Economically and culturally, Hamburg is one of Europe’s most liveable and economically strongest cities. Therefore, Hamburg is undertaking significant efforts to put its Smart City approach into reality by using smart technologies and implementing numerous interdisciplinary pilot projects. And Hamburg is still facing a growth trend; especially younger people are attracted by the city’s dynamic economy and many jobs by various educational institutions and extensive leisure facilities and cultural opportunities. The current town planning aims to find spaces within the existing areas and open up new development opportunities. The city wants to create additional, high-quality urban spaces by the water, offering homes, jobs, leisure, and recreation.
Hamburg Mayor Olaf Scholz envisages cities in the future as wider, bigger, smarter, and with more opportunities and encourages 21st-century citizens to embrac[e] progress and strive for the implementation of a modern city. As part of this, Hamburg’s smartPORT aims to optimize infrastructure and traffic management systems, improving safety and environment conditions with the help of hardware megacorp Cisco. Sensors and cameras make up the IoT nodes of the network. Hamburg officials consider Stadrad Hamburg to be the most successful digitally enabled bike-sharing project in Germany. Potentially allaying privacy concerns in the face of mass continual data harvesting necessary for any smart city project, a politician is supposed that only those technologies will be established which are accepted in daily lives.
According to the senator of Economic Affairs, Transport and Innovation in Hamburg, Frank Horch, the opportunities presented through the networking of people, processes, data, and things will not only drive progress in the cities and municipalities but also offer citizens greater convenience and therefore a higher quality of life.
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