Smart City Initiatives Research Articles

Exploring the relevance of ‘smart city’ approaches to low-income communities in Medellín, Colombia

Smart city approaches have tended to be top-down, techno-centric/corporate and expensive approaches which are promoted by large, global companies. Smart city narratives focus on their expected capacity to improve citizens’ quality of life. However, can technology-driven and municipally-led smart city initiatives address the issues faced by poor and vulnerable communities in urban and peri-urban areas? This paper explores key aspects of the implementation of smart city approaches in the Global South taking as a case study the Colombian city of Medellín, which has been recognized internationally for its social innovation and is considered a smart city by the Inter-American Development Bank. The paper draws on a local, national and international literature review; interviews with key local stakeholders involved in smart city initiatives; and an international workshop on smart cities and community data management organized by the authors in Medellín and bringing together three perspectives: academia, government and community. The paper provides a reflection on the concept of smart city, data management and citizen participation in smart city initiatives in Medellín, contrasting each of these with the literature. Our research found gaps between broader conceptualisations and community-oriented intentions in smart city initiatives in Medellín, as well as very low uptake and reported impact of such initiatives. We conclude that a redefinition of smart city approaches that may respond to the needs of the population while improving liveability is still urgently needed, and we set out a series of questions for an international research agenda on low-income community-oriented smart city research.

Smart city place-based outcomes in India: bubble urbanism and socio-spatial fragmentation

ABSTRACT Despite the bourgeoning of smart city initiatives across the Global South, their implementation and place-based outcomes remain understudied. This paper presents empirical studies in three Indian cities of Bhubaneswar, Pune and Chennai; three of the first 20 smart cities prioritized for implementation in the Smart Cities Mission. It investigates the place-based outcomes utilized to create smart cities under three categories of mega-, placemaking, and lighthouse projects. The results show varying levels of urban interventions contributing to ‘bubble urbanism’ – a fragmented combination of large-scale mega-projects and small-scale revitalization projects – with complex socio-spatial implications for smart city development in India.

Planning cities beyond digital colonization? Insights from the periphery

Contemporary debates about the smart city are being characterized by divergent views. While smart city proponents enthusiastically see it as a transformative vision for the future of urban areas, the skeptics bring to the fore extremely critical views. The present article critically presents the insights offered by Portuguese planners and public officials on how to craft policies aimed at regulating smart city initiatives in Portugal so that the best land use governance approaches can be identified for this country. Gathered through a mix of semi-structured interviews and an online survey, these insights indicate that planning should play a key role in regulating smart city initiatives, since much can be gained, but also lost, through these initiatives. The insights also show the extent to which smart innovations enjoy today a supposedly universalistic quality: even though Portugal is a peripheral country with very particular social, economic and geographic features, the participants in this research struggled to offer insights that were specifically related to the Portuguese context. This is critically assessed as an alarming sign of the digital colonization that contemporary imaginaries are experiencing.

Analyzing the factors that influence the seeking and sharing of information on the smart city digital platform: Empirical evidence from Indonesia

Smart city initiatives are considered as the solutions for urban problems. One dimension of a smart city, i.e., smart people/society, suggests that a smart city requires high-quality social interactions and social relationships that help cities connect with their residents and the outside world. For this purpose, smart cities in Indonesia have developed digital platforms (internet websites and mobile applications) to disseminate the cities' programs and information and facilitate sharing of information among its residents. This study aimed to investigate the factors that affect the seeking and sharing of information on the smart city digital platforms. We used a quantitative approach by conducting surveys in 8 smart cities in Indonesia, with 1161 respondents. The survey data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results showed that social factors (sense of belonging and seeking reputations) have dominant roles in determining residents' intention to seek information on smart city platforms. In turn, the intention to seek information is the key factor that affects the residents' intention to share information on the smart city platforms and on their online social network. This paper provides insights on the factors that need more attention from smart city administrators to improve resident engagement and enhance the dimension of smart people.

