SmartCitiesWorld City Profile – Atlanta

With an estimated population of around 498,000 – and growing fast – Atlanta is home to the busiest airport in the world as well as several top Fortune 500 companies and a thriving start-up scene. It is also one of the most economically divided societies in the United States.

Since Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms took over the city’s leadership in January 2018, she has stressed that closing the inequality gap must be at the heart of all initiatives. Her One Atlanta strategy aims to make Atlanta a more equitable city so that all residents have the same access to opportunity. This means that the Smart Atlanta smart city programme, too, is now focused around these very human-centric goals which perhaps don’t commonly fall within the smart city domain.

Tye Hayes, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), City of Atlanta, said: “We like the challenge of taking things which are not typically deemed technical innovation issues. That makes it exciting and gives us the chance to go out and look for opportunities to show where technology can move the city forward and help us solve these problems.”

A key focus from here is secure connectivity and more sophisticated use of data, including real-time data. This report shows Atlanta’s renewed approach in action across initiatives spanning housing, health, skills, energy and more.

Read this report for:

• A deep-dive into the One Atlanta strategy
• How Atlanta is transitioning to 100% clean energy by 2035
• Why Atlanta has created brand new positions, including Chief Health Officer, Chief Transparency Officer, Chief Equity Officer and more
• A closer look at Atlanta’s new holistic transport approach
• How the City of Atlanta is partnering with Georgia Power to turn streetlighting into connected digital infrastructure to deliver brand new types of real-time data.