future, the scarcity of safe water would force cities to filter used water so that these could again become potable. Not only that, these cities would have to resort to desalination. That would appear to be a smart idea, but that would only be so if the economics of doing it would be good. Otherwise, it would be a dumb idea to produce costly safe water because of very high costs of electricity.
Needless to say, a city would not be considered smart if it is not connected and is not automated. Of course the only way to do that would be to install so many networks of computers and sensors all over the city.
That might sound like a lot of expenses, but on the other hand, it would also mean a lot of savings, because these computers and sensors would be able to cut down on the costs of gas, electricity, mobility and safe water.
On top of that, the computer networks would also be able to ensure the efficient delivery of all citizen services that are required by a smart city. In closing, I would just end by saying that a city could not be considered smart if it is not green, and a city could not become green if it is not smart./PN
