What makes a city ‘smart’?

Abstract

Taking advantage of ICT tools and techniques for city administration, whether it is for urban planning activities, for transport solutions, or many other purposes is not a new concept. However in order for a city to be classified as 'smart', a synthesis of intelligence that transcends mere utilization is essential., This paper analyses the increasing use of ICT and sensing technologies in cities by examining this new way of city governing from a critical perspective.Existing projects and initiatives were investigated to find out how, and to what extent, these tools are being employed by cities. The advantages and the current shortcomings of smart city are also discussed in order to understand the viability of using these tools.

Urban Sustainability and the SDGs: A Nordic Perspective and Opportunity for Integration

“…In an ideal situation, public involvement in the different phases of decision making and also policy implementation brings about benefits, despite making the processes sometimes more laborious [49]. Some cities, such as Lahti, Finland but also Helsinki have appointed special officials who aim to engage citizens in the policy and planning processes [31].…”

The 4th Industrial Revolution, Smart Cities, and Sustainable Urban Regeneration : A Perspective Study

“…What makes a city "smart"? There were many previous forms in tandem with the current one: 'virtual city', 'wired city', 'informational city', 'telecity', 'intelligent city', 'urban cybernetics', 'digital city' and others (Thompson, 2016). Making cities smarter is usually achieved via Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-intensive solutions (Cavalcante et al, 2016).…”

The Puzzling Concept of Smart City in Central and Eastern Europe: A Literature Review Designed for Policy Development

“…Smart is just one of the multitude of concepts meant to designate the relation between the advancements of information and communication technologies (ICT) and economic, political and socio-cultural change, alongside 'intelligent', 'innovative', 'wired', 'digital', or 'creative' (Hollands, 2008;Thompson, 2016). In spite of the apparent diversity, the above-mentioned concepts represent variations of the same idea, the existent variety being a supplementary sign of the heterogeneous vision currently governing the field.…”

“…Number of scientific articles on smart city between 2000 and 2019Source: The authors Overall, the scientific literature analyzing the smart city concept in Europe is focused on several key themes:-conceptual debates including smart city and digital city concepts(Hollands, 2008;Dameri and Cocchia, 2013;Thompson, 2016;Ismagilova et al, 2019), including critical assessment of the concept due to its both impreciseness and limited approaches(Hollands, 2008); there are also integrative conceptual frameworks taking as case study European cities such as Vienna(Fernandez-Anez, Fernández-Güell and Giffinger, 2018), Barcelona (Bakıcı, Almirall and Wareham, 2013) or multiple cities (Anthopoulos, 2017); -general life quality oriented approaches of smart city policies, recognizing the concept not as a goal in itself but as a mean to increase resilience and quality of life (Boulos, Tsouros and Holopainen, 2015; Borsekova and Nijkamp, 2018; Kourtit, 2019); -analyses of specific smart city policies and their impact on general urban policies; these analyses focus on the decisive role in creating innovative cities at European level (Kourtit and Nijkamp, 2012; Dameri, 2017; Caragliu and Del Bo, 2019, 2020) that is also an opportunity for competitive urbanism (Taylor Buck and While, 2017) and smart city planning (Komninos et al, 2019); in close relation, the transformative effects of Internet of Things for cities are seen as a major innovation putting people and not technology itself in the center of smart cities approaches (Boulos, Tsouros and Holopainen, 2015; Ejaz and Anpalagan, 2019); -smart city governance, a topic analyzed through a variety of approaches, such as coalitions and organizations (Anthopoulos, 2017), stakeholders' implication (Axelsson and Granath, 2018; Marrone and Hammerle, 2018), citizens (non)implication (Engelbert, van Zoonen and Hirzalla, 2019); -smart city indicators for modeling performance (Lombardi et al, 2012), using indicators in order to prioritize funding by the European Commission (Lazaroiu and Roscia, 2012), or ranking European smart cities (Giffinger et al, 2007); -smart city in relation to green cities, sustainability and resilience approaches (Antrobus, 2011; Baron, 2012; Papa et al, 2015; Ahvenniemi et al, 2017; Bănică, Eva and Iațu, 2019; Bănică et al, 2020), including smart cities' contribution to sustainable public transport (Tomaszewska and Florea, 2018), decarbonizing transport (Zawieska and Pieriegud, 2018) and even a proposition of a European smart and resilient city model (Arafah, Winarso and Suroso, 2018).Currently, there could be identified six main areas of smart city actions included in most of the approaches found in literature: governance, economy, mobility, environment, people, and living each comprising a multitude of potential actions(Lombardi et al, 2012;Albino, Berardi and Dangelico, 2015). As an overall picture, based on these six dimensions,Arafah et al (2018) suggest an European Smart City model that includes, besides technology, resources, processes, activities, population and institutions.…”