FAQ

What is a Smart Community?
A community that has made a conscious effort to use information technology to transform life and work within its region in significant and fundamental, rather than incremental, ways. This transformation is beneficial to the community and attracts local participation and cooperation among the community, government, industry, and education.

Smart Communities improve their citizens' lifestyles by increasing mobility (lessening the burden on the physical transportation infrastructure) and reducing environmental pollutants. Citizens also experience increased control over the demands placed upon their lives from the convenience offered by a community-wide information infrastructure. Smart Communities are also economically competitive in the new global economy and attract commerce as a result of an advanced telecommunications infrastructure.

Is that the same as a "Smart" city?
Not necessarily. A city is a legal entity; a unit of government. By "community" we mean a broader term that connotes a superset of a city (or other unit of local government) and encompasses the array of neighborhoods, organizations, groups and individuals that collectively constitute the community and give it a sense of place. The Smart Community definition also speakes to transformation of a community. This is to be distinguished from the incremental enhancement of a single community element, such as automation of a function of city government (e.g., issuing permits) or providing city information on an electronic bulletin board or kiosk.

Do you mean an electronic community?
An "electronic" community is a virtual community representing common interests linked by telecommunications technology and independent of place. We would not rule out a Smart Community effort that in indifferent to geopolitical boundaries (which are fairly arbitrary) but underlying the smart communities initiatives is a strong desire to improve quality of life for all inhabitants of a community. This implies some reasonable linkage of the concept of an "electronic" community with a specific physical place or set of places within the region.

What's this got to do with transportation? The information highway is different from transportation: transportation is about cars, trucks, buses and trains.
Transportation is about mobility: the movement of people, goods, information and services. As a component of a full transportation system, telecommunications can be substituted for some physical trips. For example, the movement of information and services to people achieves the same purpose as the movement of people to information and services.

But how does this relate to highways, ports and railroads? Products still have to get to the marketplace.
Of course. Transportation supports trade and commerce and the physical movement of products will remain important. Telecommunications mobility supplements the physical components of the transportation system, it does not supplant them. Not all trade transactions involve tangible products. Buyers and sellers of knowledge-based services do not necessarily need ports, trucks, warehouses and physical trading floors to complete their transactions. Buyers and sellers of physical products can also transact business electronically in a way that minimizes their need for physical movement. Telecommunications technologies bring buyers and sellers together in a virtual marketplace that is independent of place.

Won't the private sector make this happen? The invisible hand of the freemarket will ensure that people can access the full range of the information infrastructure.
The free market has a history of accentuating the gap between information haves and have-nots, at least in the short term. Unless communities act consciously and purposefully now to foster timely, universal access to information embodied by telecommunications technologies, the "digital divide" will only be exacerbated.

Wouldn't it be better to wait and see how the playing field for telecommunications technology develops?
The pace of change in telecommunications technology is extraordinary. Technology products are nearly obsolete even before being brought to market. It may be possible to stay abreast, but it is nearly impossible to catch up.

Aren't you a smart community once the technical infrastructure for telecommunications technology is in place?
No. Mere presence of technology does not equate to use. A comprehensive system is needed to make a community 'Smart.' Such a system not only includes the technical infrastructure components, but also accommodates users by providing the tools, training and support they need to accept and use technology and the institutional infrastructure that facilitates use.

Where are communities supposed to find the resources to support this new program? Resources are already stretched thin supporting existing programs.
There are probably not enough resources to support each desirable program individually. Collaborative use of resources across traditional programmatic lines has potential to leverage mutual gains for the collaborating programs. Communities should also ask themselves if they are making economic development investments aimed at accommodating the ways of the past or the opportunities of the future. In truth, now is truly the time to begin tasking the private/public partnerships we often talk about but rarely embrace.