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Columbus, Ohio, and Others Land on Global Smart City Ranks

A new report that ranks cities around the world when it comes to smart development and use of technology to help their cities puts the major international hubs of Singapore, Seoul and London first, second and third.

by Mark Williams, The Columbus Dispatch / April 2, 2021

(TNS) — A new report that ranks cities around the world when it comes to smart development and use of technology to help their cities puts the major international hubs of Singapore, Seoul and London first, second and third.

The top U.S. city is New York, ranked sixth, according to a new report from Eden Strategy Institute, a consulting firm based in Singapore that, among other things, supports companies and governments to bring innovation.

The next U.S. city to make the list: Columbus, which ranks 11th — ahead of San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Moscow.

More than 230 cities were evaluated by the institute for the study, which looks at the role played by city governments as a driver for what it calls smart development in terms of deploying technology in their cities along with efforts to help residents use that technology.

Columbus scores so well in large part because it won the Smart City competition in 2016.

That win came with a $40 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation for research on what a smart transportation system could look like and a $10 million grant from Paul G. Allen Philanthropies meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, mostly by encouraging more consumer and fleet adoption of electric vehicles.

Smart Columbus, a collaboration of the city and the Columbus Partnership, which is composed of local business leaders, used those grant dollars to leverage commitments totaling more than $500 million.

The report credits the city with a having a clear smart city vision.

"This clarity and alignment between a city-level vision and projects is often lacking in other smart city plans," the report noted.

The report also praised the city for using the grants to leverage money from throughout the region to support projects in Columbus.

"This is an area in which other smart cities often face difficulty and hence initiatives launched are often unsustainable or unsuccessful," the report said.

“Winning the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Smart City Challenge united our community in seizing the opportunity to use emerging technologies to create a more prosperous future for everyone," Mayor  Andrew Ginther  said in a statement. "As the past year has demonstrated, Columbus and cities like us face critical challenges related to equity, sustainability, digital access and regional competitiveness. By harnessing technology to achieve community good, our community has the potential to solve some of our most pressing challenges and emerge as a city of the future.”

(c)2021 The Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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