Smart City Research Research Articles

Neurochallenges in smart cities: state-of-the-art, perspectives, and research directions

Smart city development is a complex, transdisciplinary challenge that requires adaptive resource use and context-aware decision-making practices to enhance human functionality and capabilities while respecting societal and environmental rights, and ethics. There is an urgent need for action in cities, particularly to (i) enhance the health and wellbeing of urban residents while ensuring inclusivity in urban development (e.g., through the intelligent design of public spaces, mobility, and transportation) and (ii) improve resilience and sustainability (e.g., through better disaster management, planning of city logistics, and waste management). This paper aims to explore how neuroscientific and neurotechnological solutions can contribute to the development of smart cities, as experts in various fields underline that real-time sensing designs and control algorithms inspired by the brain could help build and plan urban systems that are healthy, safe, inclusive, and resilient. Motivated by the potential interplay between societal challenges and these emerging technologies, we provide an overview of state-of-the-art research through a bibliometric analysis of neurochallenges within the context of smart cities using terms and data extracted from the Scopus database between 2018 and 2022. The results indicate that smart city research remains fragmented and technology-driven, relying heavily on internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI)-based technologies. Mostly, it also lacks careful integration and adoption tailored to societal goals and human-centric concerns. In this context, the article explores key research streams and discusses how to create new synergies and complementarities in the challenge-technology intersection. We conclude that realizing the vision of smart cities at the nexus of neuroscience, technology, urban space, and society requires more than just technological progress. Integrating the human dimension alongside various technological tools and systems is crucial. This necessitates better interdisciplinary collaboration and co-production of knowledge toward a hybrid intelligence, where synergies of education and research, technological innovation, and societal innovation are genuinely built. We hope the insights from this analysis will help orient neurotechnological interventions on urban living and ensure they are more responsive to societal and environmental challenges as well as to legal and ethical concerns.

Innovating smart cities in Latin America: Addressing regional urban challenges and opportunities

This study analyzes the role of innovation in the development of smart cities in Latin America. It focuses on how emerging technologies and sustainable strategies are being integrated into urban planning and urban development. In this sense, this study seeks to contribute to the smart city literature by answering the following research questions: (i) To what extent smart city innovative initiatives have been addressed in Latin America? and (ii) To what extent scholars have addressed sustainable innovation strategies in the smart city literature? To this end, this is the first comprehensive bibliometric analysis of smart city research in Latin America, with a structured and systematized review of the available literature. This methodological approach allows cluster visualization and detailed analysis of inter-node relationships using the VOSViewer software. The research comprises 4 stages: (a) search criteria; (b) selection of documents; (c) software and data extraction; and (d) analysis of results and trends. Results indicate that studies on the Latin America region began to develop in 2012, with Brazil as a leader in this field and the tourism sector as the most relevant. Nevertheless, strong international collaboration was identified in co-authoring studies, underscoring a cooperative approach to solving common urban problems. The most active research area is technological innovation and sustainability, with focus on solutions for urban mobility, quality of life and smart governance. Finally, this work underlines the need to continue exploring the integration of technology in urban development, suggesting an agenda to guide future research to evaluate the sustainability and long-term impacts of smart city initiatives in Latin America. From the policy perspective, smart city initiatives need to be human-centered to boost smart solutions adoption and to guarantee long term local impacts.

Terrains of care in the smart city: sensemaking by creative communities of practice

Critical smart city research has presented wide-ranging risks of technocentric urban development. One critique lies in the kinds of citizenship directed under smart urban paradigms, which do little to account for residents’ practices of care. This paper is an ethico-onto-epistemological re-examination of smart cities through the lens of care practices specifically focusing on creative communities of practice. We use an enactivist empirical approach to help uncover experiences of sensemaking in the smart city held by three creative communities of practice in Helsinki. Through in-depth interviews with n = 22 urban planners, artists, and community space organizers, we assessed these groups’ differing and overlapping sensemaking processes. Utilizing 5E sensemaking processes (embodied, extended, enacted, emotive, and embedded) as a flexible analytical framework, we identify and interpret their practices of care as ways of sensemaking in a developing smart urban environment. Our results depict terrains of care in which participation and citizenship in the smart city is not neutral, but embedded in affective engagement, navigating rules and institutions, and cultivation of joy and inspiration. We use our findings to discuss what these interweaving terrains of care mean for citizenship and transformational change in the smart city.

