In Montpellier, France, the government wants local citizens to help build a smart metropolis.

 

The Montpellier metropolitan area is in the early stages of a $5.2m (€4m) research and development project funded by the local government. The eighth largest city in France will collect data in real time from various sectors, such as public transportation and water usage, with the help of IBM. Montpellier will sign a contract with Veolia, a local water management company that will collect water data. The data collected will be made public. The Montpellier municipality has created a contest for small and midsize companies to provide a proposal for taking the real-time data and creating new uses for it.

 

Montpellier has been at the forefront of innovation, in fact, being the first city government in France to create an innovation committee and even the position of vice president of innovation.

 

Montpellier is not the only city in France attempting to make its city smart. Nice, another southern French city, is working with Cisco to begin incorporating smart technology through smart parking meters and smart lighting.

 

How are the citizens involved? To engage people and get their feedback, Montpellier has organised public meetings on various topics about the project. A "Citizen Collaboration" app is being created to allow citizens to send text messages and images with special requests directly to the city and county governments. Local officials will process the requests and send a confirmation back to the citizen. He also mentioned that other social media analysis will be employed.

 

The plan sounds innovative, but can it work? There have been other successes with integrating smart technology into other cities worldwide. However, there are not as many documented cases of effective and active citizen participation.