Smart Cities do “per se” nothing to ensure SDG 4 but may even exclude seniors
from fully participating in any educational offers. Apart from that, SDG 4 itself is
partly a rather questionable goal, because the imperative requirement for lifelong
learning regardless of individual wisdom, knowledge, and prior educational or
professional experience bears the danger of political indoctrination of adults
(Koire 2011), thus favoring fascism.
The job losses due to increasing digitization brought about by highly digitized
Smart Cities clearly violate SDG 10, because only the upper layers of society, above
all Big Business and some political leaders, benefit from smart cities, whereas small
companies and the average citizen, above all women, are threatened by poverty due
to job losses. So, Smart Cities equally violate SDG 5 and the second half of SDG8.
The first half of SDG 8 is violated by state debt which hampers further economic
growth.
State debt created by financing Smart City projects poses a huge threat for SDG
1, SDG 2, SDG 6, SDG 14, and SDG 15, because indebted nations and communities
will have to hand in all their land and their resources to their creditors, thus losing
control over their land and all resources including soil, water, and air on it, below it,
and above it and handing it to actors with unknown intentions who may abuse this
power by exploiting land, water, resources, plants including food plants, and maybe
even animals and humans on it for their own purposes. Cyber-attacks which are
greatly facilitated by highly digitalized Smart Cities may also contaminate water
resources in the city as shown above (see Sect. 13.4, p. 247), thus violating SDG
6. SDG 17 is generally a laudable goal, but global partnerships for Smart Cities
would multiply the apparent weaknesses of fully digitalized Smart Cities, putting all
pillars of SD at risk on a global base.
In sum, highly digitized Smart Cities based on the ISO definition (see Sect. 13.1)
have more disadvantages than advantages for all pillars of SD and for the UN SDGs
(see Sect. 13.2.2). Possibly, partly digitalized Smart Cities and the use of blockchain
technology to protect cities against cyber-attacks may modestly contribute at least to
SDG 1 by increased energy transparency, energy efficiency, and increased comfort
once the current challenges of smart meters will be overcome and under the
provision that 100% of the energy used in smart Cities is actually ecologically,
socially, and economically sustainable. Blockchain technology may help to provide
end-to-end privacy and encryption by using a decentralized ledger and removing the
risk of a singular point of failure (Barzilay 2017) to restore privacy (Hall 2018) and
even to fight cybercrime (Schou-Zibell and Phair 2018) and censorship (Hilongs
2018), but this is easier in theory than in practice as shown by the recent
cryptocurrency hacks (Orcutt 2018) as blockchains can be cheated, e.g., via an
“eclipse attack” by taking control of one node’s communications and fooling it
into accepting false data seemingly coming from the rest of the network, thus
tricking it into confirming fake transactions (Orcutt 2018).
The use of killing robots should be a taboo in a civilized society. The idea to
connect humans to the IoT by implants is legally and ethically completely
inacceptable in a free and democratic society. Even Tesla founder Elon Musk who
recently bought up a start-up company researching brain implants that will make it
13 The Role of Smart Cities for the Realization of. . .
241
from fully participating in any educational offers. Apart from that, SDG 4 itself is
partly a rather questionable goal, because the imperative requirement for lifelong
learning regardless of individual wisdom, knowledge, and prior educational or
professional experience bears the danger of political indoctrination of adults
(Koire 2011), thus favoring fascism.
The job losses due to increasing digitization brought about by highly digitized
Smart Cities clearly violate SDG 10, because only the upper layers of society, above
all Big Business and some political leaders, benefit from smart cities, whereas small
companies and the average citizen, above all women, are threatened by poverty due
to job losses. So, Smart Cities equally violate SDG 5 and the second half of SDG8.
The first half of SDG 8 is violated by state debt which hampers further economic
growth.
State debt created by financing Smart City projects poses a huge threat for SDG
1, SDG 2, SDG 6, SDG 14, and SDG 15, because indebted nations and communities
will have to hand in all their land and their resources to their creditors, thus losing
control over their land and all resources including soil, water, and air on it, below it,
and above it and handing it to actors with unknown intentions who may abuse this
power by exploiting land, water, resources, plants including food plants, and maybe
even animals and humans on it for their own purposes. Cyber-attacks which are
greatly facilitated by highly digitalized Smart Cities may also contaminate water
resources in the city as shown above (see Sect. 13.4, p. 247), thus violating SDG
6. SDG 17 is generally a laudable goal, but global partnerships for Smart Cities
would multiply the apparent weaknesses of fully digitalized Smart Cities, putting all
pillars of SD at risk on a global base.
In sum, highly digitized Smart Cities based on the ISO definition (see Sect. 13.1)
have more disadvantages than advantages for all pillars of SD and for the UN SDGs
(see Sect. 13.2.2). Possibly, partly digitalized Smart Cities and the use of blockchain
technology to protect cities against cyber-attacks may modestly contribute at least to
SDG 1 by increased energy transparency, energy efficiency, and increased comfort
once the current challenges of smart meters will be overcome and under the
provision that 100% of the energy used in smart Cities is actually ecologically,
socially, and economically sustainable. Blockchain technology may help to provide
end-to-end privacy and encryption by using a decentralized ledger and removing the
risk of a singular point of failure (Barzilay 2017) to restore privacy (Hall 2018) and
even to fight cybercrime (Schou-Zibell and Phair 2018) and censorship (Hilongs
2018), but this is easier in theory than in practice as shown by the recent
cryptocurrency hacks (Orcutt 2018) as blockchains can be cheated, e.g., via an
“eclipse attack” by taking control of one node’s communications and fooling it
into accepting false data seemingly coming from the rest of the network, thus
tricking it into confirming fake transactions (Orcutt 2018).
The use of killing robots should be a taboo in a civilized society. The idea to
connect humans to the IoT by implants is legally and ethically completely
inacceptable in a free and democratic society. Even Tesla founder Elon Musk who
recently bought up a start-up company researching brain implants that will make it
13 The Role of Smart Cities for the Realization of. . .
241