Living in a smart city – what does it mean?

The smart city – we hear about it everywhere. Ecological, connected, adapted to intensive urban development: This city of the future is full of promise! However, do you know what it is, how it will really improve your everyday life, and how VINCI Energies is involved?

ligthing smart cityAround the world, more than half of us live in cities yet the latter occupy only 3% of the earth’s land surface. Given their very high urban population growth, cities face many issues: transportation, treatment of water and waste, and housing…

The need to construct a city adapted to the requirements of the present while preserving resources for the future has given rise to the concept of the smart city. Its purpose can be summarized in three points: to improve the comfort of its inhabitants, provide more efficient transportation, and respect the environment.

Specifically, this covers several aspects of development: For example, constructing more buildings with positive energy coefficients and insulating buildings during remodelling both increase global energy performance. Smart cities have other attributes: optimisation of waste management; development of environmentally sound means of transport, such as electric cars and tramways, public lighting or telecommunications networks that permit offers of real-time services to connected users.

The sustainable city: If anything were possible?

Imagine that in several years you could be living in a building powered by solar and wind energy, at a temperature regulated by green walls. Your electrical consumption would be optimised for when you are at home and adjustable at a distance using your smartphone. The latter would also advise you of the best route to take to work, the best type of transport – green for sure – depending on the traffic. All of this is not as far away as it seems.

VINCI Energies participates in the construction of smart cities

smart city public lightingVINCI Energies is involved in all the components of the smart city: transportation networks, energy, communication, lighting, smart grids…. It is helping to create the city of the future, to renovate buildings like the Eqho Tower or the Chartis Tower  at La Défense (Paris), which as a result can expect HQE certification (High Quality Environmental). Axians deploys 3G, 4G, and optical fibre and facilitates communication, especially mobile.

Citeos optimises urban lighting to achieve, among other goals, energy economies, such as in Cergy-Pontoise or in Lille. The brand’s business units also install lighting points, crossing lights, and equipment for remote management, such as for the new tramway at Brest, which help streamline and optimise traffic management. Citeos contributes in other ways to improve the environmental quality of emblematic urban buildings such as the Montparnasse Tower in Paris, by making use of LED bulbs .

The Group also participates in the development of transport infrastructures: intelligent tramways as in Le Havre, which recovers the energy generated by braking, or installation of charging stations for electric cars.

eclairage-smart-city smart-city-eclairage smart-city-eclairage-public smart-city-eclairage-urbain