Glasgow To Be UK's First 'Smart City' 98
CowboyRobot writes "Once the 'Second City' of the British Empire, scrappy Glasgow — whose now-demolished Gorbals was once known for urban grimness on a par with Chicago's South Side or New York's Hell's Kitchen — has the chance for a whole new lease on life as the UK's first 'smart city.' The UK's government has just announced a $38 million (£24 million) grant to fund pilot projects in the city that show how mass deployment of sensors and real-time information can help local government run more efficiently while also boosting the quality of life for its 600,000 citizens. Glasgow won the prize in a competition among 30 British towns and cities for state help in looking at the possible contribution of smart technology."
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waste of time (Score:1, Funny)
They still believe electric lights are the devils work
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They still believe electric lights are the devils work
They like electric lights, they can rip them off and sell them for smack.
I can't believe a government sponspored array of sensors is going to do anyone any good.
This is smart? (Score:5, Insightful)
"mass deployment of sensors and real-time information can help local government"
Sounds as much like Big Brother as Smart City.
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Arken's Law. All of three minutes.
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Arken's Law. All of three minutes.
So your argument is "shut up." Thanks for sharing.
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In any discussion of societal values, sooner or later someone will invoke Arken's Law or Godwin's Law, or both.
Kind of puts things in a slightly different light, I think. People who call "stereotype!" can be stereotypes.
(And yes, I realize that is recursive.)
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I propose "Jane's Law"
I thought that name was already taken, and had something to do with somebody always mentioning the really nice hat.
Re:This is smart? (Score:4, Insightful)
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http://www.thefreedictionary.com/_/dict.aspx?word=reveling [thefreedictionary.com]
Too true, too true I say.
Re:This is smart? (Score:4, Interesting)
Knowing the reputation of various UK administrations, it will be put to use to spy on people and fine them for small misdemeanors.
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Knowing the reputation of various UK administrations, it will be put to use to spy on people and fine them for small misdemeanors.
That's absolutely certain. How could anyone trust any council that uses anti-terrorism laws to monitor things that are between minor civil crimes and nothing at all?
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/08/21/local-councils-abusing-anti-terrorism-powers_n_1819715.html [huffingtonpost.co.uk]
http://casualsunited.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/councils-abusing-their-power-and-using-anti-terror-laws-to-harass-the-public-edl-abuseofpower/ [wordpress.com]
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Knowing the reputation of various UK administrations, it will be put to use to spy on people and fine them for small misdemeanors.
Let me guess, you're American, and have been told by Fox News that Britain is evil because you can't buy machine guns to shoot black people with here?
big brother (Score:2)
We went on a short self-guided car tour of Scotland this summer and were blown away at the number of cameras on the roadway. Many of the main roads had one or more speed camera covering all lanes of traffic every mile for tens of miles. I had no intention of doing any wrong, but all the 'invasion of privacy' bells were going off in my head.
I never got feelings like the system was going to be abused in any type of near term scenario, but I couldn't help but think how easy it would be for a Stalin type leader
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Many of the main roads had one or more speed camera covering all lanes of traffic every mile for tens of miles.
Where was that? I can't think of *anywhere* that matches that description, unless you were driving through motorway roadworks which generally has a 40mph speed limit enforced with average speed cameras.
There are a lot of average speed cameras on the A77 in Ayrshire, maybe there? Even then, it's not "a camera every mile", it's about six average speed cameras covering 30-odd miles of extremely dangerous road.
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There are two sections of the M1 between London and Leeds, when it is a 4 lane carriageway, where there are speed cameras on almost every sign gantry over the road.
However right now it seems they are only 'on' when the variable speed limit is in force, but there is no reason they couldn't turn them on all the time.
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>There are a lot of average speed cameras on the A77 in Ayrshire,
To be fair, there are also a lot of really good ones...
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Your "Stalin type leader" is pretty well in place already. And he's going to have to derive new revenue streams soon to bribe the electorate pending the Independence Referendum.
Lucky you getting bribes!
The UK will bias the question to fool the dumbest 51% of the voters into voting the way they want.
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Many of the cameras are actually publically viewable. As a general aviation pilot, I find them quite useful in filling in the gaps between aviation weather reporting stations, the traffic cameras will show me at least what the cloud cover and visibility is like and if there's any precipitation.
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We went on a short self-guided car tour of Scotland this summer and were blown away at the number of cameras on the roadway. Many of the main roads had one or more speed camera covering all lanes of traffic every mile for tens of miles. I had no intention of doing any wrong, but all the 'invasion of privacy' bells were going off in my head.
Speed camera's are just there to collect money. If you are not speeding by 10mph+ they should not bother you. These now have to be bright orange and clearly visible following various local councils attempts to hide them behind signs and trees so they collect more money.
