The Legacy of 9/11 on Smart Cities
Photo by Luca Bravo on Unsplash
September 11th of 2001 was a world-changing event that is now firmly embedded in the minds of those who were around at the time. It’s a moment of such significance that most people remember exactly what they were doing when tragedy struck, but what most people don’t know is that this precise moment, and the events that followed, played a major role in the evolution of smart cities everywhere.
Following the attack, New York adopted anti-terrorism and surveillance strategies that have been replicated all around the world and have transformed how cities are being managed, as well as how public safety is being approached. Today's smart city projects on transportation, energy grids, and internet connectivity show that new technologies can advance hard infrastructure. The central premise is that clear, real-time data inputs about everything from traffic flow to air quality can lead to more efficient responses to specific issues, with better outcomes for city residents.
After the terrorist attack of 9/11, NY focused its efforts on protecting Lower Manhattan through enhanced surveillance technologies. “There were a lot of learnings there about the power of technology to be leveraged for real-time, situational awareness or detection of anomalies,” as explained by Jeff Merritt, a former director of innovation for the city of New York who now heads urban initiatives at the World Economic Forum.
New York’s efforts 20 years ago (and since) have formed a strong basis for pretty much any smart city today: smart traffic management systems, integrated public-private monitoring networks that feed data points back to a central monitor, and data-driven technologies, to name just a few. And today, cities are continuing to put data-driven tech at the heart of their solutions grid.
It is easy to see how the learnings that we took from 9/11, in terms of safety and the role that innovation plays in it, has impacted pretty much every country around the world, and especially those who have been subject to frequent terrorist threats. But at the same time, following 9/11 we have also seen a wave of dissatisfaction resulting from the potential for surveillance technologies to violate privacy rights, as evidenced by the controversial rollout of the US Patriot Act in the weeks following the attack - and the alleged abuse by authorities in that country as a result of their increased access to these tools.
What we need to ask ourselves is: how do we balance the need for safety with ensuring data and privacy protection?
This is, to this day, one of the key challenges in the development of smart cities and the lives of their citizens. And the only way to tackle this is to strongly regulate how smart city data is used, by whom, and under what circumstances. It’s an act of genuine trust for citizens to allow authorities to access this data, so it’s only safe to assume that they would expect a guarantee that their data is safe from misuse, as well as stopping third parties from accessing it at their convenience.
I think we have a great opportunity to honour tragedy by taking key learnings and putting them to good use, in terms of improving citizens’ lives in communities across the world, but there’s also a fine line and necessary balance that we need to strike in how you use data in a non-invasive, non-violating way, no matter the context. Tensions caused by a breach of trust in this context, is something that no government can bypass, and only those who will truly take this into consideration and put in the effort to ensure that safety and privacy plays a role in the way that cities and citizens thrive, will be able to reap the benefits.
At the end of the day, if you don’t have your citizens’ trust, no promise nor effort to improve their city will make up for that.