Between smart housing and home. EU-funded climate smart interventions in Swedish public housing

Smart housing and its consequences for tenants is still a largely absent field in smart city and housing research. Departing from the EU-funded project GrowSmarter, 2015–2019 and a renovation project of a 1960s housing complex in Stockholm, the article investigates tensions around retrofitting older apartment blocks to make them climate smart. The article presents the argument that top-down approaches of EU-funded climate-smart city interventions leave minimal space for different stakeholders to steer the process and limits the tenants’ role and influence. Researching the implementation of smart technology in housing renovations and how it ultimately effects tenants’ everyday lives, the article adds to previous knowledge of uneven development of climate smart solutions through bringing in the outcomes of housing renovation projects, and how ‘actual smart cities’ are played out within the housing sector. The article brings together research on climate urbanism, housing studies and smart cities with the purpose to understand the scalar politics of smart implementations and the effects on tenants.

Mobilizing alternative urbanisms in the semiperipheral smart city agenda

ABSTRACT Within critical urban studies, this inquiry examines how mobile policies arriving in a global semiperiphery contribute to developing socially just smart city paradigms. By provincializing smart city research and expanding the North–South dichotomy by analyzing a “South of the West,” the inquiry focuses on Lisbon as a semiperipheral city. It adopts a policy mobility approach and an analytical framework of smart city paradigms, combining thematic document analysis and in-depth interviews to examine the case study. The inquiry engages with local historical transformations and temporally analyzes Lisbon’s smart city agenda representing its development phases and exploring the mobility of ideas and paradigm shifts. Due to historical challenges reflected by the peripheralization of Southern Europe, local arrangements have led to political-economic and social transformations that, as the study argues, are potentialized by policy mobilities and entail smart city paradigm shifts towards social justice. Therefore, hybridizing new and old, emerging and established urban agendas provides alternatives to replicating neoliberal policies.

Evaluating coupling coordination between urban smart performance and low-carbon level in China’s pilot cities with mixed methods

The construction models of smart cities and low-carbon cities are crucial for advancing global urbanization, enhancing urban governance, and addressing major urban challenges. Despite significant advancements in smart and low-carbon city research, a consensus on their coupling coordination remains elusive. This study employs mixed-method research, combining qualitative and quantitative analyses, to investigate the coupling coordination between urban smart performance (SCP) and low-carbon level (LCL) across 52 typical smart and low-carbon pilot cities in China. Independent evaluation models for SCP and LCL qualitatively assess the current state of smart and low-carbon city construction. Additionally, an Entropy–TOPSIS–Pearson correlation–Coupling coordination degree (ETPC) analysis model quantitatively examines their relationship. The results reveal that smart city initiatives in China significantly outperform low-carbon city development, with notable disparities in SCP and LCL between eastern, non-resource-based, and central cities versus western, resource-dependent, and peripheral cities. A strong positive correlation exists between urban SCP and overall LCL, with significant correlations in management, society, and economy, and moderate to weak correlations in environmental quality and culture. As SCP levels improve, the coupling coordination degree between the urban SCP and LCL systems also increases, driven primarily by economic, management, and societal factors. Conversely, the subsystems of low-carbon culture and environmental quality show poorer integration. Based on these findings, this study proposes an evaluation system for smart and low-carbon coupling coordination development, outlining pathways for future development from the perspective of urban complex systems.

The impact of smart city construction on resident well-being: the mediating role of technology acceptance

This study investigates the relationships between smart city construction, technology acceptance, and resident well-being, integrating the Technology Acceptance Model with smart city research. Using structural equation modeling and data from 2,187 residents across five smart cities, we examine how smart city initiatives influence technology acceptance and, consequently, resident well-being. Results indicate that smart city construction positively affects perceived usefulness and ease of use of smart technologies, which in turn drive technology acceptance. Technology acceptance significantly mediates the relationship between smart city initiatives and resident well-being, highlighting its crucial role in translating urban innovations into quality of life improvements. The indirect effect of smart city construction on resident well-being through technology acceptance was significant (β = 0.183, p < 0.001), accounting for 37.1% of the total effect. Additionally, a direct positive effect of smart city construction on well-being was observed (β = 0.31, p < 0.001), suggesting benefits beyond active technology engagement. The study contributes to smart city literature by providing empirical evidence for the often-assumed link between smart city development and resident well-being, while also extending the application of the Technology Acceptance Model to urban contexts. These findings have important implications for urban planners and policymakers, emphasizing the need for user-centered design and inclusive development strategies in smart city projects to maximize positive impacts on urban populations.

