Transforming the Citizen Experience in the Town of Cary

When the town of Cary, North Carolina, set out to adopt the latest smart city technologies, the ultimate goal was to enhance the lives of its citizens. With a growing population and proximity to top universities and tech jobs, Cary—the second-largest incorporated town in America—aimed to give its people nothing less than the most modern digital experiences.

The town had evolved its IT infrastructure in recent years, moving away from disparate legacy systems toward a more streamlined, cloud-based approach. Embracing smart city technology would be a bold next step, requiring thorough testing before rollout on a grand scale.

Cary couldn’t do it alone. Happily, they had a trusted longtime partner of 14 years in NWN, a leading Tech-enabled services company that helped to transform the citizen experience, and drives innovation adoption through their secure solution-as-a-service portfolio and Experience Management Platform (EMP) leveraging the latest Cisco API’s and technologies.

Together, they found an ideal platform in Cisco Kinetic for Cities. Through this smart-city system, the town of Cary would be able to view and manage data—on a single pane of glass—for parking, traffic-signal automation, crowd counting, facility usage, video analytics, and more.

The most unique part of the project? Cary set up its Town Hall campus as a living laboratory—a place where they could test an array of smart city capabilities before implementing them on a large scale. In one test, they installed sensors to gather data about how often parking is used, with the goal of adopting smart parking town-wide.

These days, Cary is discovering a next-generation approach to improving its infrastructure and delivering public services that benefit its citizens and businesses. Smart city technology is helping the town achieve its long-term plan to revitalize its downtown and destination centers. It’s an exciting moment for Cary, destined to enhance the quality of life for everyone in the community.

Between old-style systems and avant-garde upgrades, there’s a bridge.

Watch the Town of Cary Success Story

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