7 Principles Al Madinah Has Followed to Design Human-Centric Smart Cities

The smart city concept represents an extraordinary opportunity to leverage technology in the service of the city and its inhabitants. However, the track record is varied, with numerous efforts that missed the objective. This paper will articulate how the City of Madinah, via MDA, took a human-centric approach and addresses its benefits (realized and expected). The approach undertaken needed to build the connecting fabric between strategy, vision, and execution, to design a way that drives value-orientated innovation and breaks down the silos between functional and technology factions. Therefore, the approach focuses on utilizing human-centric user journeys to drive the definition of digital services, associated places, and key enablers, all in the service of delivering a best-in-class experience to the city’s users (i.e. citizens). In other words, the value lies with the experience rendered, not the technology deployed. Additionally, by using this human-centric user-journey approach, a city will achieve the concept of adaptive strategy and have a dynamic method to measure the city’s value as well as a lens to capture a city as a whole system. To realize the benefits of this approach, there was a need to focus on people, place & purpose, and to drive out a transformation paradigm that could be understood over time, across all phases of the city’s transformation. The approach also needed to focus on the evolution of a “City Operating System”, where digital services are accessed in a “as-a-Service” model. This Digital Services Mesh is envisioned to evolve in function and sophistication, driving real requirements into the technology and platform stacks. This in turn will ensure better leverage of technology and connect the technology investment to the experience benefits for stakeholders, whilst also considering the transformation of the city’s operational team.