When Philadelphia’s Office of Innovation and Technology published its “Smart Cities Roadmap” in early 2019, the concept of a smart city wasn’t universally understood, city officials said.

OIT team members had been exploring programs with this lens — collecting and using data to pilot accessible, tech-enabled solutions within city programs — since they established the SmartCityPHL initiative in 2017. But funding from the Knight Foundation allowed them to formalize this work and dedicate a team to it in 2019…

The original Smart Cities Roadmap has evolved enough that city leaders are thinking it’s time to make a new one. Malik has found that projects fall into three categories: mobility, non-mobility infrastructure and software systems.