While American cities might be well connected, they’re behind some European cities in putting that connectivity to use for the greater good. 
Ericsson today rolled out its annual Networked Society City Index, which links investment in Internet and Communications Technology (ICT) with overall economic, social and environmental improvments. The report indexes 40 citiies around the globe.
Ericsson extrapolates from the report that “cities with a low ICT maturity tend to be improving their ICT maturity faster than high performing cities, indicating a catch-up effect.”
New York, Miami and Los Angeles fell in the middle of the rankings. New York recieved a score of 70, tops amon American cities included in the report, but seventh overall.
Nine cities were added to this year’s report, with some changes in rankings over last year. The top five cities – Stockholm, London, Paris, Singapore and Copenhagen – remain the same, though Paris has now surpassed Singapore to take the number three slot.
The nine new cities have been added in this year’s report are Berlin, Munich, Barcelona, Athens, Rome, Warsaw, Muscat, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Among these, Munich enjoys the highest ranking, followed by Berlin and Barcelona.
An interactive version of the index can be viewed here.
Alongside the index, Ericsson also rolled out a new report that shows the rate of interest in the types of services citizens would like to see in the connected cities of the future.
Michael Björn, head of research at Ericsson ConsumerLab, explained during an interview that citizens are increasingly interested in pervasive connectivity that is integrated with publically provided services like traffic, weather and water quality.
“Interestingly, for all the concepts tested, citizens who live in the central parts of the cities are more interested in the concepts than those who live in suburbs,” Bjorn said in a statement. “Also, the young and full time workers are those with the overall highest predicted daily use of the concepts, and the ones who will most actively push cities to grow smarter.”
The report shows some interesting links in what citizens want in different environments. For instance, the report found general interest in information about water quality in a city like Stockholm, which is known for clean drinking water, was about 41 percent. Meanwhile, 92 percent of citizens in Dehli were interested in a service that would report on water quality.
Filed Under: Infrastructure
