Editor's note: This story is part of Smart Cities Dive's "Reassessing the smart cities movement" multipart series, which provides a look into the past, present and future of the space.

Hindsight, as the saying goes, is 20/20. When asked how the smart cities movement has shifted over the past five years, many municipal leaders now acknowledge that an early enthusiasm for new technologies may have obscured what mattered most: residents, their perspectives, and their needs.

Five years ago, the movement was not centered on people, said Kevin Martin, manager of Portland, Oregon's Smart City PDX program, in response to a recent Smart Cities Dive survey. Instead, it was fixated on technology that was oversold and that communities had not requested, he noted.

That technology-first approach "largely failed," Martin said, because cities were not trusted stewards of data and technology, particularly in underserved communities. Additionally, cities lacked the policy processes and systems needed to support the increased data collection and use that new technologies introduced.

Portland's approach has since evolved. "It's been a satisfying evolution, from focusing on technologies like autonomous vehicles to developing more comprehensive, just approaches to becoming a digital city, in partnership with Portland communities," Martin said.

Leaders from other major U.S. cities echoed this sentiment in the survey, saying they have redirected their smart city initiatives from adopting the newest gadgets to prioritizing community needs. New priorities include finding smarter ways—sometimes with new technologies—to meet those needs while protecting residents' privacy. The COVID-19 pandemic catalyzed much of this change, exposing inequities, especially around digital access, and underscoring the need for government transformation.

The shift away from the 'tech arms race'

The U.S. smart cities movement has been marked by high-profile projects that did not always materialize, including Sidewalk Labs' Toronto development and Replica's work in Portland, Oregon. Other tech players have also lost momentum: Cisco, an early smart city enthusiast, announced at the end of last year that it was folding one of its main smart city software platforms.

In recent years, the definition of innovation has broadened, observed Jen Sanders, executive director of the North Texas Innovation Alliance, which is part of the larger National Smart Coalitions Partnership.

"The movement and coined term of 'smart cities' was very focused on the big audacious vision," and that vision "often came in the form of things like self-driving and self-flying cars and other flashy representations," she wrote in an email interview.

Even those who saw value in such efforts now recognize where they fell short. Five years ago, new technology generated data streams that informed urban problems, but the cost was hard to justify, said Linda Gerull, executive director of San Francisco's technology department and the city's chief information officer. The technology was not used to deliver new services, she said.

"While these technologies were exciting, there was a hollowness to the topic because [they] did not completely address the challenges and needs of residents," Gerull said.

Vendors drove the "first wave" of the movement, selling hardware and software they claimed would make cities smarter, said Debra Lam, managing director of Georgia Tech's Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation initiative. This created an unnecessary "tech arms race," she said.

Many cities pursued these technologies without starting with a problem, Lam said. "They were kind of thinking, here's the solution, and trying to figure out how this would fit in the city, versus starting with the problem and thinking about what the most appropriate technologies would be in their wider toolkit."

Cities are now selecting interventions from a menu of technologies based on local conditions, said Jennifer Clark, professor and head of Ohio State University's city and regional planning section within its College of Engineering. As that thinking shifted, cities have boosted in-house expertise, allowing leaders to focus on using technology to address resident needs, Lam added.

Smart city companies are also recognizing the market's complexity and the realities of public-private partnerships, Clark said.

On the everyday scale, technology has yet to meaningfully address challenges like illegal dumping, neighborhood blight, and flood monitoring, according to Jesse Bounds, director of the Houston Mayor's Office of Innovation.

If smart city innovations require residents to interact with government via technology, the digital divide remains a barrier. "It's difficult to talk about smart cities" when many residents lack access or ability to use computers or the internet, Bounds said. "There are lots of novel solutions that would work in an ideal lab-type environment, but nothing feasible at scale."

Refocusing on 'unsexy' technologies and smaller goals

Today, the "digital cities" concept describes modernizing city services, improving accessibility, and viewing service through an equity lens, said San Francisco's Gerull. It also places cybersecurity and data privacy as cornerstones.

The core elements of a smart city are rarely visible to the average person, said Sanders of the North Texas Innovation Alliance. However, people can experience impacts like shortened commutes, faster 911 responses, or lower asthma rates.

"This is why starting with the simple and, in many cases, the 'unsexy' technologies is what creates the building blocks toward full value," she said. "With the anchor infrastructure, governance and functionality covered, the public sector can get to a risk/innovation balance of 'pragmatically flashy'."

Karen Lightman, executive director of Carnegie Mellon University's Metro21: Smart Cities Institute, noted that transformational changes often stem from breaking down silos of information and making data open and accessible.

Some cities are communicating modest goals and resident-first approaches. Lightman pointed to Boston's Smart City Playbook as a leading example.

