Economy of Scale: Smart Cities (Sponsored Content)

Jacob Greaves (0:00)

Because you're listening to this Bloomberg podcast, we thought you'd be interested in a sponsored podcast called Economy of Scale. Produced by Bloomberg Media Studios and the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism, it delves into the changing dynamics of business growth from technology to capital and investment. Here's a recent episode.

Scale has become synonymous with Dubai, a metropolis shaped by constant growth. In 2025, the Emirates retained its position as one of the world's leading destinations for greenfield foreign direct investment. But scale isn't just about size. Globally, it can be the difference between success and failure, whether bringing breakthrough technologies to market or building smart infrastructure that will shape the cities of tomorrow.

Welcome to the Economy of Scale. In this series, we'll explore one central question. What does it really take to scale? I'm your host, Jacob Greaves, and in this episode we're exploring a type of scale that can transform the lives and livelihoods of millions, the growth of smart cities and how innovation is hardwired into urban development. To discuss this and more, I'm joined here in Dubai by Rohit Kumar, CEO of Siemens Advanta for the Middle East and India, and Dr. Estefania Tapias, Head of Smart and Digital at Engineering Consult CWSP. Thank you so much for joining us. Dr. Estefania, can you just give us some insight into the types of projects that WSP involved in Dubai?

Estefania Tapias (1:26)

So in general, you know, it's an engineering consulting company. Its headquarters are in Canada, but it's very well established in the region. We have projects from big scale master plan infrastructure, small scale buildings, and my team, it's relatively new to what traditionally the company has done in the past. We cover everything that is digital and more and more we're growing, and it's really reacting to the market and reacting to where we are.

Jacob Greaves (1:52)

And Rohit, can you provide some insight into your work at Siemens Advanta?

Rohit Kumar (1:55)

So, very quickly, broader Siemens, we are the German industrial engineering and technology firm. So, our products and solutions, they power almost everything that sits on the ground. So, from factories on one side to buildings, campuses, cities, utility grids, energy distribution, and then mobility as well. So, we are literally involved in almost everything happening in a city or in a country. Siemens Advanta that I lead, we are the consulting arm, where essentially we work with our customers and helping them define those solutions and how to translate that into reality.

Jacob Greaves (2:28)

How would you define a smart city, Dr. Esfany?

Estefania Tapias (2:31)

I would define a smart city, not the city that puts first the technology and the digital advantages, but more the city that looks up or tries to become better for their citizens, that wants to provide good services for their citizens, the people, the humans, or basically the one that puts the human first and then uses technology to support that transformation.

Rohit Kumar (2:54)

A smart city is something where the physical world and the digital world come together, essentially to make your decisions more data-driven, more reliable, making the entire city a lot more predictable. Just to give you a simple example, a lot of us are using variables now, which is giving us real-time data of what's happening in our body, and we are adapting to it, basis what the signals tell us. This is what a smart city is all trying to achieve, which is looking at real-time signals and then adapting whatever operations that need to be adjusted, to just make citizens or visitors' life a lot more better, safer, all of that.

Jacob Greaves (3:30)

Which cities would you say meet that threshold of smart city?

Rohit Kumar (3:33)

Which are the cities that use data to achieve their vision, right? Like today morning when I was driving here, I think all of us would have seen these posts, Al Qudra Street, driving time reduced from seven minutes to one minute. That is 100 percent data-driven, right? It has gone through tons of simulation to deliver that outcome. It's not just somebody looking at empty land saying, let's construct a road over here, right? Dubai obviously stands out. How many other cities in the world have such a goal or boldly, publicly state that as an objective? So absolutely, Dubai stands out.

Estefania Tapias (4:07)

There's no one best practice of smart city. It really depends on what the city wants to achieve, the vision of the city and the pressing needs that the city has at the moment. And then how the city in a smart way uses the technology that it's available to reach to that goal. And then also maybe connected to what you were saying before, it's all about testing. No city in the world has been successful in one shot. So it's a lot about of testing, failing, testing, failing, testing, failing, and how much time the city wants to put on it, how much investment the city wants to put in this whole iteration process of testing and so on. I think Dubai is a good example of a city that has test so much and has the initiative of saying, okay, we will do it until it is successful.