The applications of the internet of things in smart cities governance: a bibliometric study

Integrating the Internet of Things (IoT) in smart cities can solve rapid urbanization. It will provide better urban services, addressing urban problems that develop because of enhancing urbanization without establishing policies focusing on well-being. The present investigation explores the growing trend of the dynamic publications associated with the advanced technologies integrated into smart city publication productivity using bibliometric analysis. This approach enables the detection of the usage history, the usage scheme, and the research landscape topic in scientific papers on IoT in smart cities. This study included 976 articles from 2013 to 2023. The area of research in smart cities is categorized into six important clusters: (1) IoT application areas in smart cities, (2) IoT infrastructure for smart cities, (3) IoT security and privacy for smart cities, (4) IoT architecture for smart cities, (5) IoT technologies and communication protocol for smart cities, (6) IoT data analysis for smart cities. Moreover, this study reveals that the issues related to new technologies, security, and privacy of IoT to integrate into smart cities would be an interesting topic for future research.

Empowering urban futures: Key competencies for smart city resilience officers

As cities are developing to smart, new systems are utilized that contain a multitude of critical infrastructures. Although these offer major advantages, they are also exposed to new external and frequently uncontrollable factors increasing their risk exposure and enhancing their vulnerability. Therefore, increasing resilience during city development has become a prerequisite for its survival, but continuous resilience improvement led by workforce will help them to prosper. According to researchers, officers should be able to catalogue and prioritize threats and vulnerabilities, but is this only the case? Discrete studies detail and analyze in-depth risks related to smart cities, however, how these risks are addressed by workforce and how these are related to their competencies have not been thoroughly understood to date. If vulnerabilities are not understood and analyzed appropriately by the city workforce and stakeholders, unanticipated consequences and cascading failures may potential occur, even when crises are expected. The objective of this article is to inquire into responsibilities regarding crisis issues concerning the necessary competencies for resilience officers, by exploring current perceptions, expectations and recommendations as these are acknowledged in experts’ opinions and experiences. To do so, a questionnaire was developed and distributed to experts in the field, across various cities in Greece, to indicate responsibilities, and prioritize competencies that resilient officers in smart cities should possess. The findings highlighted significant responsibilities related to managing smart city risks and identified a distinct set of competencies unique to officers in this area, emphasizing the need for targeted efforts to enhance urban resilience through the initiatives led by city officers. This article establishes a clear path for advancing smart city research by highlighting competencies that could be integrated into educational curriculums. These competencies are essential for training a workforce that not only enhances disaster management awareness but also equips cities to handle potential catastrophic events effectively, thereby laying the groundwork for more resilient urban environments.

Smart cities in developing countries: a review of research literature

ABSTRACT This paper departs from the need to better understand the intellectual map of smart city research in the context of developing countries which tends to be overlooked within the current smart city literature. A more refined landscape of smart city literature has been therefore carried out by using bibliometric analysis, i.e. a quantitative analysis method to measure and map the current body of knowledge in a scientific discipline, based on academic articles indexed in the Scopus database. In this paper, we employ a provincializing smart urbanism stance, particularly by looking through the lenses of socio-technical system and (variegated) development paths to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of smart cities. First, by looking at the research trends, geographical origins of knowledge production, research themes, and the overall intellectual structure of smart city research we unpack the similarities and differences between the general and developing countries categories. Second, reflecting upon these findings, we provide a more contextualized view of smart city research in developing countries and propose a number of research areas that have so far been overlooked. Given some peculiarities in the intellectual landscape of the smart city in developing countries due to different socio-technical contextual conditions, we suggest the need to attune the smart city label to national and local specifics so that it can aptly address real and multiplex urban challenges.

