Open cloze
For questions 1-8, read the text below and think of the word which best fits each gap. Use only one word in each gap.
In the past decade, the idea that a city can reinvent itself through technology has moved from a glossy brochure to a daily negotiation over who benefits, who pays, and who gets left out. Although sensors in streetlights may promise safer roads, it is still the people, not the data, who must decide what counts as “safe” and at what cost. There are councils that have signed contracts they barely understood, while residents, whose lives are measured in rent rises and longer commutes, wonder 1. the “smart” label is merely a new way of selling the old. If a system is designed to predict congestion, it will also, 2. definition, track movement; and unless safeguards are built in 3. the start, what begins as convenience could end as surveillance. Yet it would be 4. easy to dismiss 5. whole project, 6. the same tools, when used 7. care, might help cities cut emissions, manage water, and respond to crises that no single agency can handle 8. its own.