Character vs Technology: The Design of Urban Intelligence in "Smart Cities"

A mature city, much like a well-developed human, finds harmony between its inner character and outer presentation. True urban intelligence isn't found simply in a modern technological overlay, but in complementing the unique spirit that already exists.

As I prepared for my presentations at the Smart City Summit in San Francisco, "Humanizing AI for Better Government and Business," and the panels I was on at the AIM2025 Congress in Abu Dhabi this spring, I found myself drawn to explore this parallel between urban and personal identity.

My father's scientific career took our family across many continents, where I experienced city life through a child's eyes—playing with local children in my birthland of Australia, European capitals, watching performances in Bali, going to school in Amsterdam, exploring ancient temples near Mexico City, and wandering through bustling markets in Singapore and Indonesia. These immersive cultural experiences from my formative years fundamentally shaped how I perceive urban environments—not as mere collections of buildings and infrastructure, but as living entities with distinct personalities, rhythms, and evolutionary paths.

Consider Amsterdam, a city that has evolved over centuries from a fishing village to a global hub of commerce and culture. When I was ten, my father brought us there on sabbatical where he worked with Dr. Jan van der Elsken investigating nonspherical ions in molten salts using far-infrared spectroscopy techniques. Our family lived in a small flat above a park near the University of Amsterdam. Often, on the way home from school, my middle sister and I would stop for an order of chips with a dollop of mayonnaise served in a cone of newspaper—not the healthiest meal, but a fabulous memory. I still order my fries (when I indulge) with mayonnaise to this day.

The intricate network of canals and waterways with their boats and woonschepen made a tremendous impression. Exploring the city and parks became part of our adventures, with the reflective surfaces of the waterways mirroring centuries-old buildings in a way that seemed magical to my young eyes. Amsterdam had a thriving scientific community, and we experienced this time as one of our family's lovely chapters.

Today, Amsterdam's approach to urban intelligence exemplifies harmony — their Smart City initiative integrates technology with the city's historic character. Rather than imposing solutions that would disrupt its unique canal structure, Amsterdam has implemented over 100 projects connecting physical infrastructure to digital networks—from smart energy grids that dynamically adjust to demand patterns to flood monitoring systems utilizing real-time sensor data from canal systems. I view cities in such visual and human-centered terms because I am a designer first and a technologist second.

In design, we often say that form follows function. Yet this axiom only tells part of the story. We must acknowledge that function is in fact driven by purpose and purpose is driven by character. Form may follow function, but the extended equation is that character always drives form.

My colleague, Sheng-Hung Lee, Ph.D. , recently shared an insightful post with excerpts from Kevin Lynch's "Image of the City." In that excerpt, Lynch argued that cities should be understood as "environments perceived and navigated by their inhabitants through five key elements (paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks), rather than just as physical structures." This framework provides tools for evaluating urban form and constructing what Lynch calls an "imageable landscape" - essentially how people create mental maps of their environments. These maps go beyond Cartesian coordinates to encompass emotional and experiential connections that create pathways and linkages beyond simple spatial relationships.

This framework reminds me of Italo Calvino's masterpiece "Invisible Cities" (one of my favorite books), where Marco Polo describes fantastical urban landscapes to Kublai Khan. While Lynch offers analytical tools for understanding urban navigation, Calvino poetically demonstrates how these elements shift with perspective and memory. As the narrative unfolds, we see that a city exists in that dynamic tension between objective structure and subjective perception. Any consideration of what a smart city can be, or should be, must meet humans at this intersection.

As a child, I didn't realize how wandering through ancient temples near Mexico City or watching shadow puppets in Bali would influence my perspective on urban spaces. Your youthful mind ignores or simply enjoys the cultural differences while latching on to the human commonalities, and retaining the curiosity that comes naturally at that age. This is what Zen philosopher Shunryu Suzuki referred to as "beginner's mind"—approaching new environments with openness and without preconceptions. In Singapore's markets, I wasn't analyzing commercial organization but simply absorbing the sensory tapestry of sounds, scents, and colors. This innocent perception, free from adult categorization, somehow captured the essential character of these places more authentically than my later analytical observations ever could.

