What does a city of the future look like?

In Hebei province's Xiong'an New Area, a traffic light adjusts its timing in milliseconds to ease a growing queue of vehicles. Beneath the streets, sensors quietly confirm that oxygen levels inside an underground utility tunnel remain stable. Nearby, residents return home by swiping their access cards as community systems automatically log their arrival.

Inside the Xiong'an Urban Computing Center — also known as the "Eye of Xiong'an" — a giant digital dashboard tracks the heartbeat of China's newest city in real time. Here, advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data and the internet of things are designed not only to make urban management smarter, but also to make everyday life safer, more convenient and more responsive to people's needs.

"The computing center serves as the digital brain of Xiong'an," said Wang Zixuan, an official with the industry, information technology and data bureau of Xiong'an New Area.

From the very beginning of planning, Xiong'an decided to adopt the concept of building three interconnected cities — one underground, one above ground and one in the cloud, and together, they provide the backbone for the dynamic virtual replica of the city, enabling managers to respond to urban operations in real time, Wang said.

For residents, however, much of that technology works quietly in the background.

One example is a community care service built on utility monitoring. "If an elderly resident living alone shows no water or gas activity for an unusually long period, the system automatically sends an alert to the local community, prompting staff to check on the resident," Wang said.

The same digital intelligence extends across the city's transportation network.

Every municipal road in Xiong'an has been built to digital road standards. As traffic patterns change throughout the day, signal timings can be adjusted automatically, helping ease congestion and improve travel efficiency, Wang added.

Supporting these services is an extensive digital infrastructure. Xiong'an has deployed more than one million connected sensing devices and built over 500 kilometers of digital roads.