The Green Dimension in 11 Smart City Plans: Is There an Environmental Ethic Embedded in Long Term Strategic Commitments?

Abstract

We analyze and compare 11 city cases in three continents to find out differences and commonalities in the green dimension in smart city plans globally: Shanghai (China), four cities in Japan, Iskandar (Malaysia), New York (United States), and Amsterdam, Málaga, Santander, Tarragona (Europe). The aims of the work has been to test whether there is an environmental ethic embedded in long-term strategic commitments in these local contexts, how different environmental values are, and what lines of research might be interesting to tackle from scientific perspectives in future works where the green dimension is addressed in smart city plans. We find that plan design is very different in the search of a model of a smart city in the 11 cases studied. As we expect choices in plan design to have a long-term impact in terms of environmental outcomes and further resilience, both locally and globally, the environmental ethics attached to the local plans, or the lack thereof, we argue have a strong impact.KeywordsSmart citiesGreeningSustainable citiesEnvironmentUrban planningComparative public policies