"Smart cities are no longer an abstract vision—they're taking shape around us, and design has everything to do with how people experience them," explains José Manuel dos Santos, Head of Design & User Experience for the Americas at Signify. "Lighting is infrastructure. It's data. It's presence. And it's one of the most immediate interfaces between people and place."

Cities, like people, operate across three dimensions:

Gabriel García Márquez, author of One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, once wrote "Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life," and so profound is this insight that the American Central Intelligence Agency is often associated with using the same basic framework for developing international assets and relationships. How this might map out in relation to the identity of a city is as follows:

The Public Interface: How a city presents itself to visitors—its landmarks, public squares, and official narratives. Think Sydney Opera House or Times Square: carefully curated experiences that project identity worldwide and into the future.

The Private Experience: The daily lived reality for residents—neighborhood connections, local knowledge, and communal patterns. While tourists might visit New York's Greenwich Village as a destination, residents experience it through familiar pathways—the morning coffee route, the weekend farmers market.

The Secret Infrastructure: The unseen systems, forgotten histories, and background processes that power urban life. This includes physical infrastructure, digital networks, and the unsavory aspects of a city's history—displacement of indigenous populations, environmental injustice, redlining—that linger in the collective subconscious, sometimes acting as an unspoken impetus for positive change.

San Francisco offers a compelling example of this hidden dimension—beneath its tech-focused present lies the persistent influence of its Gold Rush origins. The remains of ships from that era literally form part of the landfill beneath the Financial District, a physical embodiment of history hidden beneath the surface. The city's steep hills, once an obstacle to development, became defining characteristics that shaped neighborhood patterns.

Modern smart city platforms increasingly acknowledge these histories, with projects that use technology to address historical inequities through data transparency and community-based decision-making tools. The smartest cities aren't those where these three lives are identical or fully integrated—complete transparency may be neither possible nor desirable—but rather those that maintain some integrity between them. When the gap between public presentation and hidden reality grows too wide, urban dysfunction follows.

Character must find some harmony with the innermost aspects of their identity, whether it is self-actualization or atonement. This is true with people, and it is true with the character of a city.

Adaptive Systems, Not Imposed Solutions

A truly intelligent city doesn't impose technological solutions arbitrarily but enhances what makes it unique. Consider Barcelona's superblocks—a revolutionary urban planning strategy that transforms 3×3 grids of city blocks into pedestrian-centric zones by redirecting through traffic around perimeters. Real-time traffic management systems using computer vision and adaptive signaling work in concert with physical redesign to create new public spaces with measurably reduced noise (30% decrease) and air pollution (21% reduction in NO₂ levels).

Similarly, Copenhagen's cycling infrastructure evolved organically from the city's human-scale urban fabric. Over 385 kilometers of dedicated cycle tracks follow desire lines rather than imposed grids.

Helsinki provides a notable example with its MyData approach to digital services, which gives citizens control over their personal data while enabling efficient service delivery. The city's commitment to transparent data use reflects Finnish cultural values of trust and citizen empowerment. A few years ago I had a chance to attend the ICANN conference in Helsinki, and I was awestruck by its sophistication and beauty. The city felt grounded and centered, with authentic interactions everywhere.

Traditional technological assessments of "smartness" often focus on quantifiable metrics—number of sensors deployed, bandwidth availability, or data collection points—without addressing the qualitative dimensions that give a city its soul. As my venerable design colleague Mauro Porcini notes, "Kindness fosters trust, collaboration, and productivity. It eliminates toxicity and creates safe spaces for ideas to thrive." To his point, emotional intelligence is essential to innovation as it enables human systems to work together. Smart cities require intelligent and emotionally intelligent platforms that streamline complex processes while creating intuitive, accessible experiences for citizens. After all, the goal is to make it all relevant to humans.

