What really makes a city ‘smart’? As many digital solutions, apps and services as possible? Stockholm is taking a different approach. In the Swedish capital, technology has become a tool for creating a liveable, climate-friendly and efficiently organised city. Stockholm’s ‘smart city’ is taking shape where digital infrastructure, sustainability and specific needs converge.

The city itself describes digitalisation as a means of making people’s everyday lives easier, streamlining administrative processes and giving staff more time for value-adding tasks.

A data platform for almost everything

IoT Stockholm forms a crucial foundation. The city has set up a central platform through which real-time data from various sectors can be collected, processed, analysed and made available for further applications. This includes, for example, information on energy consumption, traffic flows or the condition of infrastructure such as bridges, water pipes and street lighting. The data can also be combined with other sources, such as weather or movement data.

The added value lies less in the sensor itself than in the shared infrastructure behind it: local authorities do not create new data silos for every individual use case. At the same time, this creates better conditions for new services and data-driven decision-making.

• A tip for other cities: Create a scalable data infrastructure – and develop applications on top of it.

When schools work hand in hand with the city: AI to tackle energy wastage

The municipal property company SISAB demonstrates just how practical this can be. It monitors electricity consumption in school buildings using high-resolution real-time data and analyses this via the SOLIDA AI platform. This enables unusual consumption patterns to be identified more quickly.

In one building, for example, it was noticed that electricity was being consumed unexpectedly at night. The cause was a ventilation system that had continued to run outside school hours. More than 400 electricity meters are already connected to the system, with hundreds more to follow.

For the administration, this means fewer manual checks and a better basis for decision-making. For public budgets, it means lower energy costs, and for people and the climate, it means buildings operated more efficiently.

Urban neighbourhoods become real-world laboratories

Stockholm’s strength is particularly evident where innovation is tested directly within the urban environment. The Stockholm Royal Seaport – Norra Djurgårdsstaden is one of Sweden’s largest sustainable urban development projects. At least 12,000 homes and 35,000 jobs are being created on former industrial sites. Energy efficiency, climate adaptation and resource-efficient infrastructure are being factored in from the very outset.

The Slakthusområdet, the historic abattoir district, is also becoming a testing ground. Around 3,000 homes and 14,000 jobs are set to be created there by 2035. Stockholm is showcasing what the district will look like in the future using a 3D model. As part of a pilot project for construction sites with lower fossil fuel emissions, the city is collaborating with Skanska and Volvo Construction Equipment, amongst others. The increased use of electric construction machinery alone is expected to prevent more than 2,000 tonnes of CO₂ emissions.

The ‘Smart City’ initiative is thus also becoming an economic driver: companies can test solutions under real-world conditions, whilst the city gains insights for future construction and infrastructure projects.

Open data creates scope for new solutions

Stockholm also makes transport and road data publicly available via APIs. Businesses and members of the public can use this to develop their own applications; the data on offer includes, amongst other things, geodata on road networks, traffic regulations and parking information.

This is changing the role of the local authority: rather than having to develop digital innovation entirely on its own, it can provide data and infrastructure on the basis of which an ecosystem of new services can emerge externally.

What other cities can learn from Stockholm

Smart city initiatives and sustainable urban development are most effective when technology is consistently designed with practical benefits in mind. Data is made available, innovations are first tested in practice, and successful solutions are then rolled out on a larger scale.

The EU’s GrowSmarter project has already demonstrated that this principle works: Stockholm, together with Cologne and Barcelona, tested twelve solutions in areas including energy, mobility and waste management. In 2019, the city won the World Smart City Award for its leading role in the project.

The perhaps most important message from Stockholm is therefore this: a smart city does not need more technology first and foremost. It needs clear objectives, good data and the courage to try out new solutions in real life, in collaboration with the local government, the business community and the wider city society.