Three years after receiving an $11 million grant from the European Union, the city of Santander in northern Spain has transformed itself into a prototype "smart city" that has attracted delegations from China and the US as well as from Google and Microsoft. Its 36-square-kilometer area is studded with 10,000 sensors that deliver data about everything from parking space availability to dumpster capacity to streetlight luminosity. Residents and officials can access the data through their mobile phones or tablets.

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