How “Smart” Is Taipei? Taipei’s Smart City Push

According to the report “IESE Cities in Motion” of the IESE Business School of the University of Navarra, a smart city should have an innovative approach of governance and a new urban planning that adapts to the 21st century. It includes four factors: sustainability, innovation, citizen equality and a connected territory. Citizen involvement, or how the report calls it: “social cohesion,” is equally important to make a more liveable city. 

In an interview with Chen Kuan-ting, the Deputy Spokesperson of Taipei City Hall, we talked about how Taipei is exactly achieving all these goals. He emphasized that their policy is to “start building things to sell service.” He also explained that, “Taiwan already has technology parks and hubs that provide a complete supply chain, and now it is time to start using them.”

When comparing Taipei to other cities around the globe, the IESE Cities in Motion ranks Taipei 30th out of 174 cities in their 2019 list of the smartest cities in the world. To obtain a higher position in this ranking cities are assessed through nine different factors, which include: economy, international outreach, governance, human capital, urban planning, social cohesion, mobility and transportation, environment and technology.

How does Taipei compare?

Even though Taipei’s position in the ranking is higher than in the past years, there are many factors that can still make it advance even higher. “To make Taipei more liveable and more efficient, we have to use intelligent resources,” said Chen. “we have many advantages and potential, for example: communication, IoT, human Capital and open data.”

According to the IESE report of 2019, smart cities such as Taipei generate various business opportunities and improve the collaboration between the public and private sectors.

In Taipei there used to exist such type of collaboration between both sectors. In 2017, the Taipei Rapid Transit Corporation (TRTC) signed a contract with Forest-wide Industrial Co. to provide free wi-fi access throughout the network. This arrangement between a semi-public institution and the private sector made it possible for riders to enjoy free wifi service while riding the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) of the city. The service ended in June 25th, due to the fact that most of the riders had switched to unlimited internet access from their mobile carriers. Even though the service has ended, riders are still able to access the internet in different areas of the metro system. 

Taipei and Technology

When it comes to technology Taipei has been overpassed by 22 cities in the IESE ranking of 2019, marking a score of 23. This is a major setback from being Top 1 in the ranking of 2017. 

This year, Singapore leads the “Technology” category of the IESE ranking. According to the report Singapore is a place where technology triumphs over politics, and the authorities have a commitment to innovation. “It is difficult for the [Taipei] to turn innovative ideas into reality as fast as we wished. There exists a lot of requirements and processes that come from the central government,” says Chen. Indeed, bureaucracy oftentimes hampers innovators from turning projects into usable technology for the real world. 

Transportation and Mobility

Chen said that “Taipei is tackling the problems in public service of transportation and mobility, such as traffic jams, as its highest priority.” Taipei’s efforts to solve them had been reflected in the scores of the Cities in Motion ranking where Taipei climbed from 99 in 2017 to 10 in 2019 for the category of Mobility and Transportation; and from 28 in 2017 to 20 in 2019.

The Taipei Smart City Summit & Expo held this year is an example of these efforts. It is a “way to invite other cities to exchange ideas of systems that work outside of Taiwan, and also show (the world) the technology and applications we have to turn them into reality,” says Chen. 

Dreams that are becoming reality

Smart Taipei is the name of a number of projects that Taipei City Hall is implementing across the city. This project has the goal of transforming Taipei into a truly smart city. Among these projects there exists citizen participation that allows Taipei City Hall to deliver real life outcomes. 

In the area of Transportation and Mobility, Taipei Navi is a mobile application used to find a vehicle’s location, as well as to navigate inside Taipei Main Station and get push notifications on events as they happen. Smart Parking uses light beacons to indicate free parking spaces, as well as license plate recognition. Smart Bus Network uses cameras to collect and manage data on traffic and pedestrian flows. Smart Street Lights, not only does what Smart Bus does, but it also analyzes the conditions of the environment. 

In areas such as Governance, pay.taipei is a Smart payment platform that allows residents to pay utility fees. In the category of Education, Taipei City CooC-Cloud is a digital learning platform which main purpose is to eliminate the gap between rural and urban areas, as well as to provide a wide set of courses, and digital learning channels. Smart Public Housing, another one of Taipei’s innovations, offers the residents automated data upload and visualization of the water, electricity and gas consumptions of each one of the households where it has been implemented.

There are many other projects in different stages of implementation such as Airbox, an app that uses the open data promoted by Taipei City Hall, to analyze the air condition. At the same time, it provides information that is easy to understand for the average resident. Hello Taipei, is an app that allows residents to make suggestions or voice complaints to the Taipei government. 

Citizens’ involvement

According to the Cities in Motion report, without the citizen’s involvement and the mutual cooperation between the government and civilians, cities have a low chance to turn from an overall city to a “smart one.” 

Chen says that “we [Taiwan] are good at producing stuff.” In fact, in the Cities in Motion report of 2017, Taipei was a notable case studied by the researches who mentioned how Taiwan is called the Asia Silicon Valley. This is because Taiwan’s industry is still heavily invested in computer and IT hardware. However, “we have to evolve,” says Chen, “and one way is to build these things but also use them as applications and sell it to the world.” Chen talks about not only producing technology, but finding a way to use it within the city, and turn it into a kind of system that can also be used outside of Taipei. 

This concept could turn Taipei into an example for other cities who are in the process of upgrading their infrastructure to be smarter and more sustainable. 

No matter how innovative the private sector or residents of Taipei may be, the government still needs to update the country’s legal regulations that will allow faster adaptation of such technologies to the real life throughout the country. In the meantime, Chen has one more message for his fellow citizens: “Don’t let the law shape you; you shape the law.”

(Feature photo by Mauricio Sandigo Peralta)