This philosophy guides our current work at EPIRA.ai, a company that evolved from insights at my design firm, ModernEdge.com. We recognized from our work with AI starting in 2016 and with global health systems for Samsung, Intel, and others, that innovative solutions had to be culturally resonant to maximize citizen adoption and benefit. At EPIRA, we focus on creating human-centric experiences that improve government-citizen relationships through thoughtfully designed digital platforms. Our approach draws on diverse expertise—from sustainable systems, user-centric design, and technology innovation - to reimagining how urban environments and government systems function.

The upcoming Smart Cities Summit in San Francisco will gather experts to discuss these intersections. The most valuable conversations will move beyond technical specifications to address how technology can support the human experience of place - exactly the focus needed for cities need to develop true intelligence.

The Self-Aware City

As we envision future urban environments, we must remember that cities, like people, need both structure and soul. Our city governments must become not just more efficient but also more effective and human. In my new venture, EPIRA, we apply this understanding by developing systems that connect citizens with their governments through intuitive interfaces and responsive design. The technology becomes transparent, not an additional layer of complexity but a natural extension of the fabric that strengthens a governance system's and location's authentic character rather than imposing standardized solutions.

We just opened another EPIRA office in South Dublin, Ireland. A gorgeous city, which I became familiar with back in my time at Intel. South Dublin emerged as the perfect European home for EPIRA precisely because the region harmonizes technology with tradition. Their Innovation Quarter exemplifies our philosophy, where digital solutions enhance rather than overwrite cultural identity. South Dublin's approach to urban intelligence mirrors our own: technology that serves as an invisible enabler rather than a conspicuous addition. Government policies mirror these values with incentives for long-term commitment to the community. Their initiatives in adaptive reuse of historic structures alongside cutting-edge innovation spaces create exactly the environment we sought—a place where smart city solutions feel like natural outgrowths of the community's authentic character rather than imposed systems.

When is a city smart?

When it knows itself, embraces its uniqueness, and grows in ways that respect its inherent character, then technological additions feel like natural extensions rather than foreign impositions.

Yet we must acknowledge the inherent tensions in this vision. The push for efficiency and optimization can conflict with the preservation of character and community. The rapid deployment of new technologies may outpace our ability to understand their social implications. Privacy concerns clash with data-collection needs. These tensions aren't problems to be solved but cultural dynamics to be managed—the defining challenge of a true smart city.

We must approach smart city development not as a technical problem but as cultural evolution. We need frameworks and broad expertise with the tools to incorporate both quantitative and qualitative measures of success, as well as processes that engage citizens as co-creators rather than simply consumers of urban innovation, if we are to attract investment and generate returns for the community effectively.

When residents recognize themselves in their evolution and can engage with systems that feel human rather than bureaucratic, only then does a city achieve the urban equivalent of self-actualization—a mature intelligence that transcends mere connectivity to achieve true harmony between what it is and what it aspires to be. ________________________________________________________________

Join me in the discussion at one of these upcoming events:

1. "Humanizing AI for Better Government and Business" will explore innovative technical and design approaches that are helping shape the future of urban environments, platform engagement, and the exchange of goods and services. Charles Austen Angell, Keynote Speaker, SMART CITIES SUMMIT NORTH AMERICA, San Francisco, California, May 7-8, 2025 (Register now via the link below using the code: SCSNA2025-Member, event website, Click Here )

2. Panel: What Will Be The Transport Modalities of the Future? Changes in mobility may be the single biggest change in our urban landscape. Join the panellists as they discuss regulations, legislation, risk frameworks, and finance models. Andrew J. Cary , Charles Austen Angell FIDSA, @Clàudia Gomis, Moderated by Dr. Peter Van Deventer. Thu, May 08, 2025, 01:30 PM - 02:00 PM (PDT) SMART CITIES SUMMIT NORTH AMERICA, San Francisco, California

3. Introduction to EPIRA.ai. Better government through technology. Thu, May 08, 2025, 12:10 PM - 12:20 PM (PDT)SMART CITIES SUMMIT NORTH AMERICA, San Francisco, California

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