There are special “World Days” for nearly everything, however: one of the most significant days that you may not know is “World Cities Day”, which is traditionally celebrated on October 31.

This year’s World Cities Day has a Smart Cities theme. It is all about People-Centered Smart Cities and how digital innovation can improve life for all. Cities Alliance, a global partnership fighting urban poverty and supporting cities to deliver sustainable development, suggests that people-centered smart cities highlight the importance of ensuring that technological progress translates into inclusion, accessibility, and better opportunities for everyone.

The smart cities revolution

The Alliance points out that technology, data, and AI are revolutionising the way cities are planned and managed. However, the real measure of progress lies in how these tools serve the people.

We talk often about the world’s great smart cities, how, by 2050, nearly 70% of the world’s population will live in cities, compared to about 50% today. Increased urbanisation and the challenges created by a changing climate are causing growing infrastructure headaches for cities, which will only worsen. These challenges are driving the growing development of smart cities, a market that GlobalData forecasts will be worth $417bn in 2028, up from $204.8bn in 2023.

Smart cities are spreading across the globe. The plethora of Chinese tech-led cities, like Shenzhen, has been joined by a new breed of renewable energy-focused cities, notably in the Middle East. They include Neom in Saudi Arabia, a project designed to reduce the country’s dependence on oil, diversify its economy, and develop public service sectors. Neom, like most smart cities, will adopt technologies such as AI, digital twins, and 5G to run urban operations. Digital twins, particularly, are behind the successful operation of many cities, including London, New York, and Paris.

And yet, at the same time, cities must tackle healthcare and climate change risks. The pandemic disrupted cities’ natural rhythms, such as the morning-evening commute, and that rhythm has yet to reset completely. The pandemic exposed weaknesses in urban health infrastructures, but cities have learned from the experience and are trying to become more resilient. That resilience will be tested by future health catastrophes and the climate crisis, which has increased the risk of natural disasters like floods. Such risks are also driving cities’ adoption of weather monitoring systems and resilience planning tools.

Technology that listens

“Technology that listens” is a phrase coined by Cities Alliance to make the point that smart cities are often defined by their digital infrastructure. The Alliance argues that a city really becomes truly smart “when technology amplifies the knowledge and priorities of its residents. When data collection starts at the community level, when design processes include women, youth, and marginalised groups, and when local governments have the capacity to translate this knowledge into policy, technology becomes a tool for inclusion rather than exclusion.”

Take the example of Nepal, where, in the Cities for Women initiative, local governments are using data and digital planning tools to design safer, more inclusive public spaces. The project, implemented by UNOPS and UN-Habitat and funded by the European Union and the Government of Finland, shows how technology and participation can work together to strengthen local governance.

The host city for World Cities Day in 2025 is Bogotá, the capital of Colombia. There, World Cities Day representatives will celebrate the idea that as cities worldwide embrace digital transformation, the challenge is not to adopt technology for its own sake, but to ensure that it strengthens inclusive governance, fair access to services, and resilience.

Another example comes from sub-Saharan Africa, where, under the EU-funded Sustainable Urban Integration of Displacement-Affected Communities (SUIDAC) program, Cities Alliance and its partners work with municipalities in nine cities across the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda to improve services and opportunities for both displaced people and host communities.

By strengthening local governments’ capacity, encouraging data-driven planning, and promoting dialogue across local and national levels, SUIDAC helps cities become more resilient to climate risks and better equipped to manage the pressures of fragility and human mobility.

Smart cities start with people

The experience from these partnerships shows that smart cities start with people. When digital innovation is embedded in participatory, gender-sensitive, and climate-aware urban planning, it becomes a catalyst for inclusion and better governance.

One key quote perhaps provides a summary of what World Cities Day and people-centered smart cities are seeking to achieve. It is that, “Across these contexts, one lesson stands out: innovation is most effective when grounded in local realities and designed with—not for—the people who live in cities.”

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“Celebrating World Cities Day with smart cities” was originally created and published by Verdict, a GlobalData owned brand.

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