International Parking & Mobility Institute

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Is a Fear of Change Holding Back Your Smart City Ambition?

A man with a beard using a cell phone at the Parking Industry Awards.

Is a Fear of Change Holding Back Your Smart City Ambition?

A reflection on the not-so-distant past.

shutterstock / Just dance / hero mujahid

Is a Fear of Change Holding Back Your Smart City Ambition?

A man with a beard using a cell phone at the Parking Industry Awards.

A reflection on the not-so-distant past.

SMART CITY INNOVATION in mobility, energy, water, and social equity is gaining momentum—yet we often hear the “this is not going to happen in my lifetime” attitude—especially towards emerging technology innovations. I encountered this when I was CEO of an Australian government agency running public transport ticketing. I was tasked with creating a statewide electronic ticketing system for the state of New South Wales (NSW) across trains, ferries, and public and private bus networks. The backlash against the idea that people couldn’t use cash to catch a bus or a train was enormous. The concept that you didn’t need to buy a separate train ticket or bus pass was equally unnerving. But the outcome—a multimodal electronic system called the Opal card—has been a game changer for convenient and cost-effective travel across the city of Sydney and NSW.

Not so long ago, city curbsides, infrastructure, and driver habits looked a lot different. A smart city not only evolves with technological advances, but also with societal changes and values. 

As recently as the late 1990s, an international motorist’s typical journey went something like this: everyone used The Street Directory, which was the book of maps with every grid, of every street, in every city used to navigate when you were driving. In America, you were likely to have a copy of the Rand McNally Road Atlas on hand, or a more local version of a regional road map book provided by your local AAA. These heavy lumps-of-a-book could be seen sprawled open on the passenger’s seat, with dog-eared pages of the relevant maps for your journey. If you were lucky, you had a passenger who had the arduous task of navigation—a role I unfortunately played too often.

Then, the amazing technological advancement that disrupted the street directory was of course the portable electronic navigation device—remember the NavMan and the TOMTOM? Again, not much use unless you continued to download updates regularly. And do you recall the extravagant in-car navigation systems—only for the high-end vehicles? You needed an engineering degree and the patience of a saint to find your destination. 

Often, if you were lost or your destination was “off the page” you would have to look for a phone booth along the curbside to phone a friend for help. Do you remember back when those phone booths took prime real estate on city sidewalks? In the pre-cell phone era, these phone booths were sites that had to be connected to telecommunications infrastructure, powered, lit, had to be safe (though in many cases were not), and were ubiquitous on the curb. Yet, with the rise of mobile telecommunications we saw this curbside infrastructure rapidly recede over the past couple of decades.

Did any city ever actually plan not to have phone booths, and the telecommunication and electricity infrastructure to support them on the curb?

The last hardcopy publication of the Yellow Pages was printed in January 2019 in the UK, after it was announced the Yellow Pages would become fully digitized—finally!

A yellow telephone on a white background in a Smart City.

The last hardcopy publication of the Yellow Pages was printed in January 2019 in the UK, after it was announced the Yellow Pages would become fully digitized—finally!

Often chained inside one of these phone booths, was a huge Yellow Pages paper phone directory. The name “Yellow Pages” was coined in 1883, when a printer in Cheyenne, Wyoming, ran out of white paper and used yellow paper instead. After more than a century of publications across the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Philippines, the last hardcopy publication of the Yellow Pages was printed in January 2019 in the UK, after it was announced the Yellow Pages would become fully digitized—finally!

Just like the enormous cost of printing the Yellow Pages phone book and the Street Directories and road atlases that became redundant, so too will the need to erect physical signage infrastructure on the curb to communicate the rules and take payment for parking. As technology evolves, mobile payments have skyrocketed across the world, especially since 2020 with the need for contactless transactions. The new “parking sign” and “meter” is on your cell phone or in your car navigation and can be dynamic as uses of the curb need to change. Cities have been exploring digital signage for flexible curb use, or even monetization of loading zones. However, I believe we can leapfrog the physical digital infrastructure and have a completely digital curb infrastructure, with perhaps holographic signage augmenting the cell phone and car navigation in smart cities.

Speaking of smart cities, I recently flew from Australia and embarked on a three-month trip traveling across the U.S. visiting many smart cities. I traveled more than 5,000 miles across the states via plane, car, bus, tram, e-scooter (even golf buggy!) looking at different smart city initiatives, particularly around parking and transportation—I’m inspired by what is possible.

While it is important to reflect on some of the bedrocks and traditions of city infrastructure and transport which have been disrupted over the past 20 years, it’s vital to understand what changes are coming next and how your city can take innovative steps towards a more sustainable future. Now is the time to invest in your city’s mobility and transportation technology—such technologies help city leaders and planners to make better informed (and data-backed) planning decisions. How can you truly know, understand, and predict the use of parking assets and mobility flow of your city without the inevitable investment of such technologies?

Are we seeing electric charging stations as the new kid on the curbside block? Or community battery electricity storage competing for curbside real estate?

Citizens are changing where they work from and what infrastructure they need from cities and urban hubs. Yet confusing and expensive physical parking signs and rules are still evident in most cities. Parking meters are the typewriters of transport. Autonomous vehicles won’t carry coins.

What is the next “phone booth” or “street directory” to be disrupted in your smart city journey?

Shutterstock / jocic

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