A systematic review of smart city research from an urban context perspective

This review conducts a systematic analysis of a total of 90 Smart City articles from an urban context perspective based on the ‘Urban Engagement and Impact Analytical Framework’. Many previous smart city reviews have been conducted through bibliometric analysis from a holistic viewpoint, finding the performance, trend and focused area of smart city research. Therefore, the principal objective of this review is to explore the gap in the adequacy of smart city research engagement with diverse urban contexts, to provide a smart urban environment focusing on Smart Urbanism. This paper highlights three principal aspects of each article; 1) Whose perspective that Smart City research mostly conducted by, 2) The depth of Urban context engagement conducted during Smart City development, 3) Which part of urban development is particularly affected by. These three dimensions are significant factors correlated to each other, that form healthy smart urbanism. By doing so, the findings from this review will lead the smart city research to a practical intervention in urban planning through engagement with the insightful urban contexts. This will offer a positive impact on developing a sustainable urban livelihood for the inhabitants by extending the view of the smart city development towards Smart urbanism within the urban context viewpoint.

A scoping review of green Internet of Things in construction and smart cities: current applications, adoption strategies and future directions

PurposeContemporary technological disruptions are espoused as though they stimulate sustainable growth in the built environment through the Green Internet of Things (G-IoT). Learning from discipline-specific experiences, this paper articulates recent advancements in the knowledge and concepts of G-IoT in relation to the construction and smart city sectors. It provides a scoping review for G-IoT as an overlooked dimension. Attention was paid to modern circularity, cleaner production and sustainability as key benefits of G-IoT adoption in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs). In addition, this study also investigates the current application and adoption strategies of G-IoT.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) review approach. Resources are drawn from Scopus and Web of Science repositories using apt search strings that reflect applications of G-IoT in the built environment in relation to construction management, urban planning, societies and infrastructure. Thematic analysis was used to analyze pertinent themes in the retrieved articles.FindingsG-IoT is an overlooked dimension in construction and smart cities so far. Thirty-three scholarly articles were reviewed from a total of 82 articles retrieved, from which five themes were identified: G-IoT in buildings, computing, sustainability, waste management and tracking and monitoring. Among other applications, findings show that G-IoT is prominent in smart urban services, healthcare, traffic management, green computing, environmental protection, site safety and waste management. Applicable strategies to hasten adoption include raising awareness, financial incentives, dedicated work approaches, G-IoT technologies and purposeful capacity building among stakeholders. The future of G-IoT in construction and smart city research is in smart drones, building information modeling, digital twins, 3D printing, green computing, robotics and policies that incentivize adoption.Originality/valueThis study adds to the normative literature on envisioning potential strategies for adoption and the future of G-IoT in construction and smart cities as an overlooked dimension. No previous study to date has reviewed pertinent literature in this area, intending to investigate the current applications, adoption strategies and future direction of G-IoT in construction and smart cities. Researchers can expand on the current study by exploring the identified G-IoT applications and adoption strategies in detail, and practitioners can develop implementation policies, regulations and guidelines for holistic G-IoT adoption.

A Comprehensive Analysis and Visualization of Trends and Research Patterns in the Field of IoT Smart Cities

Every nation is interested in creating "smart cities," making this a hot topic requiring extensive scientific study. Given the current state of affairs, it is essential to conduct a systematic review to thoroughly understand the current research trends and patterns in this field. It is applied to a corpus of 9,131 papers published between 2010 and 2022 from the Scopus publications database to test the string's effectiveness. This research utilizes text mining and Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) to delve into the current state-of-the-art study concerning IoT Smart cities research. KNIME was used to conduct the analysis. Predicting the study domain is done with the help of the K-means clustering method. Future researchers can build upon these patterns to strengthen security in various sectors. This report also reviews the history of smart city research, its current position, and its prospects. We help institutions and authors collaborate globally in science. This research analyses Smart City IoT integration trends and patterns in a graphical overview. According to the data, the identified areas are developing and need more research.

