Smart Cities Council

Smart Cities Council is the longest-running global smart cities ecosystem founded in 2012. They envision a world where innovation, technology and data leverages smart, sustainable cities with high-quality living and high-quality jobs. The Smart Cities Council serves as an objective and neutral network for sharing knowledge.

Smart Cities Council, the world’s longest-standing, largest and most respected smart cities organisation, was launched in the United Kingdom in November 2022. Founded 11 years ago, with global headquarters in Washington D.C, North America, and with operations globally, Smart Cities Council will set up its UK operations in Manchester.

Smart Cities Council and its associated global impact initiative, “Everyone” brings together government, industry, academia, philanthropy and charity to create action and impact around the key challenges and opportunities facing cities and communities today. The expansion of “smart” from place and infrastructure in the UK will include people, safety, beautification, enablement, sustainability resilience, equity, and inclusion.

Smart Cities Council currently has operations across North America, Australia, New Zealand, India and the ASEAN region, and in the coming months is expanding its European presence to include Poland, Turkey, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia, Bosnia Herzegovina and Montenegro.

Everyone by Smart Cities Council is a movement that creates opportunities for change through engagement, education, projects, and events centred around impact-focused task forces tackling local and global issues such as energy, the application of digital twin technology, cyber security, wellbeing, placemaking, disadvantaged urban communities, and more.

The organisation already counts Amazon Web Services (AWS), EY, ENE.HUB, Aurecon and GHD among its 100+ international member, and in the UK high profile organisations, such as global engineering services and digital infrastructure giant Valmont, life safety technology company Clevertronics, smart buildings dashboard provider Bueno Systems and digital transformation software innovator, Tr3dent, are foundation members of the UK Organisation, with UCLan, University of Lancaster as supporting academic partners.

In 2012, Jesse Berst founded the Smart Cities Council to deliver solutions for advancing the livability, workability, and sustainability of cities globally.

Some of the milestones achieved by Smart Cities Council include:

IBM was the first member to join the council in 2012. In 2014, the council released its First Handbook for Cities (Readiness Guide).

The Council expanded to India in 2015, and released its India Readiness Guide. It also organised its first Smart Cities Week during the same year. 

In 2016, SCC Australia and New Zealand was launched. The Council was invited in 2016 at the US White House.

Its first Readiness Challenge was launched in 2017. In 2020, the Smart Cities Academy was launched. In October 2020, the first Practitioner Certificate was released. 

Until 2021, the Council continued to work with technology and intelligent design. After the pandemic, it extended its focus to innovative and compassionate outcomes for all communities, wherever located. 

Smart Cities Council has worked with hundreds of cities all at varying stages of their smart cities journey or project.

Celebrating a decade into its establishment, it embraced a renewed sense of determination to unlock greater benefits for all its communities and their stakeholders wherever located.

According to its website:

“We envision a world where innovation, technology, and data leverage smarter and sustainable cities with high-quality living and jobs. The Smart Cities Council serves as an objective and neutral network for sharing knowledge.”

Smart Cities Council promotes cities that embody its three core values:

Livability: Cities that provide clean, healthy living conditions without pollution and congestion. With a digital infrastructure that makes city services instantly and conveniently available anytime, anywhere.

Workability: Cities that provide the enabling infrastructure: energy, connectivity, computing, and essential services to compete globally for high-quality jobs.

Sustainability: Cities that provide services without stealing from future generations.

Smart Cities Academy: The Smart Cities Council launched the Smart Cities Academy to support the diverse professional development needs of the growing smart cities marketplace. 

The Academy offers a self-paced Practitioner Certificate and other short courses and on-demand webinars. 

The Academy offers recognition for its users' knowledge of key smart and sustainable cities concepts and rewards them for their ongoing contribution to the industry.

Readiness Programme: The Readiness Program collects data from cities about their upcoming projects and seeks to assist these cities in

• aggregating demand,
• finding replicable solutions, and
• scaling.

This is where digital technology (communications and IoT) offers specific advantages and the Council's advice is ‘think big, be agile.’

Smart Cities Week: The event is focussed on showcasing the world’s most dynamic cities. Smart Cities Week highlights the implementation of innovation, technology, and data to make cities more livable, workable, and sustainable.

It brings together key figures from all sides of the table to showcase the best innovations and brightest ideas around.

Smart Cities Week is a global convening of policymakers, practitioners, technologists, researchers, and affiliated organisations facilitated by the Smart Cities Council across its key regions, including North America, India, Europe, and Australia.