Abstract
Urban infrastructure systems responsible for the provision of energy, transportation, shelter, and communication to populations are important determinants of health and health equity. The term “smart city” has been used synonymously with other terms, such as “digital city”, “sustainable city”, and “information city”, even though definitional distinctions exist between terms. In this review, we use “smart cities” as a catch-all term to refer to an emerging concept in urban governance practice and scholarship that has been increasingly applied to achieve public health aims. The objective of this systematic review was to document and analyze the inclusion of equity considerations and dimensions (i.e., a measurement, analytical, or dialectical focus on systematic disparities in health between groups) in smart city interventions aimed to improve human health and well-being. Systematic searches were carried out in the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Psychological Information Database (PsycINFO), the PubMed database from the National Center for Biotechnology Information, Elsevier’s database Scopus, and Web of Science, returning 3219 titles. Ultimately, 28 articles were retained, assessed, and coded for their inclusion of equity characteristics using the Cochrane PROGRESS-Plus tool (referring to (P) place of residence, (R) race, (O) occupation, (G) gender, (R) religion, (E) education, (S) socio-economic status (SES), and (S) social capital). The most frequently included equity considerations in smart city health interventions were place of residence, SES, social capital, and personal characteristics; conversely, occupation, gender or sex, religion, race, ethnicity, culture, language, and education characteristics were comparatively less featured in such interventions. Overall, it appears that most of intervention evaluations assessed in this review are still in the early testing phases, and thus did not include or feature robust evaluative designs or commercially available technologies
Highlights
Urban infrastructure—including systems that provide energy, transportation, shelter, and communication—is an important determinant of population health and health equity.These systems influence risk of morbidity and mortality from injury, and chronic physical and mental diseases
While there were no search date criteria applied in this review, the earliest noted evaluation being conducted on smart city interventions targeting human health and well-being was in 2013
While smart city concepts have historically been criticized for a lack of focus regarding social concerns [12,45,46,47], our review found that numerous equity issues and topics have been considered in smart city health interventions
Summary
Urban infrastructure—including systems that provide energy, transportation, shelter, and communication—is an important determinant of population health and health equity. These systems influence risk of morbidity and mortality from injury, and chronic physical and mental diseases. Relevant health risks include exposure to traffic, air pollution, noise, and social isolation; sedentary behavior; and unhealthy food sources [1]. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 2325; doi:10.3390/ijerph17072325 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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