The UAE’s Bold Bet That Technology Can Reshape Entire Cities
To planners of our urban areas, the same question keeps popping up:
What strategies should cities implement to accommodate the rise in populations without being suffocated by traffic jams, pollution, or the poor infrastructure?
UAE has made a radical assumption focusing on the positive side of the problem.
Might it be that technology is the silver bullet?
Already smart traffic control systems analyze the flows of traffic and change the light schedule automatically. Moving government services online is letting people do their paperwork from the comfort of their homes, effectively doing away with the need to go to the office.
They are using AI more and more, not only in healthcare but also in transportation, for example.
This is not just about making things easier.
The trust is in the potential of major digital transformations to change the world at its very heart, and making cities a better place to live: clean, efficient, and tuned to what the residents want;
Time will tell if all of them can have a successful outcome.
Yet the readiness to deploy major tech solutions is what really distinguishes the Emirates from most of the other countries where such projects only exist on paper.
