Smart City Strategy: Chicago (USA)

Chicago’ s Technology Plan is the City’ s strategy for leveraging technology in order to promote opportunity, inclusion, engagement, and innovation. The plan’ s main purpose is to contribute to the quality of life, employment opportunities and business growth in the city. The collaboration among the public, the private sector and the third sector is vital in Chicago’ s plan ‘“ all stakeholders, including the city’ s inhabitants, are called to engage collectively in achieving innovation and development for the entire city. The plan features five broad strategies comprised of 28 initiatives. The first two strategies set the foundation for the development of the rest three. In detail, they include: (a) the establishment of next generation infrastructure that enables residents and businesses to become more digitally engaged, (b) the transformation of all communities into ‘˜smart’ ones, by building digital literacy skills, promoting the use of technology for workforce and business development and using technology as a platform for increased civic engagement, (c) leveraging urban data and new technology to make government more efficient, effective and open, (d) the collaboration of the City with civic technology innovators to develop creative solutions for urban challenges and, finally, (e) the development of a vibrant Technology Sector by supporting companies and startups, especially in the areas of Web/Mobile, CleanTech, and Biosciences. The initiatives are assessed in terms of savings, city services’ improvement, Chicagoans’ engagement, digital accessibility improvement, digital skills improvement, new job creation capacity and the ability to attract and retain Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math professionals. The plan also establishes a list of performance indicators by area of impact that is useful in tracking and evaluating the success of the Plan’ s initiatives.

Access Chicago’ s Technology Plan here.

Suggested readings about Chicago:

1. O’Neil, D. (2014). Getting Smarter in Chicago. Available here.
2. Smart Chicago Collaborative official webpage (2014). Available here.
3. Thornton, S. (2013). The Chicago Tech Plan: Building a Model for Cities and Technology. Available here.