Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) can realize the concept of “smart city.” Video surveillance in smart cities is, usually, based on a centralized framework in which large amounts of real-time media data are transmitted to and processed in the cloud. However, the cloud relies on network connectivity of the Internet that is sometimes limited or unavailable; thus, the centralized framework is not sufficient for real-time processing of media data needed for smart video surveillance. To tackle this problem, edge computing - a technique for accelerating the development of AIoT (AI across IoT) in smart cities - can be conducted. In this paper, a distributed real-time object detection framework based on edge-cloud collaboration for smart video surveillance is proposed. When collaborating with the cloud, edge computing can serve as converged computing through which media data from distributed edge devices of the network are consolidated by AI in the cloud. After AI discovers global knowledge in the cloud, it to be shared at the edge is deployed remotely on distributed edge devices for real-time smart video surveillance. First, the proposed framework and its preliminary implementation are described. Then, the performance evaluation is provided regarding potential benefits, real-time responsiveness and low-throughput media data transmission.