A smart city uses networks, sensors and data to run services better for the people who live there. South Africa's flagship plan, the Lanseria smart city, is still largely at the planning stage in 2026. This guide, from Arke Technologies in Johannesburg, covers its progress, other projects and what municipalities can build now.
Last reviewed: September 2026, 17 min read
A smart city uses networks, sensors and data to run services better for the people who live there. South Africa's flagship plan, the Lanseria smart city, is still largely at the planning stage in 2026. This guide, from Arke Technologies in Johannesburg, covers its progress, other projects and what municipalities can build now.
Last reviewed: September 2026, 17 min read
Last reviewed: September 2026.
A smart city is a city that uses digital networks, connected sensors and data to plan and run its services, infrastructure and engagement with residents more efficiently, fairly and sustainably. That smart city definition matters less than its test: do residents get water, power, safety and services more reliably because of it? The smart city meaning for a municipality is practical: fewer leaks, faster repairs, accurate bills and shorter queues.
A smart city, explained in five layers: connectivity (fibre, Wi-Fi, mobile and low-power networks); sensors and devices, the internet of things; a data platform; applications and dashboards for staff and residents; and people and governance. The last layer is the one most plans neglect. People make a smart city: residents who report problems and use digital services, and officials with the skills and authority to act on what the data shows.
Why smart city investment, when budgets are tight? Because the returns sit in services and revenue that municipalities already struggle with. National non-revenue water, water lost to leaks, faulty meters or billing gaps, reached 47.4% in 2023 (Department of Water and Sanitation, No Drop report, 2023). This guide, part of our insights and guides, looks at South Africa's smart city plans and the smart city requirements that make them work.
Which is the best smart city in the world? On the IMD Smart City Index 2026, which surveys residents in 148 cities, Zurich ranks first, Oslo second and Geneva third (IMD, 2026). The smart cities in the world with the most to teach South African municipalities are not always the highest-ranked:
The city-owned company Stokab has laid dark fibre since 1994, digging each street once and leasing fibre to every operator on equal terms (City of Stockholm). For anyone researching smart city Sweden, it is the place to start, and the model behind the dig-once idea.
India's Smart Cities Mission, launched in June 2015 for 100 cities, Srinagar among them, closed on 31 March 2025 with 18 cities having completed all their projects (Down To Earth, 2025): funding and deadlines alone do not deliver.
SmartLA 2028, the LA smart city project timed for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, was first published in 2020 and updated in 2026, with plans from connectivity to one payment across rail, buses and bikes (City of Los Angeles, 2026). Other smart city transportation examples include traffic signals that report faults, real-time bus tracking and cashless fares.
Smart city Mauritius is a policy choice: since 2015, a Smart City Scheme under the Investment Promotion Act, run by the Economic Development Board, has approved more than a dozen developments (Economic Development Board Mauritius), showing how an African government can steer smart development with investment incentives.
Saudi Arabia scaled back The Line, the 170-kilometre linear city planned at NEOM (Euronews, January 2026), and Belmont, a smart city planned in Arizona since 2017 by an investment firm linked to Bill Gates, has no published date for its first residents. The lesson matches Lanseria's: most of the value lies in making existing cities work better.
Future cities will be judged less on skylines than on services. For further reading, the open-access journal Smart Cities, published by MDPI, and IMD's Smart City Observatory publish research and rankings regularly.
Making a smart city project succeed is mostly a governance question. The G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance, for which the World Economic Forum acts as secretariat, built its policy roadmap on five foundational policies: privacy impact assessment, ICT accessibility, accountability for cyber security, dig-once digital infrastructure and open data. When the WEF smart cities benchmark reviewed the alliance's pioneer cities, fewer than a quarter carried out privacy impact assessments when deploying new technology (World Economic Forum, 2021).
When choosing smart city companies, judge them on open standards, local support, security controls and the exit they offer, not on the showcase they present.
Arke Technologies (Pty) Ltd, in Johannesburg, builds the practical layer that smart services run on:
See IT for municipalities for how we work with councils and municipal managers.