Half of the other cameras are just traffic monitoring cameras, they are run by people who only really care about keeping the traffic moving along.
The rest are run by the police who are vindictive abusers of terrorism law and really are out of
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Speed camera's are just there to collect money.
No, they're not. I've said it before here on Slashdot, but many UK councils have turned them off as a cost-cutting measure in the current climate of pseudo-austerity (i.e. austerity for the poor and not the rich).
Speed cameras are there to catch people speeding. Since the locations of fixed speed cameras are (a) obvious if you pay attention and (b) publicly available on the web/through satnav devices you have to be very unlucky or stupid to get caught by one. Hand-held mobile devices are a different ma
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Speed camera's are just there to collect money.
No, they're not. I've said it before here on Slashdot, but many UK councils have turned them off as a cost-cutting measure in the current climate of pseudo-austerity (i.e. austerity for the poor and not the rich).
They turned them off because central government took the profits. Central government also forced the councils to end their practice of hiding these things in places where they could not be seen and to make them bright orange so they are clearly visible.
If speed cameras are not about making money then why do they impose fines for speeders? How about a system where speeders lose their license after getting caught a few times? Or a day of community service? Or send speeders to a driving awareness course? Or a
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Many of the main roads had one or more speed camera covering all lanes of traffic every mile for tens of miles. I had no intention of doing any wrong, but all the 'invasion of privacy' bells were going off in my head.
I think paranoid twits like you need to decide whether speed cameras are evil because they catch people who break the law by speeding on public highways, or whether they're evil because they COULD be used to catch people who break the law by doing something else illegal on public highways.
You don't have privacy when you're driving on a public road.
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Actually, back then the Gorbals were half shit half nice. The area around the Citizens Theatre was always reasonable, and the regeneration of the shit end had already begun back in '85 (or talks of atleast) and the first tower blocks (pretty much the source of all the gang culture) came down in 1993 (which shows you how long it takes to rehouse a tower block). As of 2011, most of the Tower Blocks have been demolished, and the area's bounced back quite a bit. The article talks about it like it's still a viol
Good news (Score:2)
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I would have thought that "the grey place" would be Aberdeen, the Granite City.
Glasgow is known as "the Dear Green Place", and if you look at it on Google Earth you'll see why.
Re:Good news (Score:4, Informative)
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That works if Glasgow is a Gaelic name, but it isn't. There are very convoluted translations of "Glasgow" as "Grey Hill" or "Grey Field" but none of them actually make sense.
I guess if you take the Glasgow Gael trendy-west-endie-hangs-around-in-the-Lismore dialect of Gaelic where if you don't find a word that suits you just make up a translation that fits your etymological theory, then you can get away with it. This part of the world was never Gaelic-speaking, and Gaelic only came here with the Highland D
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I guess if you take the Glasgow Gael trendy-west-endie-hangs-around-in-the-Lismore dialect of Gaelic where if you don't find a word that suits you just make up a translation that fits your etymological theory, then you can get away with it. This part of the world was never Gaelic-speaking, and Gaelic only came here with the Highland Diaspora.
Let's not forget the ones in Deoch an Dorus.
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Yes, such a money sink that the loony right wing government in the UK is *desperate* to stop Scotland becoming independant, and keeping all the wealth up here.
Sorry Maggie^WTony^WDavid, we're keeping the oil, and we're keeping the tax revenue. You'll have to pay for your own moat-cleaning now.
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Yes, such a money sink that the loony right wing government in the UK is *desperate* to stop Scotland becoming independant,
The UK government includes Scottish MPs. So are they desperate to stop Scotland from becoming independent too?
and keeping all the wealth up here.
The what?
Sorry Maggie^WTony^WDavid, we're keeping the oil, and we're keeping the tax revenue. You'll have to pay for your own moat-cleaning now.
OK, we'll keep your banks, then.
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Yes, such a money sink that the loony right wing government in the UK is *desperate* to stop Scotland becoming independant,
The UK government includes Scottish MPs. So are they desperate to stop Scotland from becoming independent too?
They are MPs. They do whatever makes them the most money and lie about it.
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You do know that the "Conservative" party is short for Conservative and Unionist right? It's nothing to do with the wealth scotland has.
The "Unionist" in the "Conservative and Unionist Party" refers to the fact they merged with the "Liberal Unionist Party" [wikipedia.org] just over 100 years ago. The Liberal Unionists were formed in 1886 as a breakaway from the Liberal Party who were opposed to Irish home rule (which William Gladstone, the Liberal leader, came down in support of). That's essentially what it refers to.
Despite the fact that the modern-day Conservative Party is ostensibly unionist, the "Unionist" in the official party title is therefore a b
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_independence_referendum,_2014 [wikipedia.org]
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I don't think it would take much to convince Scottish voters to stay in the UK. Latest polls show only 23% of Scots want independence.
