There is a project that could see the town of Ari­ma be­ing turned in­to a smart city with the use of 5G tech­nol­o­gy, ur­ban re­new­al and im­proved op­por­tu­ni­ty for burgess­es of the bor­ough.

Speak­ing at a re­cent event to dis­cuss the ini­tia­tive, IDB coun­try rep­re­sen­ta­tive for T&T Ca­ri­na Cock­burn ex­plained that “Con­nect­ed Ari­ma” is an ur­ban re­gen­er­a­tion ob­jec­tive to cre­ate a smart com­mu­ni­ty where dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies are used op­ti­mal­ly to meet the needs of cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es.

This in­cludes en­hanced dig­i­tal con­nec­tiv­i­ty in the econ­o­my, gov­er­nance, en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment, and so­cial in­ter­ac­tions, among oth­er spheres of life.

She not­ed, tech­nol­o­gy will be a crit­i­cal en­abler for the growth and de­vel­op­ment of these sec­tors as part of “Con­nect­ed Ari­ma” and serve as a mod­el for oth­er ar­eas of T&T.

Cock­burn fur­ther ex­plained that it is ex­pect­ed to be fi­nanced by the ex­ist­ing Ur­ban Up­grad­ing and Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Pro­gramme be­ing ex­e­cut­ed by the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment.

A trust fund fi­nanced by the Re­pub­lic of Ko­rea is al­so ex­pect­ed to con­tribute to prepara­to­ry work for the ini­tia­tive.

“Con­nect­ed Ari­ma is based up­on the smart city con­cept where tech­nol­o­gy is typ­i­cal­ly used to im­prove op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy, share in­for­ma­tion with the pub­lic and pro­vide a bet­ter qual­i­ty of gov­ern­ment ser­vice and cit­i­zen wel­fare,” Cock­burn said.

The main goal of a smart city, she added, is to op­ti­mise city func­tions and pro­mote eco­nom­ic growth while al­so im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of life for cit­i­zens by us­ing smart tech­nolo­gies and da­ta analy­sis.

Ac­cord­ing to Cock­burn, in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, San­ti­a­go, Chile was the lead­ing smart city based on 2019 da­ta while San­to Domin­go in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic was the lead­ing smart city in the Caribbean.

“But this is not just about be­ing smart, the idea is that the Con­nect­ed Ari­ma project will lever­age tech­nol­o­gy as part of a broad­er ur­ban re­gen­er­a­tion and re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion ef­fort,” she ex­plained.

Cock­burn al­so not­ed that stud­ies have shown that such ef­forts yield sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits rang­ing from 2.5 to 7.9 times the in­vest­ment made.

She al­so ad­vised that the trans­for­ma­tion of Ari­ma can­not be done with­out its cit­i­zens in­clud­ing the First Peo­ples, and even those who will vis­it for leisure and to do busi­ness.

The IDB’s Vi­sion 2025 pro­motes sus­tain­able and in­clu­sive growth through the re­ac­ti­va­tion of the pro­duc­tive sec­tor, the pro­mo­tion of so­cial de­vel­op­ment, and the strength­en­ing of good gov­er­nance and in­sti­tu­tions.

One of the pil­lars, Cock­burn added, is dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, which sup­ports build­ing dig­i­tal economies and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, hence Con­nect­ed Ari­ma falls square­ly with­in this fo­cus.

Speak­ing on be­half of the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Deputy Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Marie Hinds said Con­nect­ed Ari­ma is ex­pect­ed to be a pi­lot for a broad­er smart city and com­mu­ni­ty con­nec­tiv­i­ty agen­da be­ing planned by the Gov­ern­ment.

De­vel­op­ing

a smart city

Robin Ra­jack, IDB se­nior sec­tor spe­cial­ist, Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment, who spoke to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian from Bar­ba­dos ex­plained that Con­nect­ed Ari­ma is part of a US$50 mil­lion ($338 mil­lion) loan to im­prove the liv­ing con­di­tions of low-in­come house­holds and in­vest in ur­ban spaces in T&T.

“It is a six-year loan but about US$15.5 mil­lion of the $50 mil­lion is as­signed for ur­ban re­gen­er­a­tion,” Ra­jack fur­ther ex­plained, adding that the mon­ey will al­so be spent on mul­ti­ple projects not just on Ari­ma.

He al­so em­pha­sised that there’s no re­vival with­out eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, ar­gu­ing that many oth­er things fol­low when this hap­pens.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Ra­jack said, there needs to be more ded­i­cat­ed con­sul­ta­tions with the busi­ness and in­dige­nous com­mu­ni­ties and the users of pub­lic trans­porta­tion, to en­able the bor­ough to de­vel­op in­to a thriv­ing hub for busi­ness and tourism.

