Smart City Movement Research Articles

Enabling Smarter Cities with Operations Management

Recent development of new technologies and data analytics has unleashed the so-called smart city (SC) movement, which has been transforming the ways that cities (and their services) operate. This movement is in line with the operations management (OM) community’s pursuit of innovative research questions, and part of our community has already started working on this exciting area of SC OM. In this article, we shall discuss (i) the potential contribution that OM can make to the SC movement, that is, how OM research may help inform discussion and decision making in the public and private sectors. In particular, the core principle of making cities smarter is in line with the OM literature. We then discuss (ii) how and why SC operations can be an interesting topic that possibly expands the scope and depth of OM theory, through drawing links to the existing and new streams of OM literature. Finally, we present (iii) a few promising research directions and examples, in domains such as energy, transportation (mobility), and retail.

‘Smart’ crime prevention? Digitization and racialized crime control in a Smart City

As part of the global Smart Cities movement, the Switching on Darwin programme foregrounds digitally enhanced government and urbanism. While promoting its environmental and democratizing potential, software-enhanced CCTV, LED lighting and geofencing were among the first components rolled out. In practice, these technologies will impact adversely on Aboriginal people, already disproportionately targeted by criminal justice processes. By integrating multiple ‘smart’ technologies with ‘public safety’ agendas, such Smart City developments provide the potential for intensified criminalization of visible minorities.

Systemic Methods and Large-Scale Models in Ekistics

In recent years planning discourse and ideology have been dominated by the smart city movement and yet the past is full theories that address the challenges of the increasingly urban world drawing on scientific concepts and technological advances, in most cases unsuccessfully. This paper describes ekistics, a concept coined by architect-planner C.A. Doxiadis to describe the science of human settlements. It offered a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and systemic approach that explored worldwide urbanization drawing on mathematics, forecasting models, but also on social sciences. In parallel, the paper reviews Doxiadis Associates’ Urban Detroit Area project to denote the clash of systemic methods and large-scale models with urban complexity. The aim is to provide a historical background for assessing the theoretical underpinnings and scope of the smart city model.

Assessing the ASEAN Smart Cities Network (ASCN) via the Quintuple Helix Innovation Framework, with Special Regard to Smart City Discourse, Civil Participation, and Environmental Performance

ABSTRACT The smart city movement (SCM) is spreading globally with increasing velocity. With its international allure, it has generated a burgeoning body of international literature, much of which forms what the current study refers to as a ‘normalised discourse’. The international literature also includes a growing body of criticism that addresses hazards associated with this normalised discourse. The current study labels the collective product of this criticism as identification of the ‘normalised problematics’ of the SCM. In 2018, Singapore announced that 26 cities would form the ASEAN Smart Cities Network (ASCN). This article assesses the ASCN in terms of the SCM discourse and its normalised problematics through the Quintuple Helix frame of innovation economics. Our analysis suggests that the authoritarian nature of some ASEAN countries has serious implications for participatory and therefore socio-ecologically sustainable urban planning and governance, for the ASCN projects specifically, and for similar national and regional projects globally.

Modeling Photovoltaic Potential for Bus Shelters on a City-Scale: A Case Study in Lisbon

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development set 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These include ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all (SGD7) and making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable (SGD11). Thus, across the globe, major cities are moving in the smart city direction, by, for example, incorporating photovoltaics (PV), electric buses and sensors to improve public transportation. We study the concept of integrated PV bus stop shelters for the city of Lisbon. We identified the suitable locations for these, with respect to solar exposure, by using a Geographic Information System (GIS) solar radiation map. Then, using proxies to describe tourist and commuter demand, we determined that 54% of all current city bus stop shelters have the potential to receive PV-based solutions. Promoting innovative solutions such as this one will support smart mobility and urban sustainability while increasing quality of life, the ultimate goal of the Smart Cities movement.

Smart City Operations: Modeling Challenges and Opportunities

We discuss some recent developments in smart city initiatives across the world to motivate the opportunities and challenges that such initiatives pose, and we categorize them into three themes: data access and collection, end-user utility, and economic viability of different solutions. We recognize that the academic literature that can help in addressing some of these challenges is at its nascent state and provide guidelines on how manufacturing and service operations management scholars can contribute to the global smart city movement.

