City Policy Makers Research Articles

What Makes Indian Cities Smart? A Policy Analysis of Smart Cities Mission

Despite widespread practices worldwide and increasing research centred on smart urbanism, there is no universal definition for ‘smart cities’. More importantly, a growing line of research warns about the north-centric notion of smart city research which underestimates the fast rate of uptake in the global South. In a search for a contextually informed definition of smart cities, the paper focuses on India: Home to one-third of the global South population, and the cradle of the ambitious Smart City Mission to develop 100 smart cities nationwide. It investigates the Smart City Proposals (SCPs) prepared for the first 20 smart cities prioritised, as part of the Mission. Findings offer a typology of smart city approaches; and shed light on the smart dimensions prioritised (e.g. smart governance, smart citizen and smart infrastructure) versus those overlooked (e.g. smart environment and smart economy) at the smart city policymaking level in India. The paper calls for further empirical research to investigate how the typologies pan out at the implementation of smart cities across the nation.

What could go wrong with cooking? Exploring vulnerability at the water, energy and food Nexus in Kampala through a social practices lens.

Sub-Saharan African cities like Kampala face challenges with rapid urbanization and impacts of climate change. These challenges have exacerbated the struggle to provide adequate infrastructural and socio-ecological services to Kampala's growing poor. Based on a social practices perspective, this paper presents a study of emergent vulnerabilities at the urban Nexus of water, energy and food (WEF) in the informal settlements of Bwaise and Kanyogoga. We employ methods of observation, interviews, focus group discussions and a vision-building workshop to explore the growing vulnerabilities of poor households as they daily navigate deteriorating water quality, rising energy prices and food insecurity. Results indicate that most household-level vulnerabilities relate to energy poverty. Households scale back on water treatment practices such as boiling and the cooking of highly-nutritious yet energy-demanding foods such as beans in efforts to conserve charcoal. Emergent practices of everyday resilience-building include the use of biomass briquettes as an alternative to solid charcoal as well as social networks and capital which allow households to borrow food and energy. We suggest the notion of ‘precarious consumption’ as a tool for understanding emergent everyday vulnerabilities in relation to the urban WEF Nexus service provision and resilience policy-making in cities of the Global South.

How Are Smart City Concepts and Technologies Perceived and Utilized? A Systematic Geo-Twitter Analysis of Smart Cities in Australia

ABSTRACT “Smart cities” is a hot topic in debates about urban policy and practice across the globe. There is, however, limited knowledge and understanding about trending smart city concepts and technologies; relationships between popular smart city concepts and technologies; policies that influence the perception and utilization of smart city concepts and technologies. The aim of this study is to evaluate how smart city concepts and technologies are perceived and utilized in cities. The methodology involves a social media analysis approach—i.e., systematic geo-Twitter analysis—that contains descriptive, content, policy, and spatial analyses. For the empirical investigation, the Australian context is selected as the testbed. The results reveal that: (a) innovation, sustainability, and governance are the most popular smart city concepts; (b) internet-of-things, artificial intelligence, and autonomous vehicle technology are the most popular technologies; (c) a balanced view exists on the importance of both smart city concepts and technologies; (d) Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane are the leading Australian smart cities; (e) systematic geo-Twitter analysis is a useful methodological approach for investigating perceptions and utilization of smart city concepts and technologies. The findings provide a clear snapshot of community perceptions on smart city concepts and technologies, and can inform smart city policymaking.

Critical Mapping of Indicators for Smart Cities Evaluation

Sustainable urban development is extremely important, if not imperative, for city managers and policy makers. Nowadays, the use of Information and Communication Technologies announces assertive, sensitive and economic solutions. This research aims to introduce smart city indicators based on critical and updated diagrammatic digital analysis regarding issues such as mobility, transportation, environment, housing, governance and security faced with concepts as innovation, sustainability and others. In order to achieve this goal, it is offered an original and relational mapping of indicators created from information collected in different sources such as texts by well-known authors such as Guimarães [1], Greenfield [2], Weiss [3] institutional websites such as Brazilian Smart Cities Network [4], Urban Systems [5] publications and legal regulations such as NBR ISO 37122 [6]. Thus, this relational mapping will highlight graphically and visually the relations between the types of technologies available and how they have been used and applied. In a nutshell, we offer a diagrammatic approach oriented to create a useful indicator analysis guide based on available technologies, populations’ needs and, more importantly, hope to provide better understanding about smart cities rankings and indicator regarding the well-being of people interacting with urban infrastructure, in special with mobility and urban devices.

