Southeast Asia’s future is tied to the fate of its cities. Today the region’s urban areas are home to one-third of its total population but generate more than two-thirds of the region’s GDP. Urbanization is fueling economic growth, but the breakneck pace has left many cities struggling to provide adequate housing, infrastructure, and services to meet the needs of a surging population.
While the urban challenges across Southeast Asia have been growing in scope, new technologies that could tackle some of these issues have reached maturity. Smart cities in Southeast Asia, a new report from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), in collaboration with the Centre for Liveable Cities in Singapore, finds that cities across the region can incorporate data and digital technologies into infrastructure and services – all with an eye to solving specific public problems and making the urban environment more livable, sustainable, and productive. The research, studying dozens of current applications, finds that cities in the region could use digital solutions to improve some quality-of-life indicators by 10-30%. It expands on global research released last month by MGI on how the current generation of smart city technologies can perform in a variety of urban settings worldwide.