Data and Temporality in the Spectral City

Rapid urbanization has meant that cities around the world must deal with problems like traffic congestion, aging infrastructure, affordable housing, and climate change. Increasingly, policymakers are turning to investments in technology and digital infrastructure to address these problems. Yet the move towards so-called smart cities is not simply responsive, and policymakers increasingly advocate for smart city initiatives as a necessary step towards objective, efficient, and rational governance. This understanding of technological interventions as inherently progressive, however, causes many to overlook the erasures, biases, and limitations that emerge from trying to leave the past behind. As the problems associated with this enthusiasm become more apparent, the smart city movement must therefore recalibrate its relationship to not just technology but time itself. Building on deconstructive temporalities emerging out of quantum physics, I argue that cities must begin drawing from alternative temporalities more open to the intersections between past, present, and future. As such, I suggest that the time has come to replace the ideal of the smart city with that of the spectral city – an incomplete city haunted by the ghosts (and composts) of the past.

The State of Smart Cities in China: The Case of Shenzhen

China is at the midpoint of its urbanisation—the largest scale in human history. The recent smart city movement is influencing the discourse and practice of China’s urbanisation, with numerous cities claiming to build smart cities and/or adopting some forms of smart city strategies and initiatives. A so-called ‘latecomer’s advantage’ is being exploited to advance their pursuit for a smart city status, not only to catch up with overseas counterparts, but to overtake them and become international leaders. This local-level enthusiasm strikes a chord with the central government’s strategy of building an ‘innovative nation’ to drive its economic transformation towards a knowledge economy. This converging central-local interest is creating a ‘smart city mania’ across the nation, which, however, has not received due attention in the international literature, and thus deserves critical examination and reflection to inform policy debates. To address this gap, this study investigates the state of smart cities in China, based on a case study of Shenzhen, China’s fastest-growing, experimental city. Shenzhen grew from a fishing village into an international metropolis in 40 years, and has now won a nickname of ‘China’s Silicon Valley’ or ‘China’s smartest city’. This study analyses the state of Chinese smart cities and the pursuit for a smart Shenzhen from the perspectives of the smart city as a concept, as an urban development paradigm, and as an urban regime, drawing upon the international smart city literature. It concludes that a technology-centric approach to smart cities in China, as illustrated by the Shenzhen case, have advanced innovation capacity and economic growth through capitalising on a ‘latecomer’s advantage’. However, this ‘latecomer’s advantage’ may translate into a ‘latecomer’s disadvantage’ for this approach’s lack of institutional adaptation, and for its insufficient attention to social and environmental problems covered under the shiny economic boom. This latecomer’s disadvantage is likely to impact the long-term sustainability of Chinese cities.

Smart cities as a source for entrepreneurial opportunities: Evidence for Spain

In the context of economic crisis, it is necessary to drive changes in the productive model towards a smart society. Particularly in urban areas, the Smart City movement has become an agent for change to help fight the loss of competitiveness and unemployment. Literature review shows that there is little regarding the generation of knowledge and entrepreneurial activity in the context of a smart city and in Spain in particular. This study contributes to filling this gap. We start by identifying the potential sources of entrepreneurial opportunities that a medium-sized smart city may offer based on the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship. We then provide empirical evidence that the Smart City label has positively influenced the effective creation of new businesses. To this end, we examine 44 Spanish Smart City initiatives included and classified in the Smart City Index according to their smartness level. Our results confirm the relation between the Smart City label and the entrepreneurship rate. Moreover, they allow us to present some relevant considerations and implications concerning the maturing process of Smart City initiatives. These considerations are of particular interest for those agents involved in the smart city entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The Application of the Internet of Things to Enhance Smart Cities

This paper explores the application of the Internet of Things (IoT) as a tool to promote sustainable urban development in the context of Smart City campaigns. As an important element of the smart city concept, IoT is expected to enhance urban sustainability through sensor networks that detect and transmit data. However, challenges remain, adding a layer of difficulty to the process of using the Internet of things to achieve the goals.This paper affirms the concept and relationship of smart city and Internet of things. Then the use of the Internet of things technology in all aspects of supporting the sustainable development of the city was discussed. Therefore, the field of urban planning must cooperate to make good use of the Internet of things technology to achieve sustainable development. The development and application of IoT technology is closely related to the smart city movement. The current trend towards the use of information communication technology (ICT) in cities and architecture may pose new problems and challenges than urban planners. In the context of the smart city movement, urban planners need to understand the role that every ICT is playing in order to make better use of these technologies.

