See what works in the world's smart cities
Urban Tech Map gathers the projects, people and evidence behind urban innovation worldwide in one place, so that no city has to start from scratch.
Why this Hub
Cities keep solving the same problems alone
- 01
Pilots end, lessons vanish
Cities everywhere test sensors, apps and data platforms, often on a public grant. Most pilots stop when the money runs out, and what they learned rarely reaches the next city.
- 02
One map of what is happening
We bring the ecosystem together: the cities and countries, the organisations behind the technology, the projects that ran and the reports that judged them. AI helps us read and connect it all; people review what we publish.
- 03
Start from what worked
So a city planning a digital twin, a mobility hub or an open-data portal can see who has done it before, what worked, what stalled and whom to ask, before spending a euro.
What you will find here
The library
Reports, organisations, projects and events from cities around the world, each with a short summary and a link to its source.
Cities and countries
What each city is trying and what it delivered, and who holds which lever in each country.
Deep dives
Long reads on what works and what stalls, every number linked to its source. Read them, or listen.
A community
City teams, start-ups and researchers who share what they know. Join, add a resource or tell us about your project.
- City teams
- Chief digital officers
- Start-ups and companies
- Researchers
- Funders
- Curious residents
Deep dives
All deep dives
Algorithmic cameras
When a city's cameras start deciding what matters, what do they actually achieve?
France ran AI on Olympic CCTV and its own evaluators found it rarely led to anyone being sent; London's facial-recognition cameras report arrests by the hundred; Warsaw's clean-air zone fined no one in its first year. A look across eight countries at which algorithmic cameras deliver, which cannot show results, and who decides what a city may switch on.
The digital chief
What does a city's Chief Digital Officer actually do now that AI has arrived?
Munich, Berlin, Hamburg and Amsterdam built AI assistants for their staff; New York switched off a business chatbot that reporters and its own auditors had found unreliable. Behind both stories is one job, the city's digital chief, now running assistants, keeping registers and steering a legal clock, while few cities can yet show what their AI has changed.
Pilot purgatory
Why do smart-city pilots stop when the grant ends — and what did the survivors have in common?
Europe has paid cities to try out smart-city ideas for two decades; its auditors and evaluators have now counted how many outlived their grants. Most did not, and the ones that did share a handful of unglamorous traits: an owner, a duty, open code and a budget line.
Browse by topic
All topics
Mobility & Urban Logistics
Moving people and goods more efficiently and sustainably across cities.
Energy & Environment
The natural world and the infrastructure that sustains it.
Built Environment & Liveability
Designing the physical city for the people who live in it.
Digital Infrastructure & Data
The connective tissue of the smart city.
Governance & Civic Innovation
How cities are managed, how citizens engage, how cities cooperate.
Do you want to get involved?
Subscribe to our newsletter and we'll keep you posted! Are you a city, startup, company, or institution interested in joining? We'd love to hear from you!