Smart cities are municipal entities that incorporate information and communications technologies into city management. Though they are gaining in popularity, where are they actually being launched?
Smart City Tracker is a web-based and open-source platform where you can track and explore local governments’ smart city implementation in the United States. It uses Google Custom Search API to systematically search the official websites of 322 cities with a population of more than 100,000. If a city mentions “smart city” on its website, Smart City Tracker drops a pin at its corresponding location. So, Smart City Tracker simply maps out which cities are talking about being smart. The map and datasets are updated monthly starting from January 2022 and serve as a living archive of smart city prevalence.
You can drag the slider on the top right of the map to see search results at different times and click on a pin to read more about what a city says. The links in the popups will take you to the city webpages where the smart city concept is being discussed.
You can download the data in JSON format here and use it for your own project.
This site was built by Meng Cai, PhD candidate at Michigan State Univeristy, as part of the Cultural Heritage Informatics Fellowship. Meng can be reached at mengcai24601 at gmail dot com.