Dimensions Of Smart City Research Articles

Exploring the role of civilizational competences for smart cities’ development

PurposeThe purpose of this paper was to identify the main necessary competences for smart cities’ development. From their inception until now, smart cities are striving to clarify their identity and become better, and thus, smarter. The whole process is in many ways similar to the journey of a child in his quest of growing into a smart adult, with the help of parents and support from educators. But it is not easy to tell how we, as citizens, through civic, educational and governance structures, raise smart cities. What competences do we need? This was the main question for the present essay, generated from several theoretical and practical experiences.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, literature analysis, synthesis and theoretical inferences, for the smart city problematiques, and induction and exploratory qualitative analysis, for soft, civilizational competences, were used.FindingsThe main conclusion is that the literature still associates the smart city especially with its hard dimension, the highly developed and intelligent technologies, including information and communication technologies (ICTs), despite a growing number of studies dedicated to the soft, human and social capital component. The intangible, soft component – the human actor – plays an equally, if not even more important role, through mechanisms affecting all classical dimensions of smart cities (smart economy, people, governance, mobility, environment, living). Civilizational competences, soft skills or human-related characteristics of cities strongly influenced by culture (at national, regional, organizational and individual levels) are crucial for the development of smart and competitive cities. Civilizational competences are grouped into four categories: enterprise culture, discoursive culture, civic culture and daily culture. If we want to make our cities smart, we need to develop these competences – first define them, then identify their antecedents or influence factors and measure them.Research limitations/implicationsThe study has several limits. First, the exploratory nature in itself, with many inductive and abductive suppositions that will need further testing. Second, the literature selection has a certain degree of subjectivity owing to the fact that besides the common, classical theory of smart cities, the authors were particularly interested in rather heterodox opinions about the subject, which lead them to the inclusion of singular or isolated points of view on narrower issues.Practical implicationsThe findings of this exploratory conceptual essay could be used for further testing of hypotheses on the relationship between civilizational competences and smart cities’ development.Social implicationsLocal and regional administrations could use the results to increase civil society’s involvement in the development of smart cities.Originality/valueThe study points out some new connections and relations for the smart city problematiques, and explicitly suggests relating the development of smart cities to the development of civilizational competences, as a complex category of factors going beyond the unique dimension of “people” or “human and social capital” from the smart cities literature. It is an exploratory outcome, generating new research hypotheses for the relationships between smart city development and culture-related factors grouped under the “cities” civilizational competences’ label.

AN INITIATIVES-BASED FRAMEWORK FOR ASSESSING SMART CITY

Smart Cities have grown in prominence due to advancement in ICT and the new paradigm of sustainable city management and development. Whilst many authors have proposed guidelines and framework for Smart City implementation, less attention has been given to the assessment of Smart City performance. The mainstream Smart City assessment framework generally entails the quantitative assessment of factors, elements and initiatives categorised under the Smart City dimensions. However, this approach is problematic and impractical because it requires a large amount of different baseline data that is often at times unavailable due to various reasons. This paper describes an alternative framework for smart city assessment, one that is based on the modification of Giffmger’s to make it amenable to leaner data. The proposed assessment framework was adopted to assess the smart city performances of Seoul, Singapore, and Iskandar Malaysia which were then compared. With the use of the framework for the performance assessment, the city that has performed better than the others is able to be identified.

AN INITIATIVES-BASED FRAMEWORK FOR ASSESSING SMART CITY

Smart Cities have grown in prominence due to advancement in ICT and the new paradigm of sustainable city management and development. Whilst many authors have proposed guidelines and framework for Smart City implementation, less attention has been given to the assessment of Smart City performance. The mainstream Smart City assessment framework generally entails the quantitative assessment of factors, elements and initiatives categorised under the Smart City dimensions. However, this approach is problematic and impractical because it requires a large amount of different baseline data that is often at times unavailable due to various reasons. This paper describes an alternative framework for smart city assessment, one that is based on the modification of Giffmger’s to make it amenable to leaner data. The proposed assessment framework was adopted to assess the smart city performances of Seoul, Singapore, and Iskandar Malaysia which were then compared. With the use of the framework for the performance assessment, the city that has performed better than the others is able to be identified.