Exploring the Balance between Smartness and Sustainability in Finnish Smart City Initiatives during the 2010s

In the era of rapid urbanisation, technological development, and climate change, there is an urgent need for urban sustainability. However, the globally widespread concept of a smart city has not delivered on its promise of improving sustainability with urban technology. Therefore, more knowledge on how current smart city initiatives are related to sustainable urban development is required. This study focuses on analysing the aims of Finnish smart city initiatives during the 2010s. We conducted a systematic review to gain a more detailed overview of the relations between smart city development and sustainable development. Our data gathering method was the convenience sampling method, and with data analysis, we used descriptive statistics and deductive content analysis methods. Results reveal the emphasis on smart governance and mobility issues in smart city initiatives. Also, sustainable development is largely dominated by perspectives of economic sustainability. To create more balance within smart and sustainable urban development, we need actions to include other aspects than only mobility and governmental domains of smartness or general sustainability objectives in urban development.

Assessment of the Impact of Smart City Initiatives on the Development of Urbanized Territories

Digitalization processes are penetrating deeper into various areas of urbanized territories, being a factor affecting the quality of life of the local population. One of the promising approaches for the development of urban areas in the context of digitalization is the concept of the smart city. Despite the significant popularity of the smart city concept among the scientific community, as well as municipal authorities, the impact of digitalization processes on the development of the urban environment, as well as the possibility of using digital technologies to solve emerging problems in the economic, social, and environmental spheres, has been studied very little. The aim of the study is to determine the dependencies between the implementation of smart city model initiatives and the development of individual subsystems of the urban environment. The paper shows that a significant part of modern research is of theoretical, descriptive nature, while there is a shortage of empirical research, the main purpose of which would be to identify quantitative patterns in the development of smart cities, which would contribute to the development of economic and mathematical approaches to the study of urbanized territories in the conditions of formation digital society. The research method used by the authors is correlation analysis. Using the cases of 118 cities from the Smart City Index 2021, prepared by the Singapore Institute of Technology and Design, the relationship between the implementation of ideas for the digitalization of the urban environment and improving the quality of individual components of the urban environment is shown. As a result of the study, strong correlations were identified between the introduction of digital technologies in the main areas of the urban economy and the development of the urban environment, the hypothesis about the impact of digitalization processes on the development of certain areas of management within urban areas was confirmed, relationships between the development of smart solutions within the urban environment and changes in quality were shown. life of the local population. The results obtained can become the basis for further research in the development of smart cities, as well as applied tools for the implementation of plans and strategies for the development of urban areas.

Smart Sustainable City Roadmap as a Tool for Addressing Sustainability Challenges and Building Governance Capacity

Building smart sustainable cities initiatives requires governance capacity, which is constantly challenged by a diversity of actors and the transformation towards a digital society; however, the process of identifying the conditions for building a smart sustainable city (SSC) is not straightforward. As an attempt to map the key governance conditions, the goal of this study is to suggest guidelines for the development of SSC initiatives in the format of a generic roadmap. This research applies design science research methodology and builds the roadmap based on identified antecedents that may hinder or facilitate the development of SSC initiatives from a systematic literature review and the analysis of key governance aspects from 12 smart city initiatives in Europe and Latin America. This paper builds its results through a four-step approach including: (1) defining the main concepts and dimensions within the smart sustainable city context; (2) identifying sustainability challenges for the development of smart sustainable city initiatives; (3) analysing key governance aspects from smart sustainable city initiatives; and (4) designing an actionable research-based roadmap and practical recommendations. The resulting roadmap contains 11 key governance conditions for developing strategies for smart sustainable city initiatives that were classified into three main phases: (1) planning; (2) implementing; and (3) adopting, monitoring, and evaluating. In terms of contribution, this research provides a tool to support the development of initiatives, addressing sustainability challenges and strengthening governance capacity to ensure the long-term impacts of smart sustainable cities.

