Conceptualizing Small and Medium-Sized Smart Cities in the Mediterranean Region

Abstract

Despite the remarkable interest in smart cities, noticed during the last decade, a consistent comprehension of the concept is not yet fully realized. Various definitions, ranging from exclusively technology-oriented perceptions to broader views, have been introduced, establishing a definitional polyphony and causing lack of semantic interoperability. Empirical evidence witnesses the prevalence of technology-pushed smart city initiatives as well as their failure to meet expectations in several urban domains. When planning “smart,” the relevance of ICT and their applications should be in alignment with spatial and other urban peculiarities and sub-systems' interactions, implying the need for getting deep insight into the city's ontology. The paper focuses on the extension/enrichment of an existing smart city ontology, with concepts and relationships stemming from Mediterranean small and medium-sized cities, in an attempt to outline their main key drivers and their interrelationships and fully grasp the smart city concept in the particular spatial context.

The role of locality and place-specific development paths in creating smart cities: The example of middle-sized Hungarian cities

“…The role of public policy in creating an appropriate environment, the so-called smart city ecosystem (Ruohomaa et al, 2019), is even more dominant at the scale of medium-sized cities. Well-designed ecosystem allows private actors to participate as much as possible in the development process, while involving local residents, tourists, city authorities and other stakeholders, because the introduction of ICT-driven models often fails as they do not fit the characteristics and expectations of the different spheres of the city (Panagiotopoulou, M. et al 2019). According to Hajduk, S. (2016), a city can be a smart city if it has the proper development documents and institutional system, intellectual resources, and infrastructure.…”

Machine Learning Technologies for Sustainability in Smart Cities in the Post-COVID Era

“…Studies have been developed for application in the areas of energy management [87][88][89] that predict consumption and optimize its use thanks to the use of IoT, creating a sustainable and efficient city; there has been research focusing on traffic management to improve the lifestyle and pollution of vehicles in cities [90,91]; and there have been applications of sustainable constructions within cities promoting the use of IoT to significantly promote and accelerate the development of smart buildings with low energy consumption in the future, which implies the creation of sustainable construction environments [92][93][94]. Likewise, there is a line of research development focused on the use of ML techniques that help the planning of the main lines in a Smart City project in line with the spatial and urban peculiarities and the interactions of the subsystems creating a sustainable city since its conception [94][95][96].…”