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Health & Fitness

China's Newark Lights the Way: Wuxi Adopts Free WiFi

Located right outside of booming Shanghai is, at least in my opinion, the closest community to being “Newark’s Twin” in rising China: Wuxi. The city of Wuxi’s population is considerably larger than the Brick City, but its relationship with its metropolitan neighbor is akin to Newark’s with New York. As with Newark, so much of the smaller Chinese city’s economic, cultural and educational links are connected with the larger, being Shanghai. Again as with Newark and New York, both Chinese cities are not only geographically proximate but also connected through a complex web of rail and road links. Every day hundreds of thousands pass through both cities en route for greater employment and financial opportunities.

 

The government of Wuxi isn’t under any illusions; it’s not going to surpass Shanghai and doesn’t seek to. Instead, it actively works to coordinate its growth and economic development with its larger neighbor. Wuxi has to do this, because Shanghai is quickly becoming the “New York City” of not only China but all of East Asia. Shanghai, within this generation, could very well wind up to be the urban pivot that the entire Pacific Rim swings upon.

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Again, the administrators of Wuxi know this. They’re counting on it. They know that their close neighbor is investing billions of U.S. dollars in critical infrastructural improvements, such as modern highways, increased public transportation, and especially communications systems. So just last month, Wuxi made a big decision, a decision that Newark desperately needs to make and implement within the very near future, if the Brick City is serious about its growth, safety and employment potential. Wuxi has decided to establish its own “wireless cloud,” it’s own urban Wi-Fi system that will cover nearly every square foot of the city.

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Ten years ago this would have been a colossal prospect for any city or town, anywhere. Some cities, like Philadelphia, experimented with the prospect, called “Municipal Wi-Fi.” But they found that the equipment was extremely expensive, fragile, and with limited geographical range and benefit. Then, over the past decade, time and the electronic marketplace exercised their magic and now what was expensive yesterday is more or less peanuts today. In short, a $350 Internet router from 2003 can be had for $25 or $30 in 2013, with the contemporary equivalent being better, more durable, with dramatically wider range capabilities.

 

Wuxi’s leaders were aware of these market changes, and have acted accordingly. Over the next year and a half, they’ve pledged and budgeted, in an ambitious private-public partnership, to “light up” the city with 40,000 Wi-Fi hotspots. Yes, you read that right; not 4,000…but 40,000!

 

Yesteryear’s equivalent of the “Moon Shot” is this year’s parallel of paving a road, or something like that. Regardless of whatever lame way I put it, within a year or so Wuxi’s residents: young, old, rich, poor, middle-class, homeless, lost, employed, and jobless will be able to access email and the full benefits of the web, at least when they’re on the streets, trains and busses of the municipality. And here’s the kicker: it won’t cost that much money. Actually, costs will be a fraction of what they were projected even five years ago. And with the possibility of added economic development due to the network’s deployment, the new system may actually wind up quickly paying for itself.

 

Newark, to my knowledge, has nothing like this in its planning books. In fact, the Brick City is caught up in one of the worst crime waves of the past 25 years that threatens to erase two decades of civic progress. To make matters worse, the city’s unemployment rate continues unabated while the Federal government cuts one of its most essential benefits, food stamps. Well, if you’re going to cut food stamps, and tell a city with a huge jobless population to “get a job,” then don’t be a hypocrite: give them the means to find one. City and state officials need to get their heads out of the clouds and turn on an electronic cloud in Newark, before the city is permanently left behind as a 20th century urban backwater.

 

Newark citywide Wi-Fi doesn’t have to be put in place all at once to be immediately successful. As a person who lived in the city for years, and now works there, I can tell you that there are places where Wi-Fi could be rapidly installed for maximum effectiveness. Newark’s downtown core, its parks and its long, major boulevards could be “illuminated” first. Also, streets adjacent to schools and schoolyards would be included, as would busses. This would immediately better the lives of those who transit through these areas daily (like my students). Then, after six months to a year, the city’s outer zones, its residential neighborhoods and housing projects could follow.

 

The city leaders of Wuxi know that Wi-Fi is an urban need, like water or sewers or other utilities. A globally-connected city simply cannot exist and prosper without it. When will Newark’s leaders come to the same conclusion? 

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