A data‐driven adaptive geospatial hotspot detection approach in smart cities

AbstractHotspot detection from geo‐referenced urban data is critical for smart city research, such as traffic management and policy making. However, the classical clustering or classification approach for hotspot detection mainly aims at identifying “hotspot areas” rather than specific points, and the setting of global parameters such as search bandwidth can lead to inaccurate results when processing multi‐density urban data. In this article, a data‐driven adaptive hotspot detection (AHD) approach based on kernel density analysis is proposed and applied to various spatial objects. The adaptive search bandwidth is automatically calculated depending on the local density. Window detection is used to extract the specific hotspots in AHD, thus realizing a small‐scale characterization of urban hotspots. Through the trajectory data of Harbin City taxis and New York City crime data, Geo‐information Tupu is used to analyze the obtained specific hotspots and verify the effectiveness of AHD, providing new ideas for further research.

Fourteen Years of Research on Smart City and Community: A Bibliometric Analysis

Smart cities have become prominent in various disciplines in the last decade. Few scholars have reviewed the current research related to smart cities. Unfortunately, limited studies have examined the smart city and community issues using bibliometrics. Therefore, this paper aims to fill the gap in the current research by systematically reviewing the paper on smart city and community research. This research was conducted by performing a bibliometric approach. The data were traced from the Web of Science Clarivate Analytics database and analysed using the R-package, Hiscite, and VOSviewer. The results of this analysis are descriptively summarised in the number of articles, citations, and the most influential author and journal. Regarding topics, we revealed six growing clusters of research covering 174 sub-topics. This study contributes to the growing body of smart cities by reviewing the current literature on the issue and providing future research directions.

Estimating and Mitigating the Congestion Effect of Curbside Pick-ups and Drop-Offs: A Causal Inference Approach

Curb space is one of the busiest areas in urban road networks. Especially in recent years, the rapid increase of ride-hailing trips and commercial deliveries has induced massive pick-ups/drop-offs (PUDOs), which occupy the limited curb space that was designed and built decades ago. These PUDOs could jam curbside utilization and disturb the mainline traffic flow, evidently leading to significant negative societal externalities. However, there is a lack of an analytical framework that rigorously quantifies and mitigates the congestion effect of PUDOs in the system view, particularly with little data support and involvement of confounding effects. To bridge this research gap, this paper develops a rigorous causal inference approach to estimate the congestion effect of PUDOs on general regional networks. A causal graph is set to represent the spatiotemporal relationship between PUDOs and traffic speed, and a double and separated machine learning (DSML) method is proposed to quantify how PUDOs affect traffic congestion. Additionally, a rerouting formulation is developed and solved to encourage passenger walking and traffic flow rerouting to achieve system optimization. Numerical experiments are conducted using real-world data in the Manhattan area. On average, 100 additional units of PUDOs in a region could reduce the traffic speed by 3.70 and 4.54 miles/hour (mph) on weekdays and weekends, respectively. Rerouting trips with PUDOs on curb space could respectively reduce the system-wide total travel time (TTT) by 2.44% and 2.12% in Midtown and Central Park on weekdays. A sensitivity analysis is also conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed framework. Funding: The work described in this paper was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 52102385], grants from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China [Grants PolyU/25209221 and PolyU/15206322], a grant from the Otto Poon Charitable Foundation Smart Cities Research Institute (SCRI) at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University [Grant P0043552], and a grant from Hong Kong Polytechnic University [Grant P0033933]. S. Qian was supported by a National Science Foundation Grant [Grant CMMI-1931827]. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2022.0195 .