Making a Building Smart with a Co-Created and Continuously Evolving Enjoyable Service Entity—Insights from a Collaborative Study

Buildings shape cities as those cities grow from and nurture people living and working within the built environment. Thus, the conceptualization of smart building should be brought closer to the smart city initiatives that particularly target ensuring and enhancing the sustainability and quality of urban life. In this paper, we propose that a smart building should be interlinked with a smart city surrounding it; it should provide good experiences to its various occupants and it should be in an ongoing state of evolving as an ecosystem, wherein different stakeholders can join to co-produce, co-provide and co-consume services. Smart buildings require a versatile set of smart services based on digital solutions, solutions in the built environment and human activities. We conducted a multiphase collaborative study on new service opportunities guided by a Design Thinking approach. The approach brought people, technology, and business perspectives together and resulted in key service opportunities that have the potential to make the buildings smart and provide enjoyable experience to the occupants who support their living and working activities in smart cities. This paper provides the resulting practical implications as well as proposes future avenues for research.

PROTECTION OF PRIVACY AND PERSONAL DATA IN THE BIG DATA ENVIRONMENT OF SMART CITIES

Abstract. The project of smart cities has emerged as a response to the challenges of twenty-first- century urbanization. Solutions to the fundamental conundrum of cities revolving around efficiency, convenience and security keep being sought by leveraging technology. Notwithstanding all the conveniences furnished by a smart city to all the citizens, privacy of a citizen is intertwined with the benefits of a smart city. The development processes which overlook privacy and security issues have left many of the smart city applications vulnerable to non-conventional security threats and susceptible to numerous privacy and personal data spillage risks. Among the challenges the smart city initiatives encounter, the emergence of the smartphone-big data-the cloud coalescence is perhaps the greatest, from the viewpoint of privacy and personal data protection. As our cities are getting digitalized, information comprising citizens' behavior, choices, and mobility, as well as their personal assets are shared over smartphone-big data-the cloud coalescences, thereby expanding cyber-threat surface and creating different security concerns. This coalescence refers to the practices of creating and analyzing vast sets of data, which comprise personal information. In this paper, the protection of privacy and personal data issues in the big data environment of smart cities are viewed through bifocal lenses, focusing on social and technical aspects. The protection of personal data and privacy in smart city enterprises is treated as a socio-technological operation where various actors and factors undertake different tasks. The article concludes by calling for novel developments, conceptual and practical changes both in technological and social realms.

Older Adults’ Perceptions of Smart City Initiatives to Age in Community

This project explores older American adults’ perceptions of smart city initiatives for them to “age in community” particularly in the northeast region. As the U.S. population is aging, it is imperative that the American cities can support their citizens to live in their preferred community environments for as long as they want. While there are many definitions of a smart city, some exemplary smarty city initiatives can be characterized as actively utilizing information and sensor technologies to promote efficiency and sustainability of city-wide systems, ultimately enhancing the quality of citizens' life. This project examines, in particular, seven smart city initiatives that are implemented globally: smart streetlights, health and fall monitoring system, community ridesharing, enhanced CCTVs, "age-friendly map," contact tracing app, and smart traffic system. By surveying those age 55 and older, with a representative sampling from the nine states in the northeast region, this project found that the vast majority of older Americans in this region would prefer to age in rural and suburban communities, and depending on where they prefer to age in (rural-exurban-suburban communities vs. urban-urban center communities) and gender (female vs. male), they perceive particular sets of smart city initiatives as more important for them to age in community. Furthermore, regardless of the community/location preference and demographic (gender, income level, and age) differences, 40% of the respondents expressed no concern of data or information privacy issues from these initiatives, opening some doors for the municipalities that plan to adopt some of these initiatives in the near future.

On the Impact of Information Technologies Secondary-School Capacity in Business Development: Evidence From Smart Cities Around the World.