Causally speaking: Challenges in measuring gentrification for population health research in the United States and Canada.

The planet is rapidly urbanizing, the need for actionable evidence to guide the design of cities that help (not hinder) our health has never felt more urgent. One essential component of healthy city design is improving neighborhood conditions in previously disinvested areas. To ensure equitable city design, policy makers, city planners, health practitioners, and researchers are interested in understanding the complex relationship between urban change, gentrification, and population health. Yet, the causal link between gentrification and health outcomes remain unclear. Without clear and consistent gentrification measures, researchers struggle to identify populations who are exposed to gentrification, and to compare health outcomes between exposed and unexposed populations. To move the science forward, this paper summarizes the challenges related to gentrification measurement in the United States and Canada when aspiring to conduct studies to analyze causal relationships between gentrification and health. The paper concludes with a series of recommendations for studies aimed at examining both causes and consequences of gentrification and health.

International isomorphism, sustainable innovation and wealth for OECD cities

ABSTRACT City memberships in international organizations such as C40 Cities may facilitate urban governance, sustainable innovation, and wealth. This study considers whether OECD cities benefit through sustainable innovations and transformative international memberships that promote the innovations. By examining these issues faced by many city policy makers, this work contributes to the sustainable urban governance literature. These issues are researched through an institutional theory lens to extend this theory of isomorphism to the international city context, where more commonly it is developed in a firm context. Findings show that cities investing in green space and innovation are wealthier, whereas cities with more pollution are less wealthy. Furthermore, international city memberships are related to wealth such that they inform the use of innovative capacity toward wealth-producing sustainable outcomes. Because city memberships produce forums where normative and mimetic pressures operate among cities to apply sustainable innovations, empirical support for institutional theory is found in the city context.

A Data-Driven Approach to Exploring Future Land Use and Transport Scenarios: The Online What If? Tool

ABSTRACTIn an era of rapid urbanization, there is a need for data-driven tools to guide long-term strategic planning. Online What If? (OWI) is a planning support system (PSS) that helps inform strategic planners about the impact of population growth and other socioeconomic factors will have on the future growth of cities. This research presents its application in metropolitan Perth with a two-part case study, demonstrating a first comprehensive application of the tool. First, OWI tests five scenarios for urban growth through the year 2050, allocating residential land use. Next, OWI alters land use allocations to align residential development with high frequency public transit, while also allocating commercial land use to support higher residential densities. Together, these data-driven scenarios inform city planners and policy makers in guiding the long-term, sustainable growth of Perth. The paper concludes with a review of OWI’s strengths, weaknesses and possibilities for continual development.

Investigating the relationship between housing policy and accessibility, based on developing a multi-perspectives accessibility index: a case study in Tehran, Iran

Quality of life has become a challenge for today’s world, which is associated with the transportation and land-use requirements, especially housing. Accessibility-based planning as a land-use transportation integration planning has turned growing attention in urban decision making in recent decades. Since there is a strong relationship between accessibility and housing policies such as housing price, this study tries to cover these relationships. In this context, we proposed a novel four-stage methodology. Firstly, a comprehensive, multi-perspectives accessibility index is being developed based on GIS for spatial analyses and GMCDM for aggregating experts’ views and then the index is compared with housing price. In order to verify the comparison and functionality of the parameters on accessibility and housing policy, sensitivity analysis is conducted. The results indicate, keeping structural features constant, the housing price shows a moderate negative correlation of -0.552 with accessibility in the study area. Although the GAHP weights and SA analysis results showed a positive correlation, the housing policy did not follow the same. The results of this research are meaningful in explaining the effect of especially neighbourhood characteristics for city policymaking and housing market analyses.

