Smart cities: Big Data's watching you
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 24 December 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
City streets are becoming a valuable source of big data, so should we care who is gathering it and how it is being used?
In Shenzhen in China, the authorities are using video footage and facial recognition technology to reward or punish citizens' good or bad behaviour - such as littering or running red lights - via "social credit" systems.
Meanwhile in the Canadian city of Toronto, a new waterfront redevelopment is introducing similar sensors and smart tech from Google subsidiary Sidewalk Labs. But does this just represent another data bonanza for the tech giant at the expense of people's privacy?
Jane Wakefield speaks to Sidewalk Labs' head of urban systems Rit Aggarwala, local activist Julie Beddoes, as well as tech consultant Charles Reed Anderson,
(Picture: CCTV security camera front of a city office building; Credit: nunawwoofy/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily on the BBC World Service. I'm Jane Wakefield and on today's |
| 0:08.6 | Business Daily, we'll be taking a closer look at cities and citizen data. From a Google-backed project in |
| 0:14.8 | Canada's Toronto, which has proved highly divisive to some of the world's smartest and newest cities in China. |
| 0:21.9 | Can tech innovations to help improve lives be compatible with privacy? |
| 0:26.6 | And what role do private sector companies have in our urban development? |
| 0:30.9 | The public needs a very clear understanding of what the rules for all companies are |
| 0:35.9 | before the world of urban technology can |
| 0:38.4 | really advance to its full potential. |
| 0:40.3 | Just because high-tech companies come waving shiny things in our faces, we fall for it. |
| 0:46.5 | I mean, I was astonished. |
| 0:49.4 | Business Daily on the BBC World Service. |
| 1:02.4 | Thank you. Daily on the BBC World Service. By 2050, around 2902 million more Chinese will live in cities. |
| 1:09.1 | Already, more than 58% of the population are urban dwellers, |
| 1:13.3 | compared to just 18% in 1980. According to the authorities, there are 662 Chinese cities, |
| 1:21.6 | including over 160, with a million people or more. 30 years ago, Shenzhen was a fishing village surrounded by paddy fields. |
| 1:30.5 | Then came a plan to build China's first special economic zone |
| 1:33.7 | where foreign investments and private businesses were allowed |
| 1:36.9 | and the quiet rural landscape was transformed into a city. |
| 1:41.7 | Now Shenzhen, with a population of 11 million, |
| 1:44.8 | is just one part of a huge urbanised area |
| 1:48.2 | running down the Pearl River Delta. |
| 1:50.4 | It is famous for factories |
... |
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