For the past 2 years, smart city is a popular concept in ASEAN after the signing of the ASEAN Smart Cities Network (ASCN) on April 28, 2018. As indicated by the ASEAN Secretariat, the primary goal of ASCN is to improve the lives of ASEAN citizens with the use of technology as an enabler. Altogether, there are 26 pilot cities involved in the ASCN platform: Bandar Seri Begawan, Battambang, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Makassar, Banyuwangi, DKI Jakarta, Luang Prabang, Vientiane, Johor Bahru, Kuala Lumpur, Kota Kinabalu, Kuching, Nay Pyi Taw, Mandalay, Yangon, Cebu City, Davao City, Manila, Singapore, Bangkok, Chonburi, Phuket, Da Nang, Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh City. Whereas the move is a great start for the Southeast Asian bloc, it certainly has room for value-added improvements for these cities.
The Concept of Smart City
As the think tank that oversees the birth of smart city concept in China, ANBOUND is of the view that the implementation of the current concept has been heavily skewed toward providing high-tech solutions for human activities. As such, it pales when comes to providing high-value contents in the establishment of smart cities around the world. In November 2008, IBM released its report entitled A Smarter Planet: The Next Leadership Agenda in New York and in which it put forward the concept of “Smarter Planet” that makes full use of information technology in all walks of life. Eager to introduce such concept to China, the American conglomerate held another conference in the country not long after that. Being part of the delegation attending the IBM conference, it was as such grand event that ANBOUND’s chief researcher, Chan Kung, witnessed the introduction of the “Smarter Planet” concept in China ⸺ a grand proposal which among all, called for the formation of smart cities in the country and beyond.
In general, smart city is widely defined internationally as a city supported by a new generation of information technology and the next generation of innovation in a knowledge society (Innovation 2.0). In technical terms, smart city is not just about the application of new-generation information technologies such as the Internet of Things and cloud computing but more importantly, it should be about building a sustainable urban innovation ecology characterized by user innovation, open innovation, mass innovation and collaborative innovation. But overall, a smart city serves the technological development of a city and it encompasses every facet of urban scene.
The major skew, however, lies on the emphasis of coming out with various information platforms that are geared towards solving problems from human activities in the cities. By all means, sensors and cameras that recorded human movements are needed for a wide variety of purposes, especially for crime prevention and traffic management. Similarly, the Internet of Tings (IoT) also integrates human activities into daily living and commercial systems ⸺ with the likes of power supply, water supply, oil and gas pipelines and transportation arrangements being the most prominent among all. Needless to say, all these practical functions are totally important for the urban management of cities and there is no dispute for this. But how about urban assets such as human history, culture and arts as well as heritage? With most if not all of these assets can be digitalized, shouldn’t we also focus on conserving these high-value contents for the future generations?
Digital Assets in the ASEAN Context
By definition, digital assets are binary coded text or media resources that are authorized for use, including but not limited to textual contents, images, and multimedia. Among all, the most common examples of digital assets in the cities are websites and their contents, domain names, application softwares, electronic documents, image contents, e-currency, e-mails, and social network accounts. Having said that, cities also possess extremely valuable and rare historical, cultural, artistic and heritage assets which formed part of the urban information ecosystem but have yet to gain similar importance as providing solutions to human activities as shown by various information platforms within the smart cities. It is within ANBOUND’s view that on top of serving people, the most essential thing for a smart city is to be able to serve contents, especially the high-value contents from these urban assets.
Within the ASCN platform, it is worthy to note that almost all of the smart city projects by the participating 26 cities are geared towards providing solutions to human activities as the main goal. Even the primary goal of ASCN is framed in a way that it seeks to improve the lives of ASEAN citizens through the use of technology as an enabler. Once again, while such focus is a great start for the Southeast Asian region (except Singapore) which relatively behind other countries such as China, in implementing various smart city projects, it will be restricting these ASEAN cities from utilizing smart technologies to showcase their extremely valuable and rare historical, cultural, artistic and heritage assets to their own residents and the wider world.
From the ASCN’s Smart City Action Plans released in 2018, digitization of urban assets is nowhere to be seen in the smart city projects of the 26 pilot cities. And this is despite cities such as Yangon, Bandar Seri Begawan and Siem Reap, all had visions to transform their urbanities into cultural and heritage hubs that ride on the ASCN’s implementation. By superseding the digitization of rich urban assets (which they already possessed) for the mechanistic high-tech solutions for human activities, these pilot cities are actually punching below their weight when comes to embracing the smart city wave in the ASEAN region.
Therefore, ANBOUND calls for the promotion of digitalization of these valuable and rare urban assets within the ASCN platform. Builders of smart cities and city bureaucrats of the 26 pilot cities can explore such direction and if possible, introduce new projects that digitize these urban assets for wider public consumption. Not only it will conserve these urban assets digitally for future generations, it will also bring in new revenues for the cities as potential tourists, scholars or enthusiasts can assess them digitally through online subscriptions. Instead of focusing heavily on the monotonous side of human activities, smart cities should treat these rich digital assets equally as important as the former. Only in this way can smart cities have the vitality of the information age and show real value and prospect.