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.

State of smart cities in UK and beyond

The smart city movement has been growing internationally, but it will take another couple of decades for smart cities to realise their game-changing potential. At that point, empowered by data, a political tipping point will begin, giving cities around the world an exalted role in the leadership of society, creating the ‘century of the city’. This study reviews progress in the UK using the four foundations of smart cities: information and communication technology; data; governance; and citizen engagement, and what to look out for in the next two decades.

Smart City Operations: Modelling Challenges and Opportunities

We discuss some recent developments in smart city initiatives across the world to motivate the opportunities and challenges that such initiatives pose, and categorizes them into three themes: data access and collection, end-user utility, and economic viability of different solutions. We recognize that the academic literature that can help in addressing some of these challenges is at its nascent state, and provide guidelines on how M&SOM scholars can contribute to the global smart city movement.

A Smart-City Scope of Operations Management

We are entering an era of great expectations towards our cities. The vision of “smart city” has been pursued worldwide to transform urban habitats into superior efficiency, quality and sustainability. This phenomenon prompts us to ponder what role the scholars in operations management (OM) can assume. In this essay, we express our initial thoughts on expanding OM to the smart-city scope. We review smart-city initiatives of governments, industry, national laboratories and academia. We argue that the smart-city movement will transition from the tech-oriented stage to the decision-oriented stage. Hence, a smart city can be perceived as a system scope within which planning and operational decisions are orchestrated at the urban scale, reflective of multidimensional needs, and adaptive to massive data and innovation. The benefits of studying smart-city OM are manifold and significant: contributing to deeper understanding of smart cities by providing advanced analytical frameworks, pushing OM knowledge boundaries (such as data-driven decision making), and empowering the OM community to deliver much broader impacts than before. We discuss several research opportunities to embody these thoughts, in the interconnected contexts of smart buildings, smart grid, smart mobility and new retail. These opportunities arise from the increasing integration of systems and business models at the urban scale.

Enabling Smarter Cities with Operations Management

Recent development of new technologies and data analytics has unleashed the so-called smart city movement, which has been transforming the ways that cities (and their services) operate. This movement is in line with the Operations Management (OM) community's pursuit of innovative research questions, and part of our community has already started working on this exciting area of smart city OM. In this article, we shall discuss (i) the potential contribution that OM can make to the smart city movement, i.e., how OM research may help inform discussion and decision making in the public and private sectors. In particular, the core principle of making cities smarter is in line with the OM literature. We then discuss (ii) how and why SC operations can be an interesting topic that possibly expands the scope and depth of OM theory, through drawing links to the existing and new streams of OM literature. Finally, we present (iii) a few promising research directions and examples, in domains such as energy, transportation (mobility), and retail.

Smart Transport Systems: Planning and Designing Transport Systems to Support Public Health

