How AI and Big Data Can Transform Smart Communities into One‑Hour Life Zones

Smart community construction is the foundation of smart cities, accelerating urbanization, improving community management, and enhancing residents' satisfaction and happiness.

The COVID‑19 pandemic exposed several problems: limited coverage, insufficient intelligent infrastructure, and low digitalization of community management, which hinder efficiency.

Zhang Jindong, a national People's Congress deputy and chairman of Suning Holdings, proposes government‑enterprise cooperation to reduce costs and increase efficiency, establishing unified standards and platforms that make communities more efficient, convenient, intelligent, and livable.

At the macro level, development is uneven—coastal regions advance faster, while less‑developed areas lag due to cost and consumption constraints. At the micro level, numerous participants create fragmented products and standards, leading to isolated “information islands” that prevent comprehensive smart services.

He recommends leveraging community resources to integrate services such as elderly care, medical care, education, governance, shopping, and logistics, thereby forming a community‑centered service life‑circle that boosts residents' happiness.

Integrating smart community management into the broader social service system—linking it with government services, security, and city management—positions it as a leading force in digital China and smart city construction. During the pandemic, many internet firms opened community management platforms for monitoring entry and exit, promoting coordinated governance.

Despite rapid advances in AI, big data, and cloud computing, product development across multiple stakeholders still lacks unified standards and compatibility.

Zhang urges the government to lead at the city or district level, establishing unified underlying standards and integrating community big data, governance, security, and ancillary services into a single platform to eliminate information islands and improve efficiency.

The overall trend is to use intelligent hardware and new internet technologies to provide modern, intelligent community experiences, making smart communities a crucial component of smart cities and new‑infrastructure initiatives.

Future smart community development should focus on industry integration, creating an “one‑hour life circle” that meets evolving user needs with fresh, convenient, diverse, and cost‑effective products and services, driven by AI, big data, and cloud computing.