I'll be honest: homeowners' meetings — at least the ones in the building where I live — almost always end up being a waste of time. Attendance is sparse, and consensus is rarer still.

A recent example: a meeting was called to discuss restoring common areas — green spaces, parking lot lighting, hallway fixtures, repairs to the security booth. Most residents ignored the invitation from the building board. Those of us who did show up ended up making all the necessary decisions on our own.

We agreed to appoint one representative per building to collect each block's needs and request quotes accordingly. That seemed workable — until reality set in: in some buildings, nobody volunteered. Because not everyone submitted their information at the same time, and some residents were more urgent about repairs than others, the group eventually decided that each building would handle its own common-area work independently.

Predictably, some buildings followed through. Others still haven't reached an agreement.

Situations like this make me think about how genuinely difficult it is to coordinate collective action — even for a small group of neighbors. Most people in a residential complex seem to believe that once they've elected a board or appointed a building manager, their own responsibility ends there. That's a serious misconception.

No shared asset stays in good condition without active community support — both to carry out the work and to flag what's working and what isn't. If this plays out in a small residential building, the scale of what a city mayor or regional governor faces every day must be exponentially greater.

Problems Get Solved Together

Thinking that electing a mayor or governor lets us step back from our city's problems is a mistake. The people in those roles are there to execute projects on behalf of residents — with the sole purpose of solving problems and improving quality of life. But that can't happen in a vacuum.

It has to be a joint effort: the public sector, the private sector, and citizens all have a role. This is precisely where knowing how to communicate — and how to lead urban development projects — becomes critical.

Consider a concrete case: if the public sector wants to improve city safety by deploying a panic button developed by a private company — designed to reduce emergency response times — the first requirement isn't the technology. It's communication. The initiative must be made public, explained in detail (the what, the why, the how), and citizens must be brought in early enough to build genuine awareness of how to use the tool responsibly.

Citizen participation is the central pillar of any smart city project.

The First Steps Toward a Smart City

Effective, transparent communication about short- and long-term plans — for solving problems and improving quality of life — is the first step toward becoming a smart city. That's not a side feature of the smart city concept; it's the foundation. Smart cities are built around their inhabitants, with technology as the integration layer.

Technology enables data collection, information generation, processing, and analysis. But using technology differently — purposefully — requires engineering. Engineering is what translates a technological capability into an actual solution.

Why Technology Integration Matters

A smart city equips its residents with the tools to contribute value back to the city. People need to feel connected to their community and to genuinely see the impact of these integrations in their own lives.

Education plays a major role here. Smart cities need to teach residents how to use these tools, and that teaching requires effective communication. In my view, digital channels — social media in particular — are the most direct path, given how immediate they are for two-way exchange.

At the outset, the public sector and its multidisciplinary team need to develop a solid communication strategy: presenting the initiative to residents clearly, explaining what the project is, which technology is involved, how to use it, and what information it will generate — and how that information will feed back into real solutions.

The City We'd All Want to Live In

How many times a day do we scroll past complaints on social media about water outages, broken street lighting, unrepaired roads, public safety failures, or the state of public transit?

Fixing all of that — building the city we actually want — demands cooperation and planning across all parties. The path forward is integration: everyone working toward the common good.

How do we get there? Through education and clear communication that shows people the concrete value that technology integration can bring to their daily lives.

Marielena González Nieves, Engineer @soylainge

This blog is an editorial publication. The opinions expressed in this article are solely the author's and do not necessarily represent the views of the company.