Toward a societal smart city: Clarifying the social justice dimension of smart cities

Abstract

Smart cities have gained prominence in theory and practice over the past two decades. While many aspects of smart cities have been explored, there has been a disproportionate focus on physical and technological elements at the expense of social justice and democratic values. Although there have been attempts to advance the ideas of human-centric or people-centric approaches, a comprehensive perspective encompassing social rights, democratic values, and social justice is still missing. To fill this gap, this study introduces the concept of 'societal smart city', discusses its dimensions, and clarifies aspects of social justice as one of the main dimensions of a societal smart city. In addition to theoretical elaborations, we offer a case study of Tehran, the capital city of Iran, which has recently invested significantly in its technological infrastructure. For this purpose, we conducted a questionnaire survey. Results of the Explanatory Factor Analysis (EFA) indicate that four key factors, namely citizen-centric governance (α: 0.92, loading 15 variables), inclusive services (α: 0.91, loading 11 variables), resilient infrastructure (α: 0.9, loading 8 variables), and information literacy (α: 0.91, loading 6 variables) are the main underlying factors of social justice in Tehran. The study highlights the importance of social justice as a major dimension of the societal smart city and provides new insights for urban planners and policymakers on how to realize a societal smart city that offers benefits beyond physical and technological advances.