The smart city concept is hot and happening in the field of urban innovation right now.

This concept assumes that a city operates as a system or a group of interlocked parts working together, where technology is used to maximize its efficiency and also unlock its potential, while its chief focus remains on sustainability.

The holy city of Makkah is being turned into a smart city through a massive upgrading exercise carried out by the Saudi government since the end of last year's Haj season.

The plan, which includes housing, transportation, shopping and historical sites, will ensure that Muslims from all over the world have a safe and comfortable journey when they perform Haj or Umrah in the holy city.

Two mega projects for road construction and public transportation network are being undertaken for the city as a whole, besides special projects such as the expansion of the Holy Haram (Grand Mosque).

Certain parts of the great mosque have been under expansion since last year. It can now accommodate 400,000 people for prayers during the holy month of Ramadan. The three-year expansion work started after last Haj, in mid-November. When the whole expansion project is completed, the capacity will be for more than 1.5 million people up to a total of almost two million.

The smart cities movement is an important step in terms of rationalizing the way cities operate. Greater efficiency in this regard is a precondition for managing the growth of major urban centers but also a massive opportunity. At the same time, the development of new cities in the region — whether the new economic cities or satellite settlements to existing conurbations — provides an opportunity to design settlement that work better and more sustainable than more established urban centers.

In the GCC, the trend of linking smart cities to the agenda of economic diversification is fast gaining ground.

Urbanization has become one of the central themes of our time and the GCC countries provide an extreme case of this concentration of population in the global context.

There have been heavy investments across the GCC countries toward smart city projects. According to Cisco, Saudi Arabia has invested $70 billion to build four new smart cities in a collaborative partnership between the Kingdom and the Cisco.

Spending on IT products and services alone in the Middle East will increase 7.3 percent year on year in 2014 to top $32 billion. IDC expects the total spending on machine-to-machine (M2M) connections in the GCC countries to increase 19 percent year on year in 2014 to reach $224 million.

With such investments, the smart cities are sure to take shape sooner than expected.

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