The phrase "smart cities" has only emerged in the past few years, yet conferences, companies, citizens, and cities around the globe have become enamored with the concept. After all, who wants to live in a dumb city?
Still, the field has yet to reach consensus on a definition for "smart cities," let alone on how to compare one city to another in the same country, or around the globe.
As a researcher and consultant, I have been working on two primary initiatives to resolve these issues. The first, as reported here in December, was the development of the Smart Cities Wheel, a holistic tool for developing and implementing smart cities strategies:
The other initiative I have been working on is a benchmarking project. The first of these was published in January 2012, before the Smart Cities Wheel was developed, using data gathered across a range of categories. The result was the first global ranking of its kind.
After developing the Smart Cities Wheel, I expanded the sources of data I used to benchmark cities. This resulted in a need to regionalize the ranking because many data sources did not allow for easy comparison across different regions.
Thus, I recently published the top 10 ranking of European smart cities and more recently a top 10 ranking of North American smart cities.
What follows here is my first-ever regional ranking of Asia/Pacific cities, published exclusively with UBM's Future Cities. Below is a table ranking the Top 10 in order, which will be discussed in greater detail in the subsequent pages.
Table 1: The 10 Smartest Cities in Asia/Pacific
| Final Rank |
City |
Smart Economy |
Smart Enviro |
Smart Governance |
Smart Living |
Smart Mobility |
Smart People |
| 1 |
Hong Kong |
2 |
2 |
2 |
6 |
1 |
1 |
| 2 |
Singapore |
3 |
4 |
5 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
| 3 |
Seoul |
5 |
1 |
1 |
7 |
5 |
10 |
| 4 |
Tokyo |
8 |
5 |
7 |
4 |
5 |
7 |
| 5 |
Auckland |
9 |
6 |
4 |
1 |
10 |
2 |
| 6 |
Sydney |
6 |
10 |
6 |
2 |
9 |
4 |
| 7 |
Kuala Lumpur |
1 |
6 |
8 |
8 |
7 |
6 |
| 8 |
Taipei |
7 |
3 |
9 |
9 |
3 |
5 |
| 9 |
Shanghai |
4 |
6 |
3 |
10 |
8 |
8 |
| 10 |
Osaka |
10 |
6 |
10 |
5 |
2 |
9 |
One final note: The Asia/Pacific region presents many difficulties for researchers trying to compare cities, due to language differences, differing levels of transparency, and the infrequent existence of inter-regional databases. Despite the challenges, this report is arguably the first data-driven ranking of smart cities in Asia/Pacific. I look forward to your comments and feedback.
— Boyd Cohen, PhD, Urban and Climate Strategist
Next page: Methodology & Data Sources
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