Spanish Smart City

B2 – Upper Intermediate

The fast advent of technology has helped improve our lives in a tremendous way. Have you ever heard of the term “Smart City” before? A Smart City uses technology to help locals live conveniently and comfortably. Apps are developed to aid locals in doing things such as finding a parking space, checking your favorite shop’s business hours, among others.

Watch the video and read the article to learn more about how Santander is becoming a smart city.

https://www.voanews.com/a/spanish-smart-city-project-saves-time-money/3274146.html

Discussion Questions:

1. How can drivers in Santander find out where they can find available parking spots?
2. What made all these innovations possible?
3. What do you think about the technological innovations in Santander?
4. Do you know of any other “smart” cities in the world?
5. What do you think big cities would look like in 100 years?
6. How do you think public transportation will change in the future?

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One reply on “Spanish Smart City”

1. They only need to search in his mobiles where are the free points for park his cars because the places for park the cars have sensors that say when can park in there.

2. All this is made possible by 20,000 sensors installed on buildings, street posts and even buses. They are part of the “smart city” project, launched by the University of Cantabria seven years ago.

3. I think that is very very usefull. It’s curious because I was in Santander two months ago during four or five days and I didn’t see nothing about this. Now I’m angry because I really I would have liked to have the opportunity to tested this.

4. No, is the first time that I read something similar. I know an specific initiatives in many cities in the world for specific situations. For example in Madrid you have the possibility to know where are the number of your bus in real time or have the possibility to know where is the car park with more empty sites when you are in your house before to exit to the street but the system of Santander is more completely and probably more elaborated.

5. I think that probably the cities in the future will have many utilities to interaction with the citizens.

6. I think that the public transport is the future in general. Now in Madrid we have the traditional public transports and since two or three years ago have arised new forms of public transport. Public cars, motorcycles and bicycles that the user can use for minutes or hours and then only need to pay for the time that he or she has used this service. You only need to have the app of this service in your mobile for start to use this cars, this motorcycles or this bicycles. Also this cars, bicycles and motorcycles are electric in all the cases and for this reason respect the environment. In the future this type of services probably will increase.

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