The City of Sydney Council, Australia has issued a call for expressions of interest from suppliers for Street Furniture – existing contracts have been in place for 20 years and are all due to expire in 2019.
Sydney wants free public Wi-Fi and a new suite of street furniture including bus shelters, kiosks, automatic public toilets, benches and bins with a consistent style and smart technology to support the needs of the city’s one million daily workers and visitors.
Lord Mayor Clover Moore re-iterated that the new furniture must meet the needs of today’s tech-savvy commuters, residents and tourists, she was quoted as saying “Eventually, we could see real-time emergency, event and transport information displayed on bus shelters”.
The announcement made no mention of any plans to integrate smart street furniture initiatives with any wider smart city strategies. In November the Committee for Sydney issued a report, #WeTheCity3 that criticised Sydney — the wider metropolis — for not having a smart city strategy. Sydney’s smart city strategy initiatives are contained in its draft Digital Strategy report, released in February 2017.
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