Predicting People’s Concentration and Movements in a Smart City

With the rapid growth of urbanization and the proliferation of mobile phone usage, smart city initiatives have gained momentum in leveraging data-driven insights to enhance urban planning and resource allocation. This paper proposes a novel approach for predicting people’s concentration and movements within a smart city environment using mobile phone data provided by telecommunication operators. By harnessing the vast amount of anonymized and aggregated mobile phone data, we present a predictive framework that offers valuable insights into urban dynamics. The methodology involves collecting and processing location-based data obtained from telecommunication operators. Using machine learning techniques, including clustering and spatiotemporal analysis, we developed models to identify patterns in people’s movements and concentration across various city regions. Our proposed approach considers factors such as time of day, day of the week, and special events to capture the intricate dynamics of urban activities. The predictive models presented in this paper demonstrate the ability to predict areas of high concentration of people, such as commercial districts during peak hours, as well as the people flow during the time. These insights have significant implications for urban planning, traffic management, and resource allocation. Our approach respects user privacy by working with aggregated and anonymized data, ensuring compliance with privacy regulations and ethical considerations. The proposed models were evaluated using real-world mobile phone data collected from a smart city environment in Lisbon, Portugal. The experimental results demonstrate the accuracy and effectiveness of our approach in predicting people’s movements and concentration. This paper contributes to the growing field of smart city research by providing a data-driven solution for enhancing urban planning and resource allocation strategies. As cities continue to evolve, leveraging mobile phone data from telecommunication operators can lead to more efficient and sustainable urban environments.

Information Security Applications in Smart Cities: A Bibliometric Analysis of Emerging Research

This paper aims to analyze the intellectual structure and research fronts in application information security in smart cities to identify research boundaries, trends, and new opportunities in the area. It applies bibliometric analyses to identify the main authors and their influences on information security and the smart city area. Moreover, this analysis focuses on journals indexed in Scopus databases. The results indicate that there is an opportunity for further advances in the adoption of information security policies in government institutions. Moreover, the production indicators presented herein are useful for the planning and implementation of information security policies and the knowledge of the scientific community about smart cities. The bibliometric analysis provides support for the visualization of the leading research technical collaboration networks among authors, co-authors, countries, and research areas. The methodology offers a broader view of the application information security in smart city areas and makes it possible to assist new research that may contribute to further advances. The smart cities topic has been receiving much attention in recent years, but to the best of our knowledge, there is no research on reporting new possibilities for advances. Therefore, this article may contribute to an emerging body of literature that explores the nature of application information security and smart cities research productivity to assist researchers in better understanding the current emerging of the area.

Smart City in Indonesia: Review Studies and Lessons for Sumatra

Smart city is a concept that has gained increasing attention in Indonesia in recent years. This study uses bibliometric analysis to explore the development and trends of smart city research in Indonesia from 469 articles. The results show that the number of publications on smart city in Indonesia has increased significantly in recent years. Employing various bibliometric techniques, the study's results reveal key insights into the dynamics of Smart City research in Indonesia. The most prominent keywords reflect the multidisciplinary nature of the topic and its relevance to urban development, technology, governance, and environmental concerns. This study also found that in Sumatra, the development of Smart Cities is still in its early stages, but has the potential to improve the quality of life for citizens and address urban challenges. By comprehensively mapping the intellectual landscape of Smart City research in Indonesia, this research contributes to a better understanding of the key themes, trends, and collaborative networks shaping the discourse in this important domain.

A global-scale review of smart city practice and research focusing on residential neighbourhoods

Smart cities have emerged as a pivotal aspect of urban planning and policy, leveraging technology and data analytics to enhance sustainability and citizens' quality of life. Nonetheless, the focus on residential neighbourhoods, integral components of cities, has been notably lacking in the sphere of smart city planning and policy. This paper endeavours to assess the evolution of smart cities in relation to neighbourhoods, elucidating dimensions and sectors while concentrating on comprehending project applications and their outcomes. This study employs a systematic literature review to ascertain the role of neighbourhoods within smart cities. Using content analysis, this methodology facilitates the accumulation of insights into smart city research and practice at the neighbourhood level. The paper empirically addresses these findings, identifying dimensions and pertinent sectors concerning residential neighbourhoods.Furthermore, it delves into projects and applications, elaborating on their implementation across diverse sectors. The analysis discerns gaps in technology-driven development planning for varying neighbourhood types within smart cities. Introducing technology-driven advancements into existing urban settings presents substantial challenges, particularly for developing nations, primarily due to limitations and constraints imposed by their current built environments. The study further underscores the perils tied to implementing city-level policies at the neighbourhood scale, prompting a query about their inclusivity. The findings imply the imperative of integrating physical planning and technology-driven solutions within smart city development, with a keen focus on neighbourhoods' social and physical characteristics. This approach becomes particularly significant when considering the inherent risks and constraints that accompany technology-based urban enhancements in the context of neighbourhoods.