Kris Carter, co-chair of the Boston Mayor's Office of New Urban Mechanics, elaborated: During the past five years, the city has "reframed innovation as care." Boston's efforts are "not about 'moving fast and breaking things' but rather as an exercise in care—caring for, caring with, caring about," Carter said. He added that the city has moved to "not worship efficiency because a city is not a stream of data; it's people, and sometimes the social fabric of a city is lost with a singular focus on process improvement."

Orlando has also reoriented. In 2019, it began developing its first smart city master plan, later reframed as a "Future-Ready City" plan. The city is implementing short-term strategies related to defining the digital divide, partnering with entrepreneurs, testing food recovery logistics, and more, said Future-Ready Director Michael Hess.

Once led by vendors, smart cities are now defined by city governments and their priorities, said David Edinger, Denver's chief information officer. Denver focuses on "less than a handful" of initiatives to avoid spreading resources thin, including improving air quality near schools and a data hub project Edinger calls "the backbone of future efforts."

Washington, D.C., shifted its focus from technology to training employees, residents, and businesses for the digital age, the city's Office of the Chief Technology Officer said in a statement.

The concept has become more holistic, according to Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, encompassing community engagement, communication, waste elimination, sustainability, and quality of life. "While the concept of smart cities is becoming more familiar, it remains a new concept for many practitioners," Gallego said. "It is challenging to ensure practitioners understand the comprehensive approach and holistic thinking necessary to achieve a truly smart city."

A pandemic-driven reckoning

The COVID-19 pandemic shattered urban normalcy, closing businesses, emptying offices, and forcing cities to reassess priorities. It also exposed shortcomings in technology responses. Dallas quickly learned it had a language problem, said Amanda Nabours, IT architect for the city. "While translation services have been made available for some resident-facing city services, the pandemic and the shift to more prevalent use of digital communication led to an increased need for a wider variety of language access." The city created a map detailing the most commonly spoken languages in each ZIP code to expand translation services.

The pandemic also laid bare technology limitations in underserved communities. Brian Dillard, chief innovation officer for San Antonio, said it "created more urgency around issues like the digital divide, data governance, digital infrastructure and community co-creation."

Jeanne Holm, deputy mayor of budget and innovation for Los Angeles, echoed that: "The pandemic changed the way Los Angeles provisioned its services and heightened its focus towards equity, especially surrounding issues of internet access and connectivity and digital literacy."

"What COVID did around internet access is that it made the inequities impossible not to see," said LaVonna Lewis, associate dean of diversity, equity and inclusion at the University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy. Schoolchildren forced online may have lacked home internet or had service that couldn't support siblings and working parents simultaneously.

Some cities were hit hard by revenue downturns. "The federal intervention very much helped the cities, but it's harder when your tax base is not strong to begin with," said David Sloane, a professor in the Department of Urban Planning and Spatial Analysis at USC's Price School.

Finding funds for smart city projects became a "limitation" as cities imposed budget cuts, said Philadelphia Smart City Director Emily Yates. Detroit Chief Information Officer Art Thompson added that "financial challenges will continue to be challenging as we look to provide more information."

Aiming for inclusive processes, equitable outcomes

The smart cities movement is "maturing," said Ohio State's Clark, partly due to pushback from citizens' groups against interventions like data-gathering smart streetlights and large-scale projects like Sidewalk Labs in Toronto. "Today, community engagement and trust are essential to setting smart cities priorities when adopting tools and processes designed for communities," she said.

One issue with this "techlash" is that it has spurred extreme views, said Lightman. "What I worry about is this idea that all facial recognition is bad. And it's this very black and white thinking."

On connected and autonomous vehicles, regulatory changes and "the heavy lift of consensus-building" have slowed progress, said Brandon Campbell, Tampa's smart mobility manager. "We're still seeing advances, but five years ago, the industry may have had overly optimistic aspirations for the timeline of the technology's maturation."

Portland is focused on "rebuilding trust" and applying justice principles, said Martin. It is developing policies with underrepresented communities to ensure surveillance technology, machine learning, and AI do not harm civil rights. "Digital justice demands more transparency, accountability, and access to resources, literacy, information and decision-making in technology and information."

Change is also pandemic-driven. Previously, said LA's Holm, the city's "smart city focus was more towards technologies versus who can access the technologies and understand how to use [them]."

In Philadelphia, where a quarter of the population is at or below the federal poverty level, "Equity and inclusion are critical to all SmartCityPHL pilots and projects," according to Yates.

But USC's Lewis cautioned that planners' desires may not match residents' wants. "If they're not the things that they want, or they're not educated on how [initiatives] may be responsive to some of the things that they want, then there's a disconnect, and we've got to deal with that disconnect."

San Antonio's Dillard concurred: "The pandemic has made smart city approaches that center on people's needs even more urgent."

Cailin Crowe contributed reporting to this story.