![\"tokyo-traffic-center\"](\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/tokyo-traffic-center-1024x532.jpg\")
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Before long, Santiago could be a city full of electric vehicles charged by \u201csmart\u201d power grids, many of them driving on highways equipped with traffic-reducing automated variable toll pricing. Perhaps a new arrival to the Chilean capital would go for the chance to found a technology company, incentivised by programmes like the state-backed, foreigner-friendly Start-Up Chile, in \u201cChilecon Valley\u201d. And perhaps they\u2019ll stay for the capital\u2019s reputation boasting the most advanced public transit system in Latin America.<\/p>\n
Or they might opt for Africa instead of South America, to take advantage of the assistance offered by organisations like SmartXchange in Durban. Not only does South Africa\u2019s third largest city now have an increasingly tech-savvy middle class population, it has schools like the Durban University of Technology, whose Urban Futures Centre is even developing technological solutions to the common challenges of drug use, security and policing strategy. If these succeed, Durban, like Santiago, may count itself among the highest-tech cities sooner than the rest of the world could imagine.<\/p>\n
An urbanite cannot live by startup incubation alone \u2013 only implementing the latest technology within a sound built and social environment can make a city truly hi-tech. Indeed, I kept hearing the same answer from current and former San Franciscans asked to name the best such cities in the world right now: \u201cNot San Francisco.\u201d Yet last year Tech Insider\u2019s ranked the \u201cundeniable epicentre of all things tech, from its gigantic start-up culture to its venture capital scene to its population of designers and programmers,\u201d at the top spot. If San Francisco doesn\u2019t rank among the most hi-tech cities in the world, which city could?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n