Skip to main content

What makes a smart city hum?

Smart cities deploy thoughtful technology to work in the background of everyday life to make energy, transportation and places more manageable for residents, governments and travelers.

Smart city solutions have many forms: energy-efficient street lighting, electrified buildings, flood and air-quality monitoring, community-wide broadband, renewable energy installations, electrified city fleets and numerous other innovative technology applications for community benefit.

Although there are many options, the overarching goal is transformation: using innovative methods and tailored solutions to transform normal community services to improve environmental sustainability and resilience, mobility, reliability and quality of life for a broad spectrum of residents. In many cases, these efforts can improve financial and operational performance.

Are you interested in exploring smart city solutions but not sure where to start?

We'd love to talk

What are the keys to Smart City success?

Collaboration is a critical element of successful smart cities. Cross-sector partnerships and information-sharing are crucial to maximizing the benefits of next-generation technologies.

Findings from a survey of best practices and methods for overcoming barriers to smart city solutions by Public Sector Consultants show that in addition to smart technology, successful smart cities rely on city relationships and communications among people. Municipalities considering deploying smart city solutions should consider these best practices before they begin, asking themselves if their city has:

  • Robust stakeholder engagement and communications strategy
  • Clear short- and long-term goals
  • Strong and visible support from organizational leadership
  • Adequate funding for implementation and sustainable funding for maintenance
    • Consistent performance metrics to measure impact
    • Capacity for managing change
    • Adaptive policymaking and governance

With the right organizational foundations in place, smart cities can improve life for residents, businesses and the organizations that join them.

Why focus on cities?

Smart city technologies can be the answer to many municipal challenges, especially concerning climate change risk and opportunity.

As cities, governments and companies align on a need for climate resilience — climate commitments, strategic plans and meetings will only get us so far. These plans must be substantiated with on-the-ground solutions that enable cities to make rapid progress toward near-term decarbonization and put them on a path to full climate neutrality,

Focusing on cities provides a pivotal opportunity to rethink the role they play in reaching carbon neutrality.

As awareness of smart city technologies grows, more cities in regions throughout the state are adopting and deploying these recent technologies to assist with the progress of their municipal strategic goals and positively impact their residents’ lives.

What challenges do small to midsized cities face as they seek to become smart cities?

Each community and city adopting smart city solutions encounter unique challenges, often based on a city’s size or management.

While the number of smart city technology deployments has been increasing in larger cities, successful technology deployment can be challenging in small to midsized cities.

These cities need to consider how to use change management strategies for adaptation in responding to changing work processes, training staff and measuring new key performance indicators.

What are the features of a smart city?

As defined by the Smart Cities Council, a smart city features three key elements:

Livability Defined as “cities that provide clean, healthy living conditions without pollution and congestion. With a technological and digital infrastructure for providing city services.”

Workability Defined as “cities that provide the enabling infrastructure — clean energy, connectivity and other essential services that allow the city to develop economically.”

Sustainability Defined as “cities that provide services without compromising future generations.”

While mobility- and transportation-related technologies are often the most familiar municipal deployments, many solutions are available to interconnect, engage and inspire cities to embrace technological advancements.

How does MiNextCities help participating cities become smart cities?

The MiNextCities team leverages its deep technical and program management expertise to implement community-backed solutions and assist cities in reducing project costs, ensuring that each deployment is set up for success. Participating cities will be instrumental in creating a replicable roadmap for similar communities across the state — further positioning Michigan as a leader in the clean energy and smart mobility spaces.

MiNextCities deployments focus on solving specific, community-defined challenges, including, but not limited to:

  • EV charging
  • Pedestrian and vehicle safety technology
  • Shared mobility options
  • Electrification of city-owned fleet vehicles
  • Building and infrastructure electrification
  • Connected and automated lighting
  • Smart building technologies
  • IoT – Internet of Things (connected devices)
  • Battery and other energy-storage technologies
  • Distributed energy resources
  • Secure high-speed data networks

Resources

Check out some resources for small to midsized Michigan communities to best incorporate next-generation technologies into their planning and maintenance activities.