A Study of the Interaction of Human Smart Characteristics with Demographic Dynamics and Built Environment: The Case of Limassol, Cyprus

The smart city notion provides an integrated and systematic answer to challenges facing cities today. Smart city policy makers and technology vendors are increasingly stating their interest in human-centered smart cities. On the other hand, in many studies smart city policies bring forward a one-size-fits-all type of recommendation for all areas in question instead of location-specific ones. Based on the above considerations, this paper illustrates that smart citizen characteristics, alongside local urban challenges, are paving the way towards more effective efforts in smart city policy decision making. Our main presumption is that the development level of human-centered indicators of smart cities varies locally. The scientific objective of this paper is to find a simple, understandable link between human smart characteristics and local determinants in Limassol city, Cyprus. The data set consists of seven indicators defined as human smart characteristics and seven which determine local urban challenges consisting of demographic dynamics and built infrastructure attributes based on housing. Correlations of the 14 above indicators are examined in entirety and separately, as the study area was divided into three spatial sub-groups (high, moderate, and low coverage areas) depending on dispersed urbanization, as the main challenge of the study area. The data were obtained mainly from the most recent population census in 2011 and categorized in sub-groups by triggering CLC 2012. Analyzing the statistics using principal component analysis (PCA), we identify significant relationships between human smart city characteristics, demographic dynamics and built infrastructure attributes which can be used in local policy decision making. Spatial variations based on the dispersed urbanization are also observed regarding the above-mentioned relationships.

Externalities of development of the sharing economy in tourism cities

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to identify the state-of-the-art of scientific research on externalities generated in cities by the sharing economy in tourism (SET) based on an extensive literature review. Design/methodology/approach This review detected benefits and costs of the SET in cities development described in the literature using the economic externalities theory approach. The SALSA (Search, AppraisaL, Synthesis and Analysis) research procedure was used to collect relevant academic articles. For findings, the qualitative and quantitative content analysis combined to make a critical analysis of selected papers was conducted. Findings Thirty articles devoted to the impact of the SET in cities were identified. Five topics that gained researchers’ attention were recognized: real estate market; transportation; quality of life and gentrification; entrepreneurship and innovativeness of citizens; and local budgets’ incomes. The studies that present externalities of development of the SET in a more complex way are extremely rare. Research limitations/implications Research limitations are related to the methods used. The subjectivism of the research is a limitation to possibilities to achieve similar results when analyzing the same set of papers by different researchers. The results then are not to be generalized. Practical implications The research reveals a list of problems with externalities of the development of the SET in tourism destinations. Those problems are to be solved by policymakers in cities. Originality/value This study identified the gaps of previous research on the impacts of the SET on cities’ development. The paper presented an original conceptualization of future research.

Detection and Analysis of Anomalies in People Density and Mobility Through Wireless Smartphone Tracking

One of the challenges of this century is to use the data that a smart-city provides to make life easier for its inhabitants. Specifically, within the area of urban mobility, the possibility of detecting anomalies in the movement of pedestrians and vehicles is an issue of vital importance for the planning and administration of a city. The aim of this paper is to propose a methodology to detect the movement of people from the information transmitted by their smart mobile devices, analyze these data, and be able to detect or recognize anomalies in their behavior. In order to validate this methodology, different experiments have been carried out based on real data aiming to extract knowledge, as well as obtaining a characterisation of the anomalies detected. The use of this methodology might help the city policy makers to better manage their mobility and transport resources.

A methodological approach on studying policy-making of autonomous driving in cities

This commentary proposes a methodological approach about policy analysis on autonomous driving. It focuses on the role of discourse, the multiple actors and technologies involved in the processes of urban policy-making. Autonomous driving is considered a crucial case of policy-making in cities, because of the multitude of established and new actors involved as well as the combination of different digitalisation and automation technologies. Current research outlines the uncertainty planners and policymakers find themselves in regarding how to plan and regulate for autonomous driving, and calls for the need of finding the right forms of governance and policy for the implementation of autonomous driving in urban contexts. Therefore, studying the processes of its policy in the making is vital, as it is these processes that determine if and how any kind of policy will come into place. Subsequently, it is urban policy that will define the ways autonomous driving will be implemented and its implications in cities. Since both socio-political and material factors play a role in policy-making, a suitable methodological approach is needed that can address both. Therefore, this commentary discusses methodological developments drawing inspiration from Argumentative Discourse Analysis (ADA) and combining it with elements from Actor-Network-Theory (ANT). The insights provided by the commentary aim at a more comprehensive and thorough understanding of policy-making processes of autonomous driving and how policy change occurs (or not).

