The past year and a half also drove cities across the globe to rethink their infrastructure planning. Some of the ideas that emerged from COVID are now permanent sustainable solutions, such as monitoring travel patterns using sensor technology and crowdsourced information, which helps cities adjust transportation services based on realtime demand and commuting patterns. Further, the pandemic brought to light several inequities in resource distribution. As society moves into the next phase of post-pandemic recovery, the goal is to position cities so future social and economic crises have less of an impact than COVID did. Whether the next major disruption is due to climate change or something else, governments and enterprises must be better prepared to respond and recover from crises in a way that is more equitable, resilient, and, ultimately, sustainable.

“Our entire planet needs to cut carbon emissions in half over the next decade and to get on a path to net-zero carbon by 2050,” Grayson says. “Cities are responsible for as much as 75% of global emissions, and as a result they need a plan to decarbonize quickly while enhancing the quality of life for their residents and the long-term economic prosperity of the city. Cities that get on the path to net-zero carbon will also see health benefits (e.g., a reduction in air pollution) and can leverage their sustainability programs to address social equity issues—from delivering new ‘green jobs’ to proactively investing in underinvested parts of the city and leveraging sustainable infrastructure investments to start addressing historical racism and past patterns of disinvestment.”

Hiba Baroud, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, earth and environmental sciences, and electrical engineering and computer science at Vanderbilt University, says essential services, including mobility, energy, and water and waste management, always rank as the top needs of cities—sustainable or not. “As cities become denser and more developed, the population will drive a greater demand for these essential services,” Baroud says. “This in turn creates two significant challenges: ensuring that resources will be sufficient for a growing population that are distributed appropriately and ensuring that services will be reliable and efficient.”

Climate models for the next century predict more extreme weather events, such as heat waves and winter storms.

“Looking ahead, we can expect to see modernization of transportation options including infrastructure, ridesharing modalities, and micro-mobility. This trend of modernizing existing systems and available technologies underscores the growing need for multimodal systems to be well integrated to ensure their sustainability. We can’t forget that mobility includes walkability within densely populated urban centers. To this end, we will be seeing the implementation of sustainable urban design to maximize pedestrian access to vital services in the years to come.”

“Sensors that monitor pipelines and infrastructure in concert with crowdsourced data and apps that monitor environmental parameters and drive actions are gaining traction in tandem,” adds Baroud. “We have already seen the smart water-management system created by IBM that combines data from multiple sources to provide a realtime and systemwide understanding of water-distribution systems. Monitoring systems with realtime insights about infrastructure systems that can detect issues before they become a disaster will be a technology trend we see across cities.”

Don Carter, senior research fellow at Carnegie Mellon University’s Remaking Cities Institute, says reduced fossil fuel energy use and zero-carbon goals are at the top of cities’ agendas worldwide, and TBL (triple bottom line) sustainability accounting (social, environmental, and financial) has also emerged as a strong trend. In terms of pressing needs, he says: “Dealing with housing affordability is a critical need, not only the high costs of construction and rehabilitation but also the ongoing costs of utilities and maintenance. Many cities have made mobility a priority—public transit, bicycles, pedestrians, and shared vehicles over single-occupancy vehicles.”

Joe DiStefano, CEO and cofounder of UrbanFootprint, points to two key areas cities need to focus on—food security and eviction protection. “The pandemic has shone a light on the inefficiencies and inequities of our resource-distribution systems,” he says. “As we begin to recover from COVID, the really substantial challenge is to ensure that relief in the form of food benefits and eviction relief is targeted to the people and communities that need it most, creating more resilient communities now and over the long term.”

To address these challenges, UrbanFootprint has crafted new datasets like its Food Security Insights and Eviction Risk Insights tools that provide up-to-date, granular data on food insecurity and eviction risk across the U.S. “We’re applying the kind of technical prowess and data science know-how used by Amazon and e-commerce companies to get Americans a toaster or Xbox in 24 hours to get critical relief to the most vulnerable Americans. This targeted relief is essential to building back resilience in communities, which is mission-critical if we are to holistically and effectively address our sustainability and social equity challenges.”

“It also requires money, which is a scarce resource in most cities around the world,” Piva says. “One successful approach is to liberate funding by digitizing public services and redirecting investment into these types of areas. This requires leadership, vision, and courage—not always easily found in a city government.”

Vanderbilt University’s Baroud adds awareness of and support for sustainable solutions is important for sustaining resources that support citywide projects for the long haul. “This directly connects to a city government’s ability to develop solutions that respond to infrastructure and zoning concerns,” Baroud notes. “Public-private partnerships are essential to getting this work done.”

Alongside these public-private partnerships, there are many stakeholders, institutions, and organizations advocating for their own goals within a smart city. “Municipal leadership must be able to connect these entities and leverage their shared goals to make meaningful change,” concludes Baroud. “This level of coordination is not simple. In fact, it is often a factor in why sustainability initiatives fail. While smart ideas are initially implemented at smaller scales, a lack of coordination jeopardizes projects from reaching their potential no matter how good they are.”

This is great, unless you are an underpaid driver, overworked warehouse worker, or wondering why there are four delivery vans on every block.”

While many pressing issues have been completely overshadowed by the COVID pandemic in the past 18 months, sustainability is one of the few that is still very much in focus. Why? “The simple answer is that people all around the world are seeing the early indicators of what will happen if we don’t take action now,” Internetstiftelsen’s Piva says. “Urban leaders around the world no longer have to doubt the scientific evidence of climate change. My prediction is that smart-city trends drive zero-carbon goals, investment in clean transport systems, green spaces, and more sustainable local ecosystems. I hope to see cities compete for talent by providing the best economic, social, and environmental living environment.”