All too often, living in a city can make you feel like a passive bystander. But new civic technology is aiming to make it easier than ever to get involved and have your voice heard.

When the London borough of Westminster spent £6 million on a smart centralised system for its 14,000 street lights, it could hardly have expected insolvency to leave it stuck with the lights on.

Just as our homes become smarter with more and more connected devices, so do our cities. And while congestion and data storage aren’t big problems for our homes, smart cities involving thousands or tens of thousands of sensors and associated data, have problems now and in the future.