Vienna at the very top of the Smart City Index

The consultancy firm Roland Berger has now released the second Smart City Index. Vienna, Chicago and Singapore take the top three places and have the best strategies for their journey to smart cityhood.

Powered by digitization, becoming a smart city is about making the living environment more technologically advanced, efficient and ecological. The experts at Roland Berger have published their second Smart City Index in which they compile the most important building blocks of a strategy for becoming a smart city. The main areas are fields of application, strategic planning and IT infrastructure. Six interlocking application fields are assigned special significance: public administration, health, education, energy and the environment, buildings and mobility.

Roland Berger has analysed a total of 87 major world cities to find out how they are strategically positioned to become smart cities. The results: Vienna, Chicago and Singapore are ranked the best.

The number of cities pursuing a strategic smart city approach has increased considerably for some years. Switzerland is no exception – it is home to countless initiatives and approaches. But many are finding it difficult to integrate these and devise strategies.

Different cities, different strategies

Cities are able to climb the ranks of the smart city index regardless of their size or financial situation. Vienna has distinguished itself through its broad and diverse smart city strategy based on the criteria of quality of life, conservation of resources and innovation. The Spanish city of Santander (180,000 inhabitants) set an impressive example with its well-balanced strategy.

Smart city solutions: a billion-dollar global market

The experts at Roland Berger predict that the smart city solutions market will reach a volume of around 28 billion dollars by the year 2023, from a present level of 13 billion dollars. There is consensus amongst the experts: the path to becoming a smart city can only be successful if companies and municipalities can manage to find complete solutions and put individual interests aside.