Smart Cities: For Whom? – Science & Tech
uring a recent trip to Jakarta, I was taken aback by Gambir train station. Instead of scanning a physical ticket, I checked in using facial recognition.
Talk about a futuristic welcome, but I couldn’t help feeling a bit like I’d stepped into a sci-fi thriller.
I must have agreed to digitize my face when I registered months ago, but by the time I used the train, I had already learned that there are advanced algorithms that do more than just recognize faces. They can now assess blood pressure, stress levels, age and even potential heart disease risks. That triggered surveillance nightmares the likes of which I’d only read about elsewhere.
“It’s worth questioning whether a train station needs facial recognition technology,” says Hendricus Andy Simarmata, president of the Indonesian Association of Urban and Regional Planners.
“Law enforcement or international airports using it makes sense, but domestic airports don’t use facial recognition, and train stations already have CCTV for security. Is facial recognition really necessary here?”
Ranked 103rd globally by the Institute of Management and Development, Jakarta is a relatively new “smart city.” Yet we can already see how technology is reshaping daily life in this megacity, from a more connected public transit system and a growing cashless economy to CCTV networks monitoring traffic, all for the promise of a frictionless future. That does sound like an urban dream.
Jakarta isn’t the only place going high-tech. The government has big ambitions, planning to develop 100 smart cities by 2045. The new capital, Nusantara, is also designed to be a “city of tomorrow” with features like autonomous driving systems, smart waste management and a digital identity platform.