Serious obstacles for Brussels as a Smart City

A Smart City improves the quality of life and provides information from the government and citizens via new digital applications. These usually revolve around themes such as smart energy, buildings, mobility, living and working environment, plus a functioning digital infrastructure and communication that support everything. These are all themes for which the Brussels-Capital Region scores poorly. “A few conventions, ambassadors and a couple of apps don’t turn Brussels into a true Smart City,” Brussels party leader Johan Van den Driessche warns. He thinks that in addition to budgetary constraints, Brussels is also facing structural obstacles, such as extensive fragmentation of their administration.

According to Agoria, Brussels is only 17th in the ranking of Smart Cities in Belgium. Hasselt is top of that list. Brussels isn’t in the top ten of the European ranking either. “In the past, the South Koreans came to us for inspiration, now it is the other way round,” Johan Van den Driessche concludes.

Structural obstacles

Even so, it is the ambition of the Brussels government to have the city enter the top five in five year’s time. “I can only say that this objective is somewhat naive,” Johan Van den Driessche finds. “Such an ambition assumes a long-term vision with measurable objectives within about fifteen years, and that vision just isn’t there.” In addition, Brussels lacks large-scale smart applications at the neighbourhood and city level in areas such as living (heating grids, energy meters) and traffic management, and with an estimated population increase of 35% by 2050, there is no choice. “You see, it’s not just that this type of project is lacking, but that there’s absolutely no budget for them either,” Johan Van den Driessche remarks.

Administrative fragmentation

An additional obstacle is the fragmentation of authority between police zones and municipalities. “This requires us to invest a significant amount of energy on projects that are not an issue for other major cities,” Johan Van den Driessche relates. “For example, the authorised Secretary of State may announce that she is working on number plate recognition for the entire region - an excellent initiative in itself - but it not only takes years of effort, but other European cities with a single police zone have already had a uniform system in place from inception.”