EV Funding Finder
Source: Electrification Coalition

Looking for ways to fund an EV project for your business, community, or home, but don’t know where to start? Try out Electrification Coalition’s EV Funding Finder tool. This user-friendly resource helps eligible recipients navigate through the sea of funding pathways made possible by unprecedented levels of federal investment in vehicle electrification.


View Resource
Inflation Reduction Act Savings Calculator
Source: Rewiring America

How much money can you get from the Inflation Reduction Act to decarbonize your home? Rewiring America’s easy-to-use calculator tool provides a quick summary of the savings you’re eligible for based on income, household size, and tax filing status. The tool even offers estimates for the savings on your utility bills for the year. Give it a try today and see the savings you can receive over the next 10 years!


View Resource
Electrify Everything in Your Home
Source: Rewiring America

Rewiring America developed this guidebook for homeowners to take steps in – you guessed it – electrifying everything in their homes. The guidebook offers manageable recommendations for homeowners (as well as options for renters) with tasks as simple as researching electric appliances to replace existing fossil-fuel powered devices at the end of their useful lives. The easy-to-read guide even offers suggestions for how to find qualified contractors and serves up available incentive programs to bring down the cost of electrifying your home.


View Resource
Local Government Playbook
Source: Electrification Coalition

A handy guide for cities, townships, and counties to use for preparing their respective local units of government for an EV transition. This playbook from the Electrification Coalition provides a checklist leaders can reference to assess their levels of readiness and covers topics such as short- and long-term policy strategies, community engagement, site planning, and resources for leveraging federal funding available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act.


View Resource
The Enhanced Air Sensor Guidebook
Source: EPA

In this newly updated guidebook, the EPA offers communities a detailed overview of best practices and questions to considers in planning and collecting air quality measurements using air sensors.

View PDF

View Resource
Current State of Smart Cities Programs
Source: MI Next Cities/NextEnergy

In this report prepared for the MiNextCities program, Public Sector Consultants investigates examples of smart city programs across the country and highlights best practices employed to overcome barriers to successful projects and deployments.


View Resource
The Enhanced Air Sensor Guidebook
Source: United States Environmental Protection Agency

In this newly updated guidebook, the EPA offers communities a detailed overview of best practices and questions to considers in planning and collecting air quality measurements using air sensors.


View Resource
MINextCities Program Primer
Source: NextEnergy

NextEnergy is developing MiNextCities one smart city at a time.

The MiNextCities program is engaging stakeholders statewide to identify and deploy tailored solutions that improve energy efficiency, reliability, sustainability, safety, and quality of life for a broad spectrum of residents.


View Resource
The Benefits of LED and Smart Street Lighting
Source: City Lab Insights and Northeast Group, LLC

Findings from a performance benchmark for cities who modernized their street lighting infrastructure with LED luminaires and smart control systems. What benefits do these upgrades offer? Have installation costs improved over time? The study is a great resource for communities and street lighting providers who might be on the fence about pursuing these upgrades.


View Resource
The Outdoor Lighting Accelerator: Lighting the Way Forward
Source: Department of Energy

Final report from the Department of Energy’s Better Buildings Outdoor Lighting Accelerator initiative which aimed to help municipalities and other public agencies overcome barriers in upgrading their street lights to modern, efficient, and high-performance systems. The report highlights pathways cities took to enhancing their street light systems, including incorporating smart street light elements such as sensors, adaptive lighting, and wireless communication capabilities. Pathways to energy savings, cost reduction, and technology enhancement are provided for municipally-owned systems as well as utility-owned and operated systems.


View Resource

Resource Type


440 Burroughs
Suite 370
Detroit, MI 48202

To learn more about the program, please contact:

Nick Thomas
Director, MiNextCities
[email protected]
(313) 833-0100 ext. 320

Sign up to receive updates

Powered by: