Cities

As the pandemic transforms the daily life of billions of people around the world, the fast-growing Saudi capital of Riyadh is preparing to lead a new era in urban living.

If data is the fuel powering the Globalization 4.0 trend in focus at Davos in 2019, then no city is better positioned for this new era than the bustling trade and services hub of modern-day Dubai.

For WEF participants gathering in the glittering conference halls of Davos it may be hard to imagine, but over one billion people around the world still do not have access to electric light.

As well as liberalizing legislation governing foreign investment and visas, Dubai’s government support for digitization is also turning the city into a magnet for tech entrepreneurs.

On the stylish and youthful streets of Barcelona, carmakers, tech giants, telecom companies and start-ups are creating an inspiring new vision of transportation for the 21st century city.

At Marcus Garvey Village, a low-income community in Brooklyn-Queens, electricians have built New York’s first digitalized microgrid, complete with solar photovoltaic panels, a fuel...

Last year, Dubai Duty Free sold 74 million pieces of merchandise, conducted 27.1 million transactions, and delivered 147,000 pallets of merchandise to its outlets. We couldn’t do that without technology.

Today, everything aspires to be smart: from the ubiquitous—the smartphone in your hand—to sometimes the ridiculous (Google Glass, Fitbit for dogs, Lily the selfie drone). But, if we want our future to be smarter, we need to start thinking beyond "smart for smart's sake" now.

Years of continuous investment from public organizations and private sector companies have provided Dubai with world-class infrastructure for communications and transport.

As an official partner of Rio 2016, IT giant Cisco is providing technology solutions to the Games.