Background In the context of city operations and management, smart generally implies“…turning to technology to better connect our communities, improving citizen services”, and, more importantly, finding more intelligent ways to manage city resources and assets. It is a common notion that a city transportation system is a critical asset that must be intelligently managed to enable a better quality of life. It is less clear, however, that a city transportation system is in fact a public health tool and enabler. A transportation system, though, is not just the physical system it is; it is the integration of several activities some of which involve physical assets while other involve policies, standards and norms, that take place over long time span and involve significant resources including technology. Catering for public health should be an integral part of the smart city movement and thinking. Methods The paper first examines the different activities involved in putting together a transportation system, namely: Planning, Design, construction, Operations (management), Maintenance, and, in some cases, Decommissioning (henceforth PDCOMD), and then maps those activities to known public health outcomes. The paper notes that certain activities of the transport system development process are more suited to serve public health than others. For one, transportation system planning is fundamental to ensuring suitable integration of public health in the early stages of putting the transport system together. The operations activity is equally critical but historically—and to this day-- seldom viewed or used as the public health tool it is. Results This paper shows that “smart” as in integration of information and communication technology to improve efficiency of the transportation system may or may not serve public health; public health considerations in some cases require the calming/slowing down and spatial shifting-- thus the appearance of inefficiency-- of certain elements of the transportation system. Alternatively, the notion of efficiency as applied to transportation systems may need to be modified to explicitly incorporate aspects of public health. Conclusions The now trendy notion that information sensing, connectivity, and computation form the backbone of smart cities is questioned. The paper presents an alternate framework where public health is made integral to the notion of smart cities through explicit consideration and integration in key transportation system activities. Adopting an encompassing definition of “health” and “healthy” is vital. Among the many transport system activities, the paper identifies two, planning and operating, where public health consideration is particularly consequential.

Open IoT Ecosystem for Sporting Event Management

By connecting devices, people, vehicles, and infrastructures everywhere in a city, governments and their partners can improve community well-being and other economic and financial aspects (e.g., cost and energy savings). Nonetheless, smart cities are complex ecosystems that comprise many different stakeholders (network operators, managed service providers, logistic centers, and so on), who must work together to provide the best services and unlock the commercial potential of the so-called Internet of Things (IoT). This is one of the major challenges that faces today’s smart city movement, and the emerging “API economy.” Indeed, while new smart connected objects hit the market every day, they mostly feed “vertical silos” (e.g., vertical apps, siloed apps, and so on) that are closed to the rest of the IoT, thus hampering developers to produce new added value across multiple platforms and/or application domains. Within this context, the contribution of this paper is twofold: 1) present the strategic vision and ambition of the EU to overcome this critical vertical silos’ issue and 2) introduce the first building blocks underlying an open IoT ecosystem developed as part of an EU (Horizon 2020) Project and a joint project initiative (IoT-EPI). The practicability of this ecosystem, along with a performance analysis, is carried out considering a proof-of-concept for enhanced sporting event management in the context of the forthcoming FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar.

Smart Cities at the Crossroads

The Smart Cities movement has produced a large number of projects and experiments around the world. To understand the primary ones, as well as their underlying tensions and the insights emerging from them, the editors of this special issue of the California Management Review enlisted a panel of experts, academics, and practitioners from different nationalities, backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. The panel focused its discussion on three main areas: new governance models for Smart Cities, how to spur growth and renewal, and the sharing economy—both commons and market based.

Tracing a path to knowledge? Indicative user impacts of introducing a public transport map in Dhaka, Bangladesh

The smartphone exemplifies the rhetorical smart city movement. This paper examines one potential use of smartphone technology—mapping public transportation services in a megacity of the Global South. We examine the potential user impacts of introducing a smartphone-generated and analogue-delivered schematic bus map in Dhaka, Bangladesh. After distributing the map, we used a web-based survey to investigate impacts on users’ knowledge, as measured by their stated understanding, navigation and perceptions of the system. While a small and biased sample, the results suggest that the map fills a knowledge gap, provides useful and valued information and may stimulate ‘exploration’ of the city and its bus system.

Can it Happen Again? Planning Support, Lee's Requiem and the Rise of the Smart Cities Movement

Can it happen again? Planning support, Lee�s Requiem and the rise of the smart cities movement Just over seventy years ago the first digital computers were born as part of the war effort. The Colossus series of computers at Bletchley Park were assembled to help Alan Turing crack the German U-boat codes and in typical British fashion were then disassembled when the war ended with no more code needing decryption or otherwise. However this was no false dawn. Digital computers painfully struggled out of the scientific laboratory into contexts where large-scale transactions processing and scientific computation were dominant. Sixty years ago the first applications of digital computers were made to our own field�to transportation planning in the Chicago Area Transportation Study (CATS) (Plummer, 2003). F