Featured Smart City Strategy: Preview Las Vegas
The Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce is the focal point for the next stage of Smart City Development. Having made great strides with transportation initiatives, they are exercising area-wide leadership to coordinate with local partners to examine how data can transform the lives of people living in the region.
Community Profile:
Amid the bustling downtown district of Las Vegas, a technology revolution is brewing.
Why are 123 lane-miles of fiber optic cable placed along the streets of Las Vegas? To allow for the implementation of autonomous vehicles to travel through the heart of town.
Welcome to Las Vegas, a technologically advanced metropolis and a US Ignite Smart Gigabit Community. What started as a small city Wi-Fi network has grown into a city-wide solution to provide safe, reliable, and efficient civic technology that aims to stimulate economic growth. Las Vegas has taken a deep dive into four main projects: autonomous vehicle development, connected vehicle corridor deployment, open data facilitation, and smart city infrastructure creation.
Forever in the fast lane of change and urbanization, Las Vegas designated its downtown as the Innovation District, a dream come true for smart city innovators everywhere. The Innovation District beckons technology companies and businesses across the country to access a unique urban environment and test their inventions.
The District is meant to house new transportation infrastructure and mobility technologies, and encourages the development of partnerships with autonomous vehicle and mobility companies and smart city technology firms.
Smart city technology isn’t just confined to the Innovation District; it can be found all over the city. Whether it’s sensors that send alerts when garbage cans are filling up or monitors that track where people are jaywalking, Las Vegas is invested in testing technology before making a large investment to implement it throughout the city.
With goals to enhance mobility, reduce traffic congestion, improve resident safety, and reduce its carbon footprint, the push to go “smart” only makes sense for this city. It doesn’t hurt that Nevada was the first state to formally allow autonomous vehicles to drive on public roads since it passed legislation in 2011; paving the way to make Las Vegas a next-generation technology hub.
With the innovative smart city technology being developed there, we know that what happens in Vegas won’t stay in Vegas.
