Here are the world's top 5 smart cities for 2022 - Juniper Research study
The top 5 smart cities are:
- Shanghai
- Seoul
- Barcelona
- Beijing
- New York
The ranking of 50 world cities is based on an evaluation of many different aspects of smart cities, covering transportation and infrastructure, energy and lighting, city management and technology, and urban connectivity.
The research particularly lauds Shanghai’s Citizen Cloud as a one-stop point for over 1,000 different services for city residents. Thanks to its rapid deployment of data management platforms, efficient, digitised utility management and public services have become common in many cities across Asia, allowing them to climb Juniper Research’s rankings.
“Many cities have deployed technology and data to help local authorities reduce environmental impact and energy usage,” remarked research co-author Mike Bainbridge. “The top cities in our recent ranking are finding innovative ways to leverage that technology to deliver observable benefits for their citizens as well.”
The $70bn smart city opportunity
In addition to these rankings, the research found that smart city initiatives will generate almost $70bn in spend annually by 2026, up from $35 bn in 2021. Much of this will focus on smart grid initiatives, which will save over 1,000TWh of electricity in 2026, equivalent to more than five years of energy consumption by Greater London at present levels.
Many areas of smart city development are still in their early stages, particularly outside the leading cities, so initial rollouts still make up much of the market. Juniper Research notes that this means savings made through smart city technologies will remain high.
"We expect energy savings alone to reach $96bn in 2026, making their deployment highly cost-effective in most instances," say the organisation.
