As cities embrace digital transformations, adding smart city technologies to save money and boost efficiency, they are drawing the attention of web giants like Google and Amazon, which view cities as new platforms on which to build all-encompassing services. There is a risk that these web giants, already established in core markets, will use their cash reserves to wrap up entire cities, enmeshing them within a platform, and building a proposition that a city can’t extricate itself from. It’s a long-term view, and one that is admittedly a little alarmist, but companies like Google and Facebook have expressed clear interest in expanding their involvement into other areas of their customers’ lives. As growth stalls in one market, whether that’s online…