“Just leave us alone with your digitization,” warns senior Jan Lindenau when visiting the retirement home. Lindenau, the mayor of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck accepts the challenge. He explains that even the emergency button on the lady’s wrist is digital, explains the opportunities for optimized traffic flow and digital flood level measurement. Suddenly the elderly woman seems fascinated. Lübeck is on the way to becoming an intelligent city, the smart city.
The Hanseatic city thus joins a whole series of cities. A position paper by the Association of German Cities states that liveable cities are smart cities. This conclusion results from the finding that intelligent mobility and sustainable climate protection are no longer conceivable without the use of data.
But smart city is not the same as a smart city. The core objective of the numerous process optimizations associated with the development of the intelligent city must be clear. Whether it is about living as comfortably as possible, resource efficiency or the greatest possible control of citizens influences all further decisions.
This fundamental question must be clarified beyond the technological possibilities and, in case of doubt, redefined for each application. The professor for urban planning at the Lübeck University of Applied Sciences, Frank Schwartze, has a clear stance on this: “In my opinion, the idea is not so much the topic of an automated world that offers us a carefree life, but above all it is the topic an intelligent city that uses its resources wisely and is therefore much more sustainable.”
Smart City is the first focus that the TH Lübeck presents in its new format “Focus Page” cross-media. What are the TH Lübeck researchers doing specifically to make our cities smarter? See for yourself: https://www.th-luebeck.de/smart-city/
The topics of the Smart City page at a glance:
- Private or public good? A conversation with Jens Meyer, Stadtwerke Lübeck GmbH
- IT security: Expertise from Prof. Sören Werth and Prof. Andreas Schäfer
- The local example: An audio interview with Lübeck Mayor Jan Lindenau
- Sensors for a smart city: A video interview with Prof. Horst Hellbrück
- Smart City Software: Expertise by Prof. Nane Kratzke
- Data: the fodder for a smart city. Audio interview with Prof. Max Zimmermann
- Statistical Modeling: Why do people come to a city? A conversation with the experts Prof. Thomas Romeyke and Prof. Karen Cabos.
- Economic control of the smart city: a conversation with Prof. Nils Balke
- Smart City = Smart Region. A video interview with Prof. Lydia Rintz
- Draw the balance. A conversation with Prof. Maximilian Schüler