Abstract
Sociodemographics are transforming the world into an ‘archipelago of cities’, with over 70 % of the world’s population concentrated in urban environments by 2050. This trend brings as many threats (impact of pollution on public health, economic losses caused by congestion) as perspectives for new urban organizations. In this context, ‘smart cities’ are emerging. Although heterogeneous, smart cities have in common the optimization of data management to improve urban services, i.e. transport, energy, waste, habitat, health, education and culture. The issue of transportation crosses over all aspects of smart cities, whether in terms of urban design and social organization (more compact towns and distance work to reduce flows), or organizing new ways to manage vehicle capacities and infrastructure (shared fleets, car sharing, urban charging, road lane management), combined with the mid- or long-term dissemination of incremental innovations (electric vehicles) or disruptive innovations (autonomous vehicles). For the traditional automobile ecosystem (car and equipment manufacturers, etc.), the emergence of smart cities constitutes a potentially disruptive challenge with the calling into question of combustion cars in towns, new competition with other industrial players (information technology, community services, utilities, etc.) and the diversification of economic models (reliance on big data, less ownership, more service-rich).
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- 1.
Although most data come from cities with populations of over 50,000, one quarter covers zones that count less than 20,000 inhabitants, so that this panorama also reflects the level of air pollution in small built-up areas and not just giant metropolises. Similarly, it should not be considered that the costs of pollution are only significant in emerging countries. According to the OECD and the WHO (WHO-OECD 2015), the deterioration in air quality in Europe amounts to a cost of 1400 billion euro per year, which represents from 1 to 10 % of the gross domestic product (GDP) of countries covered by the study: 2.3 % for France, 3.7 % for the United Kingdom and 4.5 % for Germany.
- 2.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA 2016), opting for the COP 21 2 ℃ scenario, compared to business as usual (likely to lead to a 6 ℃ increase by the end of the century), would reduce the need for investments in urban transport systems by USD 21 trillion, partly due to the reduced personal vehicle stock.
- 3.
Two-sided platforms interconnect categories of economic agents with interdependent interests. This means that the benefit of an agent located on one ‘side’ is connected to the number of agents located on the other (or the breakdown of that group), a phenomenon known as ‘crossed externalities’. This configuration results in very specific competitive tensions. The indirect network effects constitute a concentration factor (‘snowball’ effect): an increase in the number of agents on one side is likely to attract more to the other side and vice versa in a rising spiral with the possibility of the emergence of a monopolistic platform in fine (known as ‘winner takes all’) (Rochet and Tirole 2003).
- 4.
Beddington Zero Energy Development.
- 5.
Shanghai has adopted a polycentric expansion approach with the deployment of new towns in its ‘One City, Nine Towns’ project launched in 2001. More generally, over 200 smart city projects are under experimentation in Chine.
- 6.
- 7.
Initially developed in Europe, geographical restrictions (e.g. pedestrian zones, prohibition of types of polluting vehicles at some times of day or during peak hours) are rapidly being developed in Asia, especially China.
- 8.
Whereas other attributes of smart cities (environmental qualities of the habitat, introduction of green roofs, access conditions for some remote public services, etc.) fit in more easily with pre-existing urban constraints.
- 9.
The intensity of greenhouse gas emissions from urban deliveries is 3.5 times higher than for long-distance transport per ton-kilometer. The case of Barcelona illustrates both the constraints and solutions in a smart city approach: “Goods vehicles make up 6.6 % of Barcelona’s vehicle stock, but they constitute only 15 % of city traffic and 23 % of connecting trips. The city council of Barcelona has recently approved the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) 2013–2018, which focuses specifically on logistics activities. In particular, […] inside the optimisation of urban goods, it specifies a way: ‘Establish a network of multi-use vehicle parks and mini trans-shipment platforms in neighbourhoods from which goods deliveries can be realised by trolleys, electric vehicles and tricycles/cargo-bikes’” (Navarro et al. 2016, p. 316).
- 10.
Inaugurated in New York in 2014 and now available in almost 50 cities around the world, Amazon’s “Prime Now” system offers express home delivery within an hour (the average time is 36 min) for all types of goods, including food, 7 days a week from 8 am to 10 pm. This “innovation” illustrates the pressure, particularly from customers with high purchasing power, on service quality, leading to competition in the delivery conditions sector.
- 11.
This is the case of the “connected boulevard” experiment carried out by the city of Nice in association with Cisco Systems.
- 12.
On the condition, however, that the production system is low-carbon. For example, although electric vehicles circulating in Chinese towns have the advantage of distancing some types of pollution from city centers, their deployment does not fundamentally reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Other types of motorization, for example natural gas vehicles, present fewer constraints (considering the necessary adaptation of the electricity grid), while presenting an acceptable environmental footprint (contained CO2 emissions, near absence of local pollutants).
- 13.
Since the considerable electricity crises of the early 2000s, California has been looking closely at solutions for securing the local electricity supply. The state’s transport operator, California Independent System Operator (CAISO), has developed an experimental V2G system as part of its strategy.
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Geoffron, P. (2017). Smart Cities and Smart Mobilities. In: Attias, D. (eds) The Automobile Revolution. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45838-0_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45838-0_6
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