Building cities for the Networked Society

Putting ICT into city planning can help cities in their evolution to become more livable and to cope with the increasing demands imposed by the expanding urban population. This brochure looks at how ICT can open up new opportunities for value creation based on networking and connecting things.

More and more people are living in cities. Every hour the global urban population grows by 7,500 people, due to migration, urban sprawl and natural population growth. That is more than 5 million new city dwellers every month.

Ericsson has developed the Networked Society City Index to identify and measure the extent and development of ICT-enabled benefits to cities. The index helps illustrate how a multitude of stakeholders can work together to implement ICT strategies that address a city’s social, economic and environmental needs.

Ericsson believes that effective smart-city architecture has its foundation in a flexible and scalable broadband network that serves as the backbone between all kinds of data, services, applications and subscribers.

Solutions – ranging from e-health, telecommuting and video meetings, to mobile applications – can help residents choose a sustainable lifestyle. The spread of broadband is accelerating the development of transformative ICT solutions, which in turn foster new business models and opportunities.

When we connect things, we build an infrastructure where new ideas and innovation can develop. Yet for people, businesses and public authorities to have faith in any digital information ecosystem, they must be able to trust that their data will be properly safeguarded. The issues of privacy and cybersecurity must constantly be revisited to ensure personal and business data integrity.

Once we combine mobility, broadband, the cloud and security, we achieve a creative critical mass as the ideas generated become affordable and accessible for everyone – anywhere and at any time. This is a new kind of creativity – the wisdom of the network, a mosaic of small ideas that will transform the world’s cities.