At first glance, one might say that the concept of the smart city has successfully consolidated. However, for some time now, we have observed signs of exhaustion in the meaning of the term “smart city.” Several voices have questioned its relevance or usefulness from various fields because they do not understand it. It would be somewhat irresponsible if, as representatives of this industry, we did not compel ourselves to reconsider what we mean when we talk about an intelligent city in 2024 and beyond.

The most important thing that has happened to the smart city industry is not the impressive technological advances we have seen over the past decade. It is not generative artificial intelligence, big data, digital twins, or the Internet of Things. No, the real impact lies in how these technologies have forced us to rethink our relationship with the urban environment and the territory. It is the cities and territories themselves that have incorporated the concept of “smart” through their experience of transformation and digitalization over these past ten years.

It is to them that we owe, first and foremost, the expansion of the smart city concept to the territory, as defined by the standard in 2022, making it possible for regions like Castilla-La Mancha (the first in Spain) to set concrete transformation goals even without having highly populated urban centers. As has been more than argued since then, cities and territories are inseparable terms, especially if we speak of intelligence that should not be considered as such if it is not understood as sustainable, meaning balanced. Without the territory, cities are islands.

It is also an important nuance on different scales. Although it may seem obvious, it is necessary to remember that cities reflect our society. Within cities themselves, any imbalance should be considered either a symptom or a source of problems that require applying intelligent criteria and solutions. Hence, the path to the smart city never ends; the smart city is always in progress. This leads us to consider somewhat deceptive the notion of labeling some cities as smart and others not.

Each city is always intelligent in its own way, according to its resources and capabilities at a given moment, without comparisons or rankings. There is no test that cities must pass to earn something like a diploma or show their IQ results. Our cities, some millennia old, keep moving, adapting, and readapting even in the digital age.

Precisely, digitalization has become one of the main drivers of the most significant change in our cities, which is their role in attracting talent.

The New Market of Cities: From Demand to Supply

Historically, powerful cities attracted talent. Florence, Rome, Madrid, Paris, London, New York… Each in its time became a great magnet for talent due to its political and economic hegemony. Others, smaller in size, played on their uniqueness; whether it was the spirit of freedom in Ibiza or counterculture in Berlin.

With the advent of the digital revolution and the impact caused by factors such as globalization, offshoring, teleworking, and new models of social relationships, the rules of this territorial seduction game have changed, perhaps forever. In the past decade, the myth that talent must reside where its workplace is has been shattered, giving rise to an unprecedented phenomenon: influencer cities.

Unlike before, cities and territories have learned, much like social networks, to play their cards of opportunity and attractiveness without needing to reinvent themselves completely. The administrators of these cities have understood that they can attract talent to grow, rather than grow to attract talent. Thus, from playing a classic role of demanding the solutions the industry could provide for their development, cities have taken the step of becoming suppliers in a new market, that of talent attraction.

In this new market, cities showcase incentives and benefits to be chosen by that mobile talent, open to relocating based on conditions. Unique opportunities thus arise to generate significant changes at regional, national, or global levels. Like in the NBA draft, where small teams can acquire the best young players and go from struggling in every game to fighting for the championship ring, our cities can aspire to major transformations.

This role change has an immediate consequence for the entire ecosystem. When a key player changes their position, all others must reposition themselves to stay in the game. The smart industry no longer has the sole objective of competing to offer its best products and services to whoever can acquire them. Now, it also faces the challenge—and privilege—of listening to and helping territories achieve their goals to increase their competitiveness.

In this new role as suppliers, territories lack experience. If everyone competes to attract the same type of talent, the result is the same as in any other market: commoditization and the subsequent loss of added value in their proposal. We see it daily: cities and regions rushing to attract talent with tax or real estate promotions, almost always offering economic advantages. But in any brand building, as we know well in the private business world, the customer who comes for a discount will leave for a bigger one. That is where the opportunity to retain that seed talent, which can only become sustainable if it takes root in its new territory—if it believes that both its present and future lie there—can be lost.

Our industry has much to offer beyond efficiency. We can help detect, develop, and guide the intelligence that cities already possess in the way that benefits them the most. Moving from talking about the intelligent city to city intelligences is to begin to understand that technology does not make the difference by itself. Saying digitalized in the 21st century is like saying electrified in the 20th.

There are other intelligences that beat in every territory. Artistic, creative, narrative, or relational intelligences, cultural or harmonizing intelligences, managerial or disruptive intelligences… Intelligences that, unlike the usual silos based on functionalities, combine uniquely in each territory.

It is time for innovative companies to give the floor to the territory and pay more attention to what it needs than to our product and service catalog. It is time to offer ideas and innovative solutions that are not only technological. Engineering, consulting, design, communication, planning, research, management… Everything converges to allow us to create differentiated future opportunities for each territory.

Questions that Change Reality

As innovative entities, we can help locate, train, attract, and retain the talent that each city uniquely needs. We can discover new metrics and find better questions that change reality, allowing us to believe and create the future of our cities and towns.

The intelligent city of digital solutions has done a great job facilitating the efficient management of cities and will continue to do so always. But technology is evolving to go beyond correcting past problems; it is moving towards creating future opportunities.

That is what cities can offer talent: a space to create opportunities. It is what all pioneers in the territory have sought throughout history: opportunities for work, but also—and above all—for personal, family, and social development.

The new narrative of the intelligent city is a story we write together, industry and territory, open to continuous transformation. Because ideas, like cities, have no endpoint.