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To gather evidence relating to the protests that took place in June, the San Diego Police Department accessed the city's network of smart streetlights at least 35 times in the span of five days, according to The Voice of San Diego. San Diego's smart streetlight initiative — launched in 2016 through a partnership with General Electric, which provided a $30 million loan to fund the project — was originally intended to reduce energy costs and inform transit operations using anonymized data.
The purview of the project expanded after its launch, however, as police began requesting access to streetlight video footage in mid-2018, per The Voice of San Diego. In May 2020, Mayor Kevin Faulconer advocated shutting down many of the smart streetlights, although doing so would leave the city owing considerable debt to General Electric.
San Diego's streetlight troubles attest to the fact that, when cities adapt smart city solutions to meet emerging needs, they risk jeopardizing public confidence in future initiatives. In early 2020, Business Insider Intelligence spoke to a number of leaders in the smart city space who emphasized the importance of engaging citizens to get their support for smart city projects. For instance, Mike Zeto, vice president of IoT Advanced Solutions at AT&T, told us, "it's really important to get the citizens involved early so they understand the technology that is going to be deployed in their neighborhood and why."
When cities expand the scope of a smart city solution after initial deployment, they risk sowing public distrust, as this mission creep can short-circuit the process of citizen engagement. Lack of community buy-in plagued Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs' $3.9 billion smart city development in Toronto, contributing to the eventual abandonment of the project. It also appears to have motivated the movement to shut down San Diego's streetlight initiative, and will suppress public support for future smart city initiatives.
Cities have turned to smart city solutions to battle the coronavirus pandemic, but this risks tarnishing long-term public support for such initiatives. Digital infrastructure for smart city solutions can be repurposed to help governments battle the coronavirus pandemic. China, for instance, used CCTV cameras to monitor citizens' adherence to the 14-day quarantine guidelines. Similarly, South Korea tapped into its Smart City Data Hub to monitor the movements of individuals suspected of being infected.
Even if such programs are phased out once the pandemic ends, they will likely still influence public perception of smart city solutions and their related privacy implications. On the other hand, if the programs prove to be an effective tool in curbing the spread of the coronavirus, governments may consequently increase their budgets for smart city programs. We therefore expect that smart city spending trajectories will be significantly reshaped by the pandemic, but that these impacts will vary by region — the privacy-minded EU could further limit the acceptable scope of smart city solutions, for instance, while the US and China accelerate such endeavors.
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