1.1 The Development of Smart Cities: A Complex Systematic Project, Requiring the Establishment of Scientific Systematic Thinking
Having information and knowledge is not the same as having wisdom. At present, the global smart city development is booming. Almost all countries have put forward the goal of building smart cities at different levels. Fernando Savater, a Spanish philosopher, differentiated the concepts between information, knowledge, and wisdom in his famous book An Invitation to Philosophy, stating that the three is a sequence from low to high: information is fact; knowledge is reflection on information as fact; and wisdom is the connection between knowledge selection and our values. Rising from knowledge to wisdom requires a process of connection with real life and assimilation with values and worldviews. In other words, information and knowledge are related to things, while wisdom is related to life. Information and knowledge are not equal to wisdom.
There are three levels of smart cities. The basic level is a variety of physical facilities. People use sensors and smart devices scattered all over the city to collect all kinds of data information in the operation of the city. They are an extension of the human sensory organs. The second level is the network. The monitored information is transmitted and processed in the network system to realize the connection between people and people, people and things, and things and things, so as to integrate and coordinate the operation of the whole city. The top level is human wisdom. People innovate in technology and management, and turn wisdom into a new driving force for urban development. They make cities more intelligent and enable all systems and participants to collaborate efficiently. These three levels must be integrated into a trinity to form a smart city. In a word, the intelligence of a smart city is endowed by human beings and determined by the level of human wisdom.
People like to hear vivid descriptions of the various technologies and applications of smart cities, and regard them as solutions to various “urban diseases”. However, we must remember that building a smart city needs people's wisdom the most. A long-term plan should be made based on intelligent thinking. Data show that by 2018, more than 1,500 “smart cities” have been launched or under construction in the world. These cities are located in Asia, Europe, America and Africa, including cities in China. The report mentioned that more than 500 cities in China have launched smart city plans, which is the most in the world (Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited., 2019). Because of the large size of cities in China, once smart cities are implemented, it becomes a “big cake” that worth trillions of Yuan even if on a conservative calculation. Enterprises from all over the world will be naturally engaged in this fierce competition. Therefore, a question arises spontaneously. That is, how can we use wisdom to make our own industrial planning first and take advantage of this opportunity to promote the upgrading development of related industries? Smart cities involve the innovation of various technologies, which needs a more effective integration. For example, it is necessary to establish a series of technology and network standards first; otherwise, data format incompatibilities may occur in the sensory system and identification system. In addition, one of the basic facilities of smart cities is wireless network transmission that enables anyone to obtain all kinds of data needed at any time and any place. It needs the extremely high requirements for information security.
Smart city development is undoubtedly a long-term process. At present, either the new public security system in Chicago in America, or the smart medical system in Copenhagen in Denmark, or the smart projects in some cities in China, they are only partial and preliminary experiments. Therefore, the relevant municipal governments must have a long-term vision and must not treat it as a vanity project. If we rush into launching a smart city project, but later it turns out that the facilities previously built are incompatible with the overall planning and development direction, a huge amount of resources will be wasted. In this case, the so-called development of smart city is far from “wisdom”.
Technology can only serve people if we use it wisely. To make cities smart through technology, we are required to think intelligently about how to build smart cities (Lv, 2012).