Smart City initiatives across the globe have spurred increasing demand for high-skilled workers. The digital transformation, one of the main building blocks of the Smart City movement, is calling for a workforce prepared to develop novel business processes. Problem-solving, critical and analytical thinking are now the essential skills being looked at by employees. The development of the so-called STEM curriculum, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics is being given a lot of attention by educational boards in response to preparing young generations for the Smart City work market. Based on the IMD Smart City Index, PISA, and World Bank reports, we develop a model for assessing the impact of the IT secondary school capacities on Smart-City business developments. The model reveals the relationship between the technological capacity of the secondary-school, and the business activity of a Smart City. Moreover, the study shows the existence of a positive relationship between the IT capacity of secondary schools and the resulting entrepreneurial activity of the city. Our results are of interest to decision-makers and stakeholders responsible for designing educational policies and agents involved in the digital transformation and development of Smart Cities initiatives.

On the taxonomy of smart city indicators and their alignment with sustainability and resilience

As interest in smart city initiatives continues to grow rapidly, various involved actors and stakeholders increasingly rely on assessment frameworks or indicator sets for different purposes such as monitoring and benchmarking performance, identifying strengths and weaknesses, and determining priority intervention areas. Accordingly, many smart city assessment frameworks and/or indicator sets have been developed in the last decade. To guide actors and stakeholders in their selection of the most suitable frameworks, several studies have examined contents and structure of smart city assessment frameworks or indicator sets. Such studies have significantly improved our understanding of the thematic focus of assessment tools and their methodological approaches. However, there is still a lack of knowledge on the taxonomy of smart city indicators. In addition, since other concepts such as sustainability and resilience are increasingly recognized to be connected to the smart city concept, more clarity on how different assessment frameworks or indicator sets are aligned with sustainability and resilience dimensions and characteristics is needed. To fill these gaps, we developed a taxonomy and examined 33 assessment frameworks or indicator sets in terms of indicator type, sectoral linkages, and alignment with sustainability and resilience dimensions and characteristics. In terms of indicator type, results show that output indicators are dominant but limited attention has been paid to impact indicators. In terms of sectoral focus, existing indicators are mainly related to information and communication technologies, economy, and governance. Regarding resilience abilities, indicators are mainly related to planning abilities and limited attention has been paid to recovery and adaptation. As for resilience characteristics, reasonable levels of alignment with resourcefulness and efficiency were observed, but indicators are not well-aligned with other important characteristics such as redundancy and diversity. Finally, in terms of sustainability, limited alignment with the environmental dimension was found, which raises concerns regarding the suitability of smart city indicators for guiding environmental sustainability and informing efforts aimed at addressing climate change issues. Results of this study can support interested stakeholders in their efforts to select the most suitable assessment frameworks or indicator sets for promoting resilient, smart, and sustainable communities.

Developing Smart Cities: Regulatory and Policy Implications for the State of Qatar

ABSTRACT Smart cities represent an emerging trend that may have policy and regulatory implications for telecoms regulators in many countries including Qatar. This paper draws on a review of interdisciplinary literature on regulatory governance and smart cities besides primary data collected from interviews with telecom and urban planning experts as well as regulatory members of staff to offer illustrations of the regulatory challenges and policy implications facing the development of smart cities with special focus on the state of Qatar. The paper emphasizes that regulatory policy-makers are required to go beyond the obvious and immediate benefits of smart cities to capture the full picture of potential impacts on regulatory and policy processes. For the transition towards smart cities to be handled successfully, regulatory policy-makers are required to address the new regulatory challenges by developing proactive rather than reactive approaches in dealing with the implementation of smart city initiatives.

What makes a city ‘smart’ in the Anthropocene? A critical review of smart cities under climate change