“Even the use of tech­nol­o­gy by busi­ness is a big fac­tor to un­der­stand to what ex­tent are they us­ing elec­tron­ic pay­ment, etc” Ra­jack added.

The oth­er part of Con­nect­ed Ari­ma en­tails the prepara­to­ry phase which would ex­am­ine its deficits and what are need­ed to bridge those gaps in the most fea­si­ble and cost ef­fec­tive ways in­clud­ing ad­dress­ing tech­no­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture needs, he added.

Ra­jack said the IDB is hop­ing by the end of the year the di­ag­nos­tic stud­ies would be com­plet­ed as well as a rea­son­able draft of the de­signs for the in­fra­struc­ture. Fol­low­ing which there could be the bid­ding process for work.

“As fund­ing be­comes more ma­te­ri­alised, we’ll know for sure if there’s any shift in that time­line.

“Typ­i­cal­ly, we’ll hire con­sult­ing firms, lo­cal or in­ter­na­tion­al to come up with some of the as­sess­ments and the de­signs,” Ra­jack said.

While it is not yet de­ter­mined how much Ari­ma’s re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion ef­fort will cost in to­tal, Ra­jack said there might al­so be pri­vate sec­tor and NGO in­vest­ments.

He al­so not­ed that the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion is al­so a key part­ner as de­vel­op­ing a smart city en­tails ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive­ly con­nec­tiv­i­ty.

“At the heart of the ur­ban re­gen­er­a­tion ap­proach is a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion el­e­ment. It’s not the en­tire­ty of it.

“The over­all ob­jec­tive is ur­ban re­gen­er­a­tion, which is re­al­ly a peo­ple cen­tred de­vel­op­ment but tech­nol­o­gy plays a key role. And in all like­li­hood, 5G con­nec­tiv­i­ty will be part of that,” Ra­jack added.

As part of the pre­lim­i­nary scop­ing ex­er­cise for the project a sur­vey was con­duct­ed in con­junc­tion with the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment and the Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion be­tween De­cem­ber 2021 and Jan­u­ary 2022 . Over 1,100 peo­ple com­plet­ed the sur­vey with about one third com­ing from Ari­ma.

Ac­cord­ing to its find­ings, the area has good po­ten­tial to be­come more vi­brant with on­ly one per cent of those from Ari­ma say­ing it has lit­tle to of­fer and can­not re­al­is­ti­cal­ly be­come vi­brant again.

It al­so found that peo­ple most­ly vis­it Ari­ma to shop or do busi­ness, with al­most half (49 per cent ) choos­ing one of these two op­tions as their pri­ma­ry rea­son for vis­it­ing the bor­ough.

Fur­ther, most re­spon­dents picked the same gen­er­al area as their pre­ferred choice to be­gin ur­ban re­gen­er­a­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the sur­vey a com­bined 63 per cent of re­spon­dents in­di­cat­ed their top choice for re­de­vel­op­ment in Ari­ma as the mar­ket and bus ter­mi­nal area with 37 per cent opt­ing for the velo­drome.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the sur­vey found that more culi­nary, cul­tur­al and recre­ation­al ac­tiv­i­ties are strong­ly de­sired.

“A food court/ food-truck area was the most pop­u­lar choice fol­lowed by more cul­tur­al and her­itage ac­tiv­i­ties. Each was cho­sen by about one third of all re­spon­dents. Park­ing and open pub­lic spaces were al­so very pop­u­lar,” the sur­vey in­di­cat­ed.

Free pub­lic WiFi, the sur­vey al­so not­ed would be a ma­jor draw to the area as 54 per cent of re­spon­dents chose that.

When is a city

ac­tu­al­ly smart?

Ac­cord­ing to De­loitte, a city is smart when it in­vests in eco­nom­ic growth, such as hu­man and so­cial cap­i­tal, in­fra­struc­ture and tech­nol­o­gy, in sus­tain­abil­i­ty and in a high qual­i­ty of life.

The key to de­vel­op­ing smart cities is com­bin­ing the chang­ing hu­man be­hav­iour with the use of da­ta and in­no­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy—where the cit­i­zen al­ways stays at the cen­tre. Fur­ther­more, a suc­cess­ful smart city works on so­lu­tions with an ecosys­tem that cre­ate val­ue at mul­ti­ple lev­els for dif­fer­ent stake­hold­ers. The city looks from a pub­lic, pri­vate, and in­di­vid­ual per­spec­tive and should ac­tive­ly try to find so­lu­tions to so­ci­etal, busi­ness, eco­nom­ic, and re­search is­sues.