Summary: Usman Haque has used his training as an architect to inform an extensive career designing smart city projects. His work at Umbrellium goes much farther than what is typically thought of as smart cities – he has applied a creative approach to create greater engagement of citizens in public spaces, anticipating changes and evolution to deliver a better quality of life. We discuss the considerations involved in designing and implementing projects and the approach, the value of platforms and toolkits (along with the evolution of Pachube and the Urban Innovation Toolkit) as well as Thingful, the IoT data search engine.
