The 'smart' city will be run on the Urban Operating System, which will control everything from water and electricity to traffic lights.

Via a system called PlaceApps, it will even allow for apps to be created and integrated into the larger system in order to control buildings, lighting or other facets of urban management.

It's hoped that eventually even our smartphones could interact with the Urban OS to operate household appliances and energy systems.

This can be done, the company says, while ensuring people’s security and privacy is protected.

Urban OS is to be tested in earnest as a management system for in PlanIT Valley, a futuristic new city which is already under construction in Paredes near Porto, Northern Portugal, in partnership with technology giants Cisco and Microsoft.

While there have already been many ideas for how 'smart cities' could look, the Urban OS is the first time anyone has produced a system capable of handling and managing the enormous volume of data that would be produced by an entire city - 50billion devices interacting.

But rather than being a prohibitively expensive project, full of cutting-edge technology, PlanIT Valley is designed to be a low cost innovation, making savings in both its construction and subsequent operation.

Living Plan IT expects to save 30-40 per cent on traditional building costs and construct buildings 30-50 per cent faster and to a much higher quality.

This will also lead to significant savings in operation costs for the buildings based on the use of new materials and designs.

To help run the Urban OS there will be around one million high-tech sensors throughout the city - one every square foot - that have been designed by McLaren Electronic Systems, modeled on their Formula 1 race car technology.

The various innovations from the project are sure to be examined closely by developers worldwide who are tasked with urban regeneration programmes.

Living Plan IT, which was recently selected by the World Economic Forum as one of its Technology Pioneers of 2012, expects the first residents to move into PlanIT Valley around the middle of next year.

It may be the case that the most exciting insights from PlanIT Valley will not be about how we build new cities, but how we make old ones fit for the 21st century.

来源：中国日报网英语点津  编辑：许银娟