SMART CITIES THE LONG HISTORY OF THEIR FUTURE

Nicole Kobie traces the roots of smart cities back to Victorian London, before taking us on a journey to the concept’s present and future

It’s Victorian London, and cholera is creeping through the streets of Soho. Famously, Dr John Snow deduced that the disease wasn’t spread via bad smells in the air as believed but through water – in particular, a single water pump. He figured that out with data and a map. The good doctor simply plotted the deaths of infected people within the district and had the good sense to notice that they lived near the same water pump on Broad Street. As the story goes, he ended the outbreak by removing the pump’s handle. And so data analytics within cities was born. A few years later, in 1868, the world’s first traffic light was installed, at Bridge Street near Parliament Square in London. This was before cars, but a thousand pedestrians were being…

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PC Pro (Digital) - 1 Issue, August 2024

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