Macau one of 35 ‘smart city’ agreements last year

Robot driven taxis and computers eliminating traffic jams may appear sooner than you think after some of the biggest technology companies picked up the pace of dealmaking to bring about “smart cities” of the future.

Thirty-five agreements were signed between technology companies and major metropolises to jointly work on projects in 2017 – including one arranged between the Macau government and Alibaba – up from eight the previous year, according to a report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance released this week.

As smartphones and computers seep deeper into the fabric of everyday life, governments are looking at how they can use technology to improve life in cities while companies seek new ways to make money.

A range of solutions are emerging, from reducing the number of drivers on the roads with ride sharing to making cleaner electric vehicles.

Smart cities are frequently multi-billion-dollar ventures. Saudi Arabia recently announced a plan to build an entirely new city it will call NEOM, which it said will be fully powered by renewable energy and have self-driving vehicles and drones at a cost of USD500 billion.

Meanwhile, Alibaba is focusing on digital infrastructure for its partnership with the government of Macau, a Chinese city known for its glitzy casinos and shopping malls. It’s building a smart transportation network that will link road, water and air traffic and installing cloud computing programs for the municipal government.

About half the world’s population now lives in urban areas, a total of 4 billion people, and that proportion is likely to rise to 60 percent by 2030, according to the World Health Organization. MDT/Bloomberg