APEC Meeting on Smart City and Intelligent Industry
Smart Cities and Industries Underway
By Zhu Zijun
W
e are moving into a new
era — a decade of smart,
as cities and industries
are becoming intelligent
not only in China, but also worldwide.
China is positioned at the frontier
of telecommunications on the global
scale, and is heralding in the age of the
smart city.
The 2nd APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) Meeting on Smart
City and Intelligent Industry, which was
held in Langfang, Hebei Province on
May 18, highlight this trend.
The latest outcomes in developing
smart cities and intelligent industries
were presented at the meeting, and efficient ways were explored to promote
international cooperation.
“The development of intelligent
industries has refreshed the economic
growth of Asia-Pacific and the world
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at large. It has become a trend to push Jung, Chairman and Co-Founder of
forward transformation of economic Intelligent Community Forum (ICF).
development pattern with the aid of inHe also introduced several leading
telligent industries,” said Huang Meng- smart city examples in the world such as
fu, Vice Chairman of the CPPCC.
Waterloo Region of Ontario, Chattanoo“Smart cities and intelligent in- ga of Tennessee, Suwon of South Korea
dustries represent the prospect
and Eindhoven of the Netherlands.
and direction of economic
Langfang is pushing for
restructuring and indusbuilding itself a smart city,
trial upgrading, which
as the International Intelis in consistent with
ligent Industrial Park is
China’s 12th Fivetaking shape. With favory e a r P l a n (2 011able policies in taxation,
2015),” Zhang Lijun,
finance, tourism, customs
Chairman of China
clearance, etc., the park is
APEC Development
to be built an APEC demJohn G. Jung, Chairman
and Co-Founder of ICF
Council commented.
onstration zone, in order to
“Smart cities mean
implement the principle of
high quality of life, such as
trade and investment liberalizacaring and wonderful community,
tion in Asia-Pacific.
opportunities for everyone, prosperity
SunWorth Development Group,
and growth and so on,” said John G. a joint venture between Bestsun (Bai-
chuan) Energy Group and Southworth
International unveiled the master plan
of the 30 square kilometer, technologically advanced eco-green city which is
located just south of Beijing’s 7th Ring
Road near Langfang.
“The plan is amazing, though it is
just the beginning,” Gesine Thomson,
Chief Architectural Visionary, told
China’s Foreign Trade. Marcud Southworth, CEO of Southworth International LLC, shared her view.
“I am very pleased that Langfang
is taking a leadership position in developing smart city technology. This
is an outstanding opportunity to build
a new city from the ground-up with
wired and eco-green technology that
will pave the way for cities of the future around the world,” Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard
stated.
Not only in Langfang, across
China, the project of smart city is underway in many cities. At present, cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu,
Hangzhou and Wuhan are aiming to
build smart cities during the 12th Fiveyear Plan.
At the 14th Beijing International
High-tech Expo, which was held during May 18-22, “Smart Beijing” was a
highlight. It showcased the new Beijing
in the next decade, when people will
enjoy smart life. Smart home, digital
life, smart health care will make people’s lives more comfortable. Further,
citizens can enjoy more convenience resulted from intelligence, such as smart
traffic, dynamic navigation, mobile
payment, etc.
Shanghai is planning to build itself
a smart city by putting energy into the
city’s infrastructure, high-end industry, ecommerce, e-government, intelligent city
management, information safety, etc.
The city is accelerating the development of its high-speed wireless
broadband network as part of its bid to
become a “smart city”.
In its push to become the nation’s first wireless city, the country’s
three telecommunications operators are
working together to expand Shanghai’s
Wi-Fi hotspots to 20,000 in the next
three years, China Daily reported.
Wuhan is establishing a smart city
with information industrialization as
the priority, in cooperation with Singapore, which is leading in building smart
cities.
Around the world, reports showed
that over 200 pilot projects of smart city
are on the way, as the projects are considered of strategic importance for these
countries’ development.
In 2006, Singapore launched
iN2015 Masterplan, which offers a
digital future. The masterplan will
propel the nation into 2015 and beyond, with a line-up of activities and
goals that spell benefits for the people,
businesses and the global community.
The vision is to turn the country into
an intelligent nation and global city,
powered by infocomm. The masterplan
recommends the way forward for Singapore, into a future where infocomm
will bring a sea change and become
intrinsic in the way people live, learn,
work and play.
Japan is aiming to be a leader in
smart city deployments and technologies. It has been developing a significant program for smart cities for some
time. In 2008, the Japanese government established its Eco-Model City
program, initially involving six cities, to
which seven more cities were added in
2009. The cities selected offer a variety
of population, geographical and industry profiles from small towns focused
on a single industry to Yokahama, with
more than 3.5 million people, according to Reuters.
Similarly, the European Commission is hoping to drive forward
with its soon-to-be-launched Smart
Cities Industry Initiative and is already
funding several demonstration smart
city projects. Like the Japanese government, the European Commission
sees the development of smart cities
as an important element in its climate
change strategy and a way of bolstering its clean technology and smart
energy industries.
Smart city, in narrow sense, means
to improve the city’s status by means
of various advanced technologies, especially information technology like
the Internet of Things, cloud computing, thereby making the city life more
convenient; in broad sense, it means to
optimize various city resources as far as
possible, including the city’s planning
and architecture, therefore people can
enjoy their lives in the city.
Over a year ago, IBM introduced
the idea “Smarter Planet”, by which it
mean that intelligence is being infused
into the systems and processes that
make the world work — into things
no one would recognize as computers:
cars, appliances, roadways, power grids,
clothes, even natural systems such as
agriculture and waterways.
Now the signs of a smarter planet
are all around us. Smarter systems are
being implemented and are creating
value in every major industry, across
every region in both the developed
and developing worlds. IBM believes
this idea isn’t a metaphor, or a vision,
or a proposal — it’s a rapidly emerging reality.
Langfang International Intelligent Industrial Park
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