Effect of Urbanization on Land use Land Cover in Gombe Metropolis

This study examined the integration of Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System (RS/GIS) for analyzing land use and land cover dynamics in Gombe Metropolitan, the Gombe State capital for the period 1976 to 2016. Land sat (TM) images of 1976, 1996and 2016 were used. The study employed supervised digital image classification method using Erdas Imagine 9.2 and Arc GIS 10.5 software and classified the land use into undisturbed vegetation, sparse vegetation, Settlements, Farmlands, Rock outcrops, Bare surfaces. The images were analyzed via georeferencing, image enhancement, image resampling and classification. The results obtained show an increasing settlements (from 0.36% - 4.01%) and farmlands (from 24.8% - 51.2%), over a decreasing of other LULC classes (bare surfaces, undisturbed and sparse vegetation, and rocky outcrops) for the time period of 1976 to 2016. These results could help city planners and policy makers to attain and sustain future urban development. It is therefore recommended that encouragement should be given to people to build towards the outskirts, like New mile 3 and Tumfure, etc through the provision of incentives and forces of attraction that is available at the city center in these areas to avoid the problem of overcrowdings.

What Predicts a Mayoral Official's Opinion about the Role of Stress in Health Disparities?

High stress is a public health issue in the United States (US), that disproportionately affects socially-marginalized group members, including racial and ethnic minorities and those of low socioeconomic status. While city governments have the potential to reduce stress exposure and health disparities through municipal policies, very little is known about factors that are associated with mayor officials' beliefs about stress as a determinant of disparities. This information is important because it can inform the design of interventions to educate city policymakers about evidence related to stress and health disparities. Using data from a 2016 survey of 230 mayor officials (101 mayors, 129 senior staff), multivariable logistic regression was used to determine the extent to which respondents' individual characteristics (e.g., ideology, highest level of education) and the characteristics of their city's population (e.g., percentage of residents non-white) were associated with their identification of stress as a factor that has a "very strong effect" on health disparities. Forty-four percent of respondents identified stress as having a very strong effect on health disparities. In the fully adjusted model, every percentage point increase in the proportion of a respondent's city population that was non-White increased the odds of identifying stress as having a very strong effect on health disparities by 2% [adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 1.02; 95% CI = 1.00,1.04]. Interventions are needed to increase city policymakers' knowledge about the role of stress in the production of health disparities, which could, in turn, help cultivate political will for city policies that reduce disparities.

How to overcome political and legal barriers to the implementation of a drug consumption room: an application of the policy agenda framework to the Belgian situation

BackgroundFor more than 30 years, drug consumption rooms (DCRs) have been implemented in Western countries. DCRs are supported by a large body of evidence about public safety and public health effectiveness. However, a political consensus has never been achieved in Belgium on amending the existing law that explicitly penalises the supply of a room for facilitating drug use. Despite this adverse legal and policy framework, a DCR opened in the city of Liège in 2018. In this case report, we applied the theoretical framework proposed by Shiffman and Smith for policy agenda setting, in order to describe and assess how political and legal barriers were overcome in the process of opening the DCR.Case presentationFor some years, fieldworkers and some city policymakers argued for DCR implementation in Belgium, but without gaining the support of the national authorities, mainly for ideological reasons. In order to address this debate, a feasibility study of DCR implementation in Belgian cities was commissioned. At the national level, an institutional debate took place about the political responsibility for DCRs as a public health intervention, as health care is mainly a matter of regional policy. The lack of consensus led to a situation of political deadlock. Meanwhile, the publication of the study report and the context of local elections offered an opportunity for Liège authorities to reignite the local debate on DCRs. At the local level, law enforcement, care professionals, residents, users, and the press were all involved in the implementation process. Therefore, a local consensus was formed and despite the absence of any national legal change, the DCR opened 1 month before the local elections. It has been working without major medical or legal incident since then. Incidentally, the mayor of Liège was re-elected.ConclusionsAlthough the lack of a legal framework may engender instability and affect longer-term effectiveness, the DCR implementation in Liège was successful and was based on a local consensus and effective communication rather than on an appropriate legal framework. The experience provides lessons for other cities that are considering opening a DCR despite an adverse legal and political context.

New ECOSTRESS and MODIS Land Surface Temperature Data Reveal Fine-Scale Heat Vulnerability in Cities: A Case Study for Los Angeles County, California

Rapid 21st century urbanization combined with anthropogenic climate warming are significantly increasing heat-related health threats in cities worldwide. In Los Angeles (LA), increasing trends in extreme heat are expected to intensify and exacerbate the urban heat island effect, leading to greater health risks for vulnerable populations. Partnerships between city policymakers and scientists are becoming more important as the need to provide data-driven recommendations for sustainability and mitigation efforts becomes critical. Here we present a model to produce heat vulnerability index (HVI) maps driven by surface temperature data from National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) new Ecosystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) thermal infrared sensor. ECOSTRESS was launched in June 2018 with the capability to image fine-scale urban temperatures at a 70 m resolution throughout different times of the day and night. The HVI model further includes information on socio-demographic data, green vegetation abundance, and historical heatwave temperatures from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor onboard the Aqua spacecraft since 2002. During a period of high heat in July 2018, we identified the five most vulnerable communities at a sub-city block scale in the LA region. The persistence of high HVI throughout the day and night in these areas indicates a clear and urgent need for implementing cooling technologies and green infrastructure to curb future warming.

