The Smart Cities concept holds the promise of a more inclusive, convenient and prosperous city experience.
This is an exciting time. Smart City initiatives are accelerating and gaining traction as evidenced by the White House’s $ 160M Smart City announcement, the creation of Smart City research pairs called the Metrolab Network, and the recent announcement of Columbus Ohio’s $ 40M award from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s $ 50M Smart City Challenge grant program. These are only just a few examples which includes many smaller projects taking place around the globe.
Moreover, Smart Cities are at an early stage of development. We believe, the most effective way to initiate the development of the Smart City platform, is by engaging the community’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and stakeholder resources. In this way, by combining integrated community strategies with thoughtful technology choices, existing civic and socio-economic challenges can be solved, while opening new doors of public and private sector opportunity. This is the promise of the Smart City.
As citizens and government observes the success of these projects, it then becomes possible to plan on a larger scale for the metropolitan area.
iNeighborhoods makes it possible for a city, city-university pair or a utility, to move forward now.