In recent years, smart cities have grown in popularity, both in research and in practice. The focus of smart city studies and policy initiatives has historically been on technology, particularly how information and communication technology can be leveraged to improve city functions. This focus has begun to shift towards sustainability, with many researchers calling for the development of smart, sustainable cities, which can aid efforts of climate change mitigation and adaptation. The connection between smart cities and climate change, however, is not clear. In this review article, we aim to synthesize the recent literature surrounding smart cities and climate change, and to discuss the benefits (or costs) of smart cities with regard to climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. In particular, we focus on five key aspects of urban resilience to climate change: infrastructure, public health and well-being, accessibility and equity, sustainable systems, and governance. The literature reveals a higher level of emphasis on infrastructure resilience to climate change than the other categories. Moreover, the research areas differ in the level of connection between smart city initiatives and climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts. For example, within the critical infrastructure research area, studies on smart energy systems focus on climate change mitigation, particularly reducing emissions, while studies on smart water systems emphasize adaptation to future floods and droughts. Going beyond the aforementioned research areas, we discuss the role of big data in smart cities, including the benefits and challenges associated with collecting large amounts of data from smart technology, as well as the techniques needed to analyze such data. Finally, we highlight future directions that we believe the research on smart cities needs to focus on, based on the results from our literature review. These include infrastructure and disaster resilience, public health and social equity, and sustainability.

Open Data Based Machine Learning Applications in Smart Cities: A Systematic Literature Review

Machine learning (ML) has already gained the attention of the researchers involved in smart city (SC) initiatives, along with other advanced technologies such as IoT, big data, cloud computing, or analytics. In this context, researchers also realized that data can help in making the SC happen but also, the open data movement has encouraged more research works using machine learning. Based on this line of reasoning, the aim of this paper is to conduct a systematic literature review to investigate open data-based machine learning applications in the six different areas of smart cities. The results of this research reveal that: (a) machine learning applications using open data came out in all the SC areas and specific ML techniques are discovered for each area, with deep learning and supervised learning being the first choices. (b) Open data platforms represent the most frequently used source of data. (c) The challenges associated with open data utilization vary from quality of data, to frequency of data collection, to consistency of data, and data format. Overall, the data synopsis as well as the in-depth analysis may be a valuable support and inspiration for the future smart city projects.

Reception of the Smart City Concept in the Opinion of Local Administration Officials – A Case Study

Abstract A city based on the sustainable development priorities, friendly to its residents, combines human activity, technology challenges, and environmental requirements. The implementation of the idea of smart city should be discussed with regard to specific areas of activity. In order to identify the way of perceiving the activity conducted under this concept, a survey was carried out among employees of the City Office in Zabrze. The cognitive, competence and informational scope was verified. It was found that the overwhelming majority of officials (79%) are convinced that smart city principles are being implemented. The survey participants also provided specific examples of smart-city initiatives undertaken in the city, and a significant part of the respondents (64%) assigned their professional tasks to them. Moreover, three out of four surveyed officials in Zabrze declared that they know the tools supporting the smart urban development. The results presented in the article constitute pilot studies aimed at understanding the extent to which the Smart City idea is known by local government administration employees. In addition, these results serve as a tool for the authorities of Zabrze to disseminate knowledge about smart city among employees of the city hall.

Smart parking management system with dynamic pricing

Smart parking is becoming more and more an integral part of smart city initiatives. Utilizing and managing parking areas is a challenging task as space is often limited, finding empty spaces are hard and citizens want to park their vehicles close to their preferred places. This becomes worse in important/posh areas of major metropolitan cities during rush hour. Due to unavailability of proper parking management system, citizens have to roam around a lot in order to find a suitable parking area. This leads to the wastage of valuable time, unnecessary fuel consumption and environmental pollution. This paper proposes a smart parking management system (SPMS) based on multiple criteria based parking space reservation algorithm (MCPR) that allows the driver/owner of vehicles to find and reserve most appropriate parking space from anywhere at any time. The system also considers the concept of dynamic pricing strategy for calculating parking charge in order to gain more revenue by the government agencies as well as private investors. The system employs sensors to calculate concentration index, average inter-arrival time of vehicles of a parking area for better parking management and planning. The simulation results show that proposed system reduces the average extra driving required by the users to find a parking area and hence it will reduce traffic congestion, which in turn reduces air pollution caused by unnecessary driving to find a proper parking area.

