Smart cities and broken dreams
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 1 October 2021
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Do smart cities live up to the hype? Urban centres from New York to South Korea’s Busan are rebranding themselves as ‘smart’. From real-time crime mapping to lower energy use, smart cities promise a shortcut to a better future. But what is a smart city? The BBC’s Technology desk editor Jane Wakefield explains. Meanwhile, brand new metropolises are being planned across Africa, often envisioned as shiny tech hubs. Will they ever get off the ground? And why are global consultancy firms often a key part of the story? We visit Kenya’s Konza Technopolis, still a construction site 13 years after it was first promised. Konza CEO John Tanui says the project is on track but Kenyan writer Carey Baraka isn’t convinced. Picture: An artist’s impression of the planned Akon City in Senegal. Credit: Akoncity.com
Presenter: Vivienne Nunis Producer: Sarah Treanor Reporter: Michael Kaloki
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're listening to Business Daily on the BBC World Service with me, Vivienne Nunes, |
| 0:05.7 | and today we're asking, do smart cities live up to the hype? |
| 0:10.1 | From high-tech urban centres in Asia to ambitious new builds in sub-Saharan Africa, |
| 0:15.7 | smart cities are being touted across the world. |
| 0:18.8 | But what makes the city smart? |
| 0:22.5 | And who's really benefiting from the smart city dream? The project was scrapped because people acknowledged that it was, in some |
| 0:28.0 | degrees, just technology for technology's sake. And they said we don't want big companies deciding |
| 0:33.6 | how our cities work. And will these promised metropolises ever get off the ground? |
| 0:39.2 | We have been waiting for quite some time for it to pick up well, |
| 0:44.6 | but it has taken longer than we expected. |
| 0:48.7 | That's Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:53.2 | I woke up in the middle of the night and I noticed my girl wasn't by myself. from the BBC. |
| 1:00.9 | Acon. |
| 1:04.6 | You might remember when the Senegalese American music star was dominating the charts back in the late 2000s. |
| 1:08.2 | But catchy club tunes aren't the only thing Acon wants to be remembered for. |
| 1:16.5 | He's building a smart city, Acon City in fact, in his parents' homeland of Senegal. |
| 1:24.6 | Artists' impressions on the Acon City website show a futuristic skyline of twisting skyscrapers. |
| 1:30.9 | Last year, a US-based engineering and consulting firm was awarded the contract to build the city. |
| 1:37.4 | It announced it had secured $4 billion from investors and had signed up a Dubai-based architect. |
| 1:43.8 | A year ago, Acon joined the Senegalese tourism minister |
| 1:47.0 | in laying the first stone on the construction site, |
| 1:50.7 | a short drive from the capital Daka. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.