Characteristics of Smart Sustainable City Development: Implications for Project Management

Abstract

Projects and project management (PM) are becoming a way of working, and many changes in society have evolved because of projects. However, will the societal agenda also influence the project management discipline? Societal issues generated by urban population growth and rapid urbanization arise in cities. Making a city “smart” and sustainable is emerging as a strategy to mitigate these issues. How does this development impact project management? In order to answer this question, we performed meaningful learning by mapping the concepts for Smart Sustainable Cities (SSC) and project management and developing prior and post concept maps. We identified four major findings describing the implication of societal issues on project management: quality of life acts as a societal objective for PM; PM governs autonomous projects with new business models; and PM success criteria are related to stakeholders and long-term effects, as well as extensive connection to the digital world with consideration of the privacy and ethics. From this, we were able to redefine the definition of project management as “a collaborative endeavor of all affected stakeholders equivalently participating in exploring and exploiting, via an autonomous temporary organization, fit-for-purpose deliverables with connections to the digital platform, thereby aiming to prepare the entities of the affected stakeholders for the future”. Our study is novel and relevant for PM and SSC practice: societal issues are on the strategy agenda of many governments and companies, and these will drive the projects that are performed in this environment. The project management community should align with this development, since these challenges are part of their environment. As a start, a comprehensive understanding of the impact of societal issues is relevant to build new definitions, competences, and supporting processes.

Designing Rapid Rating System of Smart Economy to Sustain and Develop Cities in Egypt

“…[10] As a result of the literature review and previous studies technological economic systems are not implemented in cities according to the time line that mentioned for their appearance [3], but to the vision of the city, needs and moves to smartness. [11] As shown in figure 1 and also it was found that there is dynamic and overlap between technological economic types. It is possible to appear more than one type of technological economics in one city.…”

Smart and Age-Friendly Cities in Romania: An Overview of Public Policy and Practice

“…Schipper and Silvius [ 38 ] looked at the characteristics of smart sustainable city development and the implications for project management. They stated that cities may require a centralised and comprehensive approach to strike an appropriate balance between diverse service exploration in different domains and intensive service exploitation.…”

“…They stated that cities may require a centralised and comprehensive approach to strike an appropriate balance between diverse service exploration in different domains and intensive service exploitation. Publicly driven partnerships may help to accelerate smart city adoption at an early stage [ 38 ]. In the case of Croatian smart cities, Milenković et al [ 39 ] showed how the government’s role in public–private partnership projects is to evaluate and approve detailed execution plans of the concessionaire while the private partner’s role is to design, build, finance, and operate the facilities.…”

The Role of Program Management in the Smart Cities Development Process

“…The paper specifically deals with the topic of application of program management in the process of smart city development. Program management includes the phase of preparation and definition of the program, program goals, defining the time frame of required resources and costs and analysis of the expected effects of the program, to make a decision on the justification of the program (Schipper, & Silvius, 2018). Planning of time and resources for each project, summarizing plans in a central place, consolidation of plans into a program plan, analysis of potential conflicts between projects (especially resource), decision making, revision of project plans, project implementation, monitoring and program control, are the following steps (Gareis, 2005).…”