Area-Based Urban Renewal Approach for Smart Cities Development in India: Challenges of Inclusion and Sustainability

Cities in the Global South face rapid urbanization challenges and often suffer an acute lack of infrastructure and governance capacities. Smart Cities Mission, in India, launched in 2015, aims to offer a novel approach for urban renewal of 100 cities following an area-based development approach, where the use of ICT and digital technologies is particularly emphasized. This article presents a critical review of the design and implementation framework of this new urban renewal program across selected case-study cities. The article examines the claims of the so-called “smart cities” against actual urban transformation on-ground and evaluates how “inclusive” and “sustainable” these developments are. We quantify the scale and coverage of the smart city urban renewal projects in the cities to highlight who the program includes and excludes. The article also presents a statistical analysis of the sectoral focus and budgetary allocations of the projects under the Smart Cities Mission to find an inherent bias in these smart city initiatives in terms of which types of development they promote and the ones it ignores. The findings indicate that a predominant emphasis on digital urban renewal of selected precincts and enclaves, branded as “smart cities,” leads to deepening social polarization and gentrification. The article offers crucial urban planning lessons for designing ICT-driven urban renewal projects, while addressing critical questions around inclusion and sustainability in smart city ventures.

Prescriptive Analytics in Urban Policing Operations

Problem definition: We consider the case of prescriptive policing, that is, the data-driven assignment of police cars to different areas of a city. We analyze key problems with respect to prediction, optimization, and evaluation as well as trade-offs between different quality measures and crime types. Academic/practical relevance: Data-driven prescriptive analytics is gaining substantial attention in operations management research, and effective policing is at the core of the operations of almost every city in the world. Given the vast amounts of data increasingly collected within smart city initiatives and the growing safety challenges faced by urban centers worldwide, our work provides novel insights on the development and evaluation of prescriptive analytics applications in an urban context. Methodology: We conduct a computational study using crime and auxiliary data on the city of San Francisco. We analyze both strong and weak prediction methods along with two optimization formulations representing the deterrence and response time impact of police vehicle allocations. We analyze trade-offs between these effects and between different crime types. Results: We find that even weaker prediction methods can produce Pareto-efficient outcomes with respect to deterrence and response time. We identify three different archetypes of combinations of prediction methods and optimization objectives that constitute the Pareto frontier among the configurations we analyze. Furthermore, optimizing for multiple crime types biases allocations in a way that generally decreases single-type performance along one outcome metric but can improve it along the other. Managerial implications: Although optimization integrating all relevant crime types is theoretically possible, it is practically challenging because each crime type requires a collectively consistent weight. We present a framework combining prediction and optimization for a subset of key crime types with exploring the impact on the remaining types to support implementation of operations-focused smart city solutions in practice.

The Giant Leap for Smart Cities: Scaling Up Smart City Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) Initiatives

Despite the promise of AI and IoT, the efforts of many organizations at scaling smart city initiatives fall short. Organizations often start by exploring the potential with a proof-of-concept and a pilot project, with the process later grinding to a halt for various reasons. Pilot purgatory, in which organizations invest in small-scale implementations without them realizing substantial benefits, is given very little attention in the scientific literature relating to the question of why AI and IoT initiatives fail to scale up for smart cities. By combining extensive study of the literature and expert interviews, this research explores the underlying reasons why many smart city initiatives relying on Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) fail to scale up. The findings suggest that a multitude of factors may leave organizations ill prepared for smart city AIoT solutions, and that these tend to multiply when cities lack much-needed resources and capabilities. Yet many organizations tend to overlook the fact that such initiatives require them to pay attention to all aspects of change: strategy, data, people and organization, process, and technology. Furthermore, the research reveals that some factors tend to be more influential in certain stages. Strategic factors tend to be more prominent in the earlier stages, whereas factors relating to people and the organization tend to feature later when organizations roll out solutions. The study also puts forward potential strategies that companies can employ to scale up successfully. Three main strategic themes emerge from the study: proof-of-value, rather than proof-of-concept; treating and managing data as a key asset; and commitment at all levels.