Shaurya Agarwal first heard the term “smart city” in 2015. He was finishing his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in the city of neon lights (Las Vegas), which would lead him to do research in the city that never sleeps (New York) before teaching in the city of angels (Los Angeles).

“From the moment I heard about cities being smart, it has always been on my mind,” Agarwal says. The concept resonates for this engineering visionary because he was raised in a small town in India with unstable transportation, electric, water and drainage systems. “I had a strong feeling that a ‘smart city’ would benefit everyone living in it, for generations.”

Little did Agarwal know at the time that in 2024 he would be in Orlando, The City Beautiful, as founding director of UCF’s Urban Intelligence and Smart City Lab and coordinator of its innovative Smart Cities master’s program. He could have continued his blossoming career in any major city with a reputable university, but he came to Central Florida because he saw something fresh: under the umbrella of the Future City Initiative, researchers and students from a variety of departments who would soon be working with industry and city leaders toward a singular goal.

“Smartness,” says Agarwal, an associate professor in civil environmental and construction engineering.

Let’s just pause for a moment and address a basic question: What exactly is a smart city? The Orlando area has smart people with smart ideas. We have a university with world-renown instructors and a history of groundbreaking tech research in AR, VR, digital twinning, modeling and simulation. Yet with all of these smarts, we still live on a finite piece of land with a finite supply of water, all shared by a rapidly growing population. It doesn’t take long for such a city to become less beautiful.

Unless it’s truly smart.

“The concept of a smart city is broad, but in general it means you integrate technology to remove the negatives of daily life,” says Cameron Ford, founding director of UCF’s Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership and executive director of the Blackstone LaunchPad. “No congestion. No sanitation issues. No excess air pollutants. No problems with reliable power or water. A smart city uses foresight to improve livability, sustainability and resilience so residents can enjoy today while preparing for the uncertainties of tomorrow.”

For an example, Agarwal’s latest research provides a moving picture of what mobility within a smart city might look like: Traffic moving with the harmonious speed and efficiency of a school of fish (as opposed to the stop-and-go crawl of a caterpillar). In this city, autonomous vehicles would use sensors to transmit messages to each other and to the infrastructure. Road travel becomes cooperative and quick. It’s stress-free, and yes, friendly.

“Technology is the connective tissue between every project in a smart city,” Agarwal says, “and it requires a lot of small projects connected together. They become the digital infrastructure. You can’t necessarily see them, but they make the quality of daily life better.”

Carol Ann Logue is director of programs and operations for UCF’s Innovation Districts and Business Incubation Program. She and Ford are involved in smart city initiatives because at some point every tech-centered project, visible or invisible, comes down to business. Without investment even the smartest idea will never see the light of day.

“The cities that can pull this off have experts from every important sector intertwined into a singular ecosystem,” Logue says. “For Orlando, it’s healthcare, transportation, hospitality, education, engineering and business. We have a pipeline of young talent, intellectual property, forward-thinking research — everything is here, due in large part to UCF, to be become fully integrated, and smarter.”

Until recently, however, something crucial had been missing.

“For as long as I’ve been in Orlando, there have been frustrations that the rest of the world didn’t know about the tech capabilities here, which made it challenging to attract outside investors,” Logue says. “But that’s changing quickly.”

Logue is referring to the presence of Plug and Play, a global startup accelerator with a deep network of investors and companies able to supercharge emerging tech markets like central Florida. Plug and Play opened an Orlando office earlier in 2024 as part of a partnership with UCF, the city, Orange County, Duke Energy and Tavistock, with the goal of advancing Orlando as a smart city.

“This region’s identity as a tech market is unique,” Ford says. “We don’t have major corporate headquarters spinning out talent, like they have in Silicon Valley. However, we do have talented, ambitious students and researchers coming up with new ideas to improve urban life. They’re developing expertise learning how to turn that expertise into viable business. Plug and Play fills a critical gap by attracting corporate partners and risk capital so those tech startups can flourish.”

Logue says she’d been aware of Plug and Play for years because she’s in the world of business incubation. “They don’t just go anywhere. There has to be a culture of innovative technology for them to nurture into a smart-city ecosystem. That’s exactly what we have here.”

Plug and Play developed its first smart city cohort for Orlando in April. They invited more than two dozen companies to pitch the innovation they would bring to the smart city initiative. Of the 14 companies chosen for the cohort — some local and some from outside the area — four were founded by students, graduates and researchers from UCF: CapaciTech, which builds flexible and high-energy storage solutions; the smart mobility company ConnectedWise; Precision Periodic, which uses nanobeads for water treatment; and Fluix, an energy-saving AI-based autopilot.

“Many of the companies from outside the area that pitched said, ‘We’ve been interested in moving to Florida, but didn’t know about the tech capabilities here until Plug and Play came along,’” Logue says. “It’s been a ‘wow’ for a lot of people.”

They’ve been wowed to find out about UCF’s aforementioned Smart Cities master’s program, the only such program that fuses technology with disciplines focused on water and air quality, transportation and land development and public policy. They’ve been wowed to discover UCF working on a $26 million NSF-funded Engineering Research Center for Smart Streetscapes (CS3), and a transportation science and tech program ranked among the world’s best.

“They’re also impressed with the collaboration between experts in different fields,” Logue says, “because everyone knows collaboration is the best way to make real progress.”

Less than 10 years ago, Agarwal heard “smart city” for the first time. Today he’s helping one come together. Many students in the Smart Cities master’s program are professionals who are reskilling themselves. One is developing a smart parking system. Another is coming up with a method to ensure healthy water quality in pools. Yet another is researching a way to locate lead pipes underground so they can be removed without tearing up the landscape.

“These people have always had ideas,” Agarwal says, “and now their ideas have the potential to be grown into start-ups, then incubated, and perhaps supported through Plug and Play’s network. It’s still early, but that’s what makes this an exciting time. We’re just getting started.”