Digitising water systems reduces non‑revenue water and operating costs, which is a prerequisite for any municipality attempting to modernise toward smart‑city standards. Cape Town is famous for its scenic bay, vibrant weather, and the towering presence of Table Mountain. It’s also infamous for another towering presence, the unfinished highway called “Solly’s Folly”. The stuff of legends, this road was abandoned in the Seventies, likely because of budget issues. Others blame bad engineering or a stubborn cafe owner who refused to sell their land. To this day, it remains a favourite talking point between locals and visitors who see the high bridge abruptly going nowhere. Solly’s Folly is also a reminder that urban areas are forces of nature. As much as one can rigidly plan and orchestrate our towns and cities, there are other factors as well. Economics, weather, and people’s movements all have a say. In the early 2000s, the idea of smart cities gained popularity. Using digital technology such as data and Internet of Things devices, we could bring order to urban chaos. It sounded very promising. Yet, two decades later, the results are still mixed. There are successes, such as Singapore and Barcelona, but few other cities have reached the status of being comprehensively “smart”. True smart cities remain elusive. Yet, if we zoom in, we can see compartmentalised examples of smart city advances, such as dynamic traffic lights in New York and smart energy grids in Shenzhen. Smart‑water adoption has outpaced most other smart‑infrastructure initiatives because utilities can quantify the financial impact of leak reduction, pressure management, and regulatory compliance. The reason is that smart cities are still cities. Top-down planning can help guide and shape them, but they emerge from the bottom up. What bottom-up forces can modernise a city? Water infrastructure is often the first