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If independent, would they use the Euro, the UK Pound, or float their own currency? Of the three options, they would be best integrated with the UK Pound right now, but why would England allow that? Not having an automomous economy defeats the point of being a nation. Joining the Euro Zone or having a native currency would require that they est
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I'm sure the UK would let them continue to use the pound sterling, after all Scotland is hardly going to be considered an "enemy nation" and the remaining UK has much to gain by keeping an independent Scotland close, as the Scots do by keeping the UK close.
What would be interesting is if Scotland were to become independent, and an EU country, whilie the rest of the UK voted to leave the EU...
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I'm sure the UK would let them continue to use the pound sterling, after all Scotland is hardly going to be considered an "enemy nation" and the remaining UK has much to gain by keeping an independent Scotland close, as the Scots do by keeping the UK close.
Sure. You can't stop someone from using a currency. The point is that then Scotland would actually have less independence. Currently, the UK controls the sterling which means Scotland gets a say in how the currency works. With independence, the currency s
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A lot more recent than that:
http://m.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jan/23/support-scottish-independence-slumps-lowest [guardian.co.uk]
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You can also keep all your f*cking enormous debts from your crappy Scottish banks - that should burn thru a good few years of tax revenue...
We're fine with that (*), provided that Westminster returns every penny of revenue relating to North Sea oil and gas from Scottish waters (i.e. most of it) received, adjusted for inflation, since the 1970s- all the time they've been bleating about Scotland being unfairly subsidised and scaremongering about how the oil was about to run out.
:-P
So on balance, it looks like.... you're in the red. Never mind! You can deposit those billions in our Royal Bank of Scotland account.
(*) So long as you're happy to
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And whisky is much more valuable than gold.
- You can't drink gold, but you can drink whisky.
- Holding gold doesn't create wealth, whereas making whisky creates wealth.
Integration (Score:4, Interesting)
And this is where integration with existing projects should come first, lest we end up reinventing the wheel. http://www.fixmystreet.com/ [fixmystreet.com] http://www.opentraintimes.com/ [opentraintimes.com] http://www.openstreetmap.org/ [openstreetmap.org] http://www.flightradar24.com/ [flightradar24.com] the 45MB/min MIDAS Gold DATEX traffic information service from http://www.tih.org.uk/ [tih.org.uk] - and many more. And by far not just travel related either, but lets not allow Glasgow to 'create' new apps and datasources that just replicate ideas and services that are already out there.
I hope the administrators of this fund have a good long hard look through http://data.gov.uk/ [data.gov.uk] for inspiration and partners to work with, and that we as users and techs can help push them to make the right choices.
I've already emailed a few relevant parties. Have you?
Scottish Smart City? (Score:5, Funny)
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Sure, as long as nothing's voice-activated...
Voice Recognition Elevator in Scotland: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAz_UvnUeuU
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Easily the funniest sketch I saw last year.
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When using the voice part of the Nintendo DS e.g. on Brain Training, I have to put on a faux-American accent to get the bloody thing to work! :/
Shouldn't be too hard, you west-coasters are all obsessed with American culture anyway! :-)
Ah Now What Be the Matter with Glasgow? (Score:2)
For it's going roond and roond!
Misguided (Score:2)
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An example: http://living-planit.com/ [living-planit.com] is closed source, supported by big corporates who would probably like their noses in this particular government trough and also harvest the big data so that they can trade energy/carbon futures and help themselve
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who said the US isn't well on its way to police state dystopia?
I'll believe it (Score:2)
Smart is the new Organic (Score:3, Insightful)
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"Smart" as in "having its own self-contained computer" (as in smart watch, smart lighting, smart meter etc.), in this case with the epithet transferred from city infrastructure to the city itself.
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By your definition "smart watch" would be better stated as "computerized watch" because that phrase contains more facts.
Using "smart" to describe something is really "dumb" because its too general. It diminishes the facts from being communicate
Smart City? (Score:2)
What, are the rest of the cities dumb?
Re: 'Second City'? My arse (Score:1)
Glasgow Effect (Score:2)
Perhaps this Smart City technology can shed light on the Glasgow Effect:
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Ah, Glasgow! (Score:1)
You stay classy Glasgow
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You got a superfluous 'd' in there.
Here in Embra we refer to that other city as The Weeg and the inhabitants are weegies.
Wellington's hat (Score:2)
At least they'll know if Wellington loses his hat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wellington_Statue,_Glasgow [wikipedia.org]
(Sometimes he has a bottle of whiskey in his arms too, so presumably they could monitor his alcohol intake too, and make sure he's not drunk in charge of a statue horse).