This week’s Smart City roundup features an app that helps cities fix things faster, while the windy city gets a smart upgrade despite privacy concerns.

Reporting city issues using an app

The City of Bakersfield, California released a new app enabling residents to report issues found around town, such as potholes, broken streetlights and graffiti, to name a few.

“So many people are using smartphones whether it’s browsing the Internet to find directions, to find restaurants, to review restaurants or other attractions and this is such an extension on how people use their smart phones,” said Chris Huot, assistant to the city manager.

Bakersfield is working with app developer City Source for the mobile app, to be rolled out in three phases.   The first phase will allow residents to report service related issues such as damaged park equipment, uploading photos, videos, audio or email messages.  The Bakersfield Mobile app uses geotagging to automatically provide the location information of the service being reported.

Chicago’s ‘Array of Things’ project

Chicago is getting a huge upgrade this summer as its ‘Array of Things’ project rolls out with smart streetlights.  The smart streetlights are embedded with sensors to gather data such as weather, pollution, temperature, air quality, noise, carbon dioxide and even a city’s population.

These streetlights will be installed on Michigan Avenue, one of Chicago’s main and busiest avenues, as the local government aims to improve public safety, transportation, energy and education.

Though this seems a worthy effort, some are concerned these smart streetlights are another threat to people’s privacy, as they track foot traffic by locking onto cellphone signals of people passing by.  Researchers of the project point out that data from cellphones will be collected anonymously, but it has been proven time and again that nothing really remains anonymous, which means this project could be putting people’s privacy at risk.