Who Uses Smart City Services and What to Make of It: Toward Interdisciplinary Smart Cities Research

Miltiadis Lytras,Anna Visvizi

doi:10.3390/su10061998

Abstract

As research on smart cities garners increased attention and its status consolidates as one of the fanciest areas of research today, this paper makes a case for a cautious rethink of the very rationale and relevance of the debate. To this end, this paper looks at the smart cities debate from the perspectives of, on the one hand, citizens’ awareness of applications and solutions that are considered ‘smart’ and, on the other hand, their ability to use these applications and solutions. Drawing from a detailed analysis of the outcomes of a pilot international study, this paper showcases that even the most educated users of smart city services, i.e., those arguably most aware of and equipped with skills to use these services effectively, express very serious concerns regarding the utility, safety, accessibility and efficiency of those services. This suggests that more pragmatism needs to be included in smart cities research if its findings are to remain useful and relevant for all stakeholders involved. The discussion in this paper contributes to the smart cities debate in three ways. First, it adds empirical support to the thesis of ‘normative bias’ of smart cities research. Second, it suggests ways of bypassing it, thereby opening a debate on the preconditions of sustainable interdisciplinary smart cities research. Third, it points to new avenues of research.

Highlights

Even though over the past few decades, smart cities research has transformed into a multidisciplinary field, housing a variety of domains and disciplines, it is still heavily based on computer science and engineering, with an explicit focus on how technological advances may be applied in urban spaces
Given the apparent relevance and usability of the findings produced in the field, and the implicit policy-making potential that is inherent in the smart cities debate, it has been embraced by policy-makers at influential fora, such as the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
The main finding was that six factors are hermeneutic for this phenomenon, namely, security and protection (45%), data privacy (25%), transparency of services (8%), ethical concerns (6%), required soft skills (5%), third party awareness (5%) and the complexity of services (4%) set some limiting factors and psychological barriers for the adoption of smart city services by users

Summary

Introduction

Even though over the past few decades, smart cities research has transformed into a multidisciplinary field, housing a variety of domains and disciplines, it is still heavily based on computer science and engineering, with an explicit focus on how technological advances may be applied in urban spaces. As the body of literature on smart cities has developed, novel issues have been brought to the analysis, and new uses of technology have been proposed. It naturally lends itself to interdisciplinary (using insights and methods from more than one discipline) and multidisciplinary (using insights from different disciplines in parallel, not in conjunction) [1] approaches and strategies Both require conceptual precision if research outcomes are to be valid and usable. In contemporary smart cities research, this particular plea has very practical implications. These can be divided into two groups. An vibrant debate has emerged around issues and topics more frequently associated with social sciences and humanities [6,7,8]

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Methods

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Conclusion