Building a typology of the 100 smart cities in India

PurposeThe Smart Cities Mission (SCM) in India is generating significant interest among researchers and policymakers globally. Cities under the SCM, irrespective of their locations, size, capacities or local needs, are heavily investing in technological solutions to improve civic conditions. The purpose of this paper is to build a typology and urban classification system of these 100 smart cities using a series of key performance indicators (KPIs) around urban development and access to public services. The paper also systematically recognises the diversity of challenges facing these cities and assess whether a generic technology-based approach is adequate to address them.Design/methodology/approachA two-stage statistical process is employed in this typology building exercise – first, a cluster analysis is conducted to classify the selected cities, then a multiple discriminant analysis is used to characterise each classified city.FindingsThe urban typology analysis finds that vast disparities remain across India’s urban centres, located in different geographical regions, in terms of access to social capital and physical infrastructure. The KPIs around education, health and social services emerged from the analysis as the most significant drivers in the urban typology building process. The lack of basic community infrastructure, especially in the small-to-medium-sized cities in India, exposes the shortcomings of a one-size-fits-all technocratic smart city development strategy that assumes foundational infrastructure is already in place for technology to take effect.Originality/valueThe research methodologies developed in this paper offers a novel planning approach for smart city policymakers to devise place-based smart city interventions, acknowledging diverse cultures and specific community needs.

Determinants of Public Acceptance for Traffic-Reducing Policies to Improve Urban Air Quality

Air pollution remains a problem in German cities. In particular, the nitrogen dioxide (NO2) annual limit-value set by the European Union of 40 µg/m3 was not met at ~40% of roadside monitoring stations across German cities in 2018. In response to this issue, many cities are experimenting with various traffic-reducing measures targeting diesel passenger vehicles so as to reduce emissions of NO2 and improve air quality. Identifying the determinants of public acceptance for these measures using a systematic approach can help inform policy-makers in other German cities. Survey data generated from a questionnaire in Potsdam, Germany, were used in predictive models to quantify support for investments in traffic-reducing measures generally and to quantify support for a specific traffic-reducing measure implemented in Potsdam in 2017. This exploratory analysis found that general support for investments in such measures was most strongly predicted by environmental and air pollution perception variables, whereas specific support for the actual traffic measure was most strongly predicted by mobility habits and preferences. With such measures becoming more common in German cities and across Europe, these results exemplify the complexity of factors influencing public acceptance of traffic-reducing policies, highlight the contrasting roles environmental beliefs and mobility habits play in determining support for such measures, and emphasize the connections between mobility, air pollution, and human health.

Managing coverage holes in IoT monitoring sensor networks

Managing coverage holes in IoT monitoring sensor networks

A critical review of selected smart city assessment tools and indicator sets

In the era of digital revolution many cities around the world have invested significantly in the design and implementation of smart city projects and initiatives to provide solutions to the challenges of climate changes and urbanization. At the same time, various efforts have been made to evaluate performance and outcomes of those projects and initiatives. This study provides a critical analysis of 34 selected smart city assessment tools to highlight their strengths and weaknesses and to examine their potential contribution to the evolution of the smart city movement. The selected tools are evaluated against an analysis framework that covers criteria related to comprehensiveness, stakeholder engagement, context sensitivity, strategic alignment, uncertainty management, interlinkages and interoperability, temporal dynamism, flexibility, feasibility, presentation and communication of the results, and action plans. Results indicate that selected tools have achieved limited success in addressing these criteria. In particular, only few tools have addressed criteria related to stakeholder engagement, uncertainty management, interlinkages, and feasibility. The paper argues that assessment tools should capitalize on the advancements in smart solutions and big data analytics to develop better strategies for addressing these criteria. In addition to highlighting weaknesses that need to be addressed in the future, results of this study can be used by interested target groups such as smart city developers, planners, and policy makers to choose tools that best fit their needs.