An old port city on Spain's Bay
of Biscay has emerged as a prototype for high-tech smart cities worldwide.
Blanketed with sensors, it's changing the way its residents live. Apart from
the occasional ferry from Britain, this picturesque town doesn't attract many
foreign visitors. It turned quite a few heads, then, when delegations from
Google, Microsoft and the Japanese government all landed there recently to walk
the city streets.
What they've been coming to see,
though, is mostly invisible: 12,000 sensors buried under the asphalt, affixed
to street lamps and atop city buses. Silently they survey parking availability,
and whether the surf's up at local beaches. They can even tell garbage
collectors which bins are full, and automatically dim street lights when no
one's around. Santander is one of four cities - the three others are in
Britain, Germany and Serbia - where sensors are being tested.
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