ICT and sustainability in smart cities management

Abstract

Purpose\ud – Contemporary debate is increasingly focused on ICT and sustainability, especially in relation to the modern configuration of urban and metropolitan areas in the so-called smartization process. The purpose of this paper is to observe the connections between smart city features as conceptualized in the framework proposed by Giffinger et al. (2007) and new technologies as tools, and sustainability as the goal.\ud \ud Design/methodology/approach\ud – The connections are identified through a content analysis performed using NVivo on official reports issued by organizations, known as industry players within smart city projects, listed in the Navigant Research Report 2013.\ud \ud Findings\ud – The results frame ICT and sustainability as “across-the-board elements” because they connect with all of the services provided to communities in a smart city and play a key role in smart city planning. Specifically, sustainability and ICT can be seen as tools to enable the smartization process.\ud \ud Research limitations/implications\ud – An all-in-one perspective emerges by embedding sustainability and ICT in smart interventions; further research could be conduct through direct interviews to city managers and industry players in order to understand their attitude towards the development of smart city projects.\ud \ud Practical implications\ud – Potential approaches emerging from this research are useful to city managers or large corporations partnering with local agencies in order to increase the opportunities for the long-term success of smart projects.\ud \ud Originality/value\ud – The results of this paper delineate a new research path looking at the development of new models that integrate drivers, ICT, and sustainability in an all-in-one perspective and new indicators for the evaluation of the interventions

On the social shaping dimensions of smart sustainable cities: A study in science, technology, and society

“…(Bibri 2015b, p. 3) This is of relevance as to the innovative ways that are mostly needed to address the challenge of urban sustainability and rapid urbanization (e.g. Batty et al 2012;Bibri and Krogstie 2016a;Bifulco et al 2016;Townsend 2013;Nam and Pardo 2011). In relation to this, like other (academic) urban discourses, the discourse of smart sustainable cities, which is constructed in the light of new conceptions about the scientific, technological, environmental, economic, institutional, social, and cultural changes over the past decade-'contains an all-embracing understanding of the problems cities are facing and is also the defining context for suggested [ICT] solutions' (Jessop 1998, p. 78) as future possibilities for the challenges and problems of urban sustainability and rapid urbanization.…”

“…Rotmans, van Asselt and Vellinga 2000). ICT and sustainability play a key role in smart sustainable urban planning (Bifulco et al 2016;Bibri and Krogstie 2016a, c). In other words, ICT development and sustainability awareness has resulted in an opportunity to rethink the way we plan and develop cities (Höjer and Wangel 2015).…”

Backcasting in futures studies: a synthesized scholarly and planning approach to strategic smart sustainable city development

“…Sustainable development goals and smart targets should be well understood with respect to their synergy and integration (see, e.g., [1,5,9,12,13,16,19,43]) in the context of city planning, a valuable force for attaining a sort of integrated objectives in the realm of smart sustainable cities. As a management and government function, city planning involves formulating a detailed plan to achieve optimum balance of demands for growth with the available resources and the need to protect the environment, or to provide and maintain a livable and healthy human environment in conjunction with minimal demand on resources and minimal impacts on the environment-by integrating urban strategies with technological innovations as well as formulating and implementing policy regulations and institutional frameworks.…”

“…As further elucidated by [47] (pp. [18][19], "in the forecasting approach, the uncertainty is usually treated in terms of sensitivity of the model results to variations in external variables. The futures studies of forecasting have an idea to figure the future out what will really happen in order to permit society…to adapt to the more or less inevitable trends.…”

“…Especially, smart cities have been criticized for their lack of explicitly incorporating the goals of sustainable development (e.g., [12,34,43]) and sustainable cities for facing difficulties in translating sustainability into the built environment and for evaluating the extent to which different sustainable urban forms contribute to the goals of sustainable development ( [16,31,37,40,78]). Adding to these is the weak or lack of connection between the two urban development strategies, despite the proven role of ICT in supporting cities in their transition towards the needed sustainable development (e.g., [1,19,43]). On this note, Angelidou et al [5] conclude that the smart city and sustainable city landscapes are extremely fragmented both on the policy and the technical levels, and there is a host of unexplored opportunities towards smart sustainable city development.…”