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Sustainable smart cities
Abstract
Elaborating increasing penchant for smart cities, this chapter takes into account linkages between urbanization and sustainable development to evaluate the concept of sustainable urban development along with brief appraisal of prevalent notions of cities like livable cities, eco-cities and their related components that make city life worth living. Thereafter, the study proceeds to examine prospects of sustainable smart cities, with specific focus on its constituents like smart mobility, smart economy, smart living, smart people, smart governance and smart environment. While assessing options available for cities to tackle the vagaries of climate change, the chapter seeks to present a case for ecosystem-based adaptation as a cost-effective, viable and durable option to deal with adverse impacts of climate change. Lastly, it suggests the implementation of New Urban Agenda of the UN-Habitat in tandem with sustainable development goal-11 as a way out.
En este estudio, se aborda la creciente tendencia global hacia el urbanismo y la economía circular, enfocándose en cómo estas disciplinas, junto con el desarrollo económico sostenible, pueden contribuir a la construcción de un modelo de resiliencia económica que favorezca un entorno bajo en carbono y promueva un avance sustentable. Mediante la revisión de 77 documentos, se exploró cómo la integración del urbanismo sostenible, que atiende a la mitigación de los impactos urbanísticos y al uso eficiente de los recursos, junto con los principios de la circularidad, que promueven la reducción de residuos y la optimización de los recursos naturales, pueden fundamentar un enfoque que armonice el crecimiento con la sostenibilidad y la equidad social. Esta investigación propone un Modelo Económico Resiliente que sintetiza estos enfoques con estrategias de desarrollo sostenible, destacando la importancia de políticas y acciones coordinadas entre gobiernos, empresas y la sociedad para lograr un equilibrio entre el bienestar económico, la justicia social y la protección del medioambiente, al tiempo que se señalan los desafíos en la comprensión e implementación de estas prácticas integradas y la necesidad de inversiones significativas y educación en sostenibilidad.
State of Knowledge. Published by Smart Prosperity at the University of Ottawa.
https://institute.smartprosperity.ca/sites/default/files/publications/files/Partner%20Engagement%20for%20Community%20Sustainability.pdf
Smart cities that make broad use of digital technologies have been touted as possible solutions for the population pressures faced by many cities in developing countries and may help meet the rising demand for services and infrastructure. Nevertheless, the high financial cost involved in infrastructure maintenance, the substantial size of the informal economies, and various governance challenges are curtailing government idealism regarding smart cities. This review examines the state of smart city development in developing countries, which includes understanding the conceptualisations, motivations, and unique drivers behind (and barriers to) smarty city development. A total of 56 studies were identified from a systematic literature review from an initial pool of 3928 social sciences literature identified from two academic databases. Data were analysed using thematic synthesis and thematic analysis. The review found that technology-enabled smart cities in developing countries can only be realised when concurrent socioeconomic, human, legal, and regulatory reforms are instituted. Governments need to step up their efforts to fulfil the basic infrastructure needs of citizens, raise more revenue, construct clear regulatory frameworks to mitigate the technological risks involved, develop human capital, ensure digital inclusivity, and promote environmental sustainability. A supportive ecosystem that encourages citizen participation, nurtures start-ups, and promotes public–private partnerships needs to be created to realise their smart city vision.
As negative impacts of climate change tend to increase in the future, densely-populated cities especially need to take action on being robust against natural hazards. Consequently, there is a growing interest from scientists in measuring the climate resilience of cities and regions. However, current measurements are usually assessed on administrative levels, not covering potential hotspots of hazardous or sensitive areas. The main aim of this paper focusses on the measurement of climate resilience in the City of Dortmund, Germany, using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Based on a literature review, we identified five essential components of climate resilience and initially designed a theoretical framework of 18 indicators. Since climate resilience is still a vague concept in scientific discourses, we implemented local expert knowledge and fuzzy logic modelling into our analysis. The benefit of this study not only lies in the fine-scale application, but also in the relevance for multiple disciplines by integrating social and ecological factors. We conclude that climate resilience varies within the city pattern, with the urban core tending to be less resilient than its surrounding districts. As almost the entire geodata set used is freely available, the presented indicators and methods are to a certain degree applicable to comparable cities.
The article deals with development of Ukrainian cities within the Smart City concept based on the experience of foreign countries. The experience of such countries as Sweden and Denmark has been analyzed. The main attention is paid to those elements of the concept that can be implemented in Ukraine at present. The analysis identified the following conditions for the development of the Smart City concept: the development of an effective e-government, transparency, inclusion in international economic processes, attracting new players and new sources of funding, service integration, strategic planning of the new business model, leadership and championship. These elements are relevant for implementation in Ukraine. Two regions of Ukraine, namely, the Black Sea and Slobozhansky regions, were selected to analyze the pace of implementing the Smart City concept. The geographic location, climatic conditions and infrastructure potential of these regions create good prospects for their attractiveness in the global world. The research has identified elements of the Smart City concept that has already been introduced and provided recommendations for possible next steps in Smart City development in Ukraine.
Congestion and road accidents are both considered essential challenges for sustainable mobility in large cities, but their relationship is only partially explored by the literature. In this paper, we empirically examine different public policies aimed at reducing urban traffic congestion but which may also have indirect effects on road accidents and casualties. We use data from 25 large urban areas in Spain for the period 2008–2017 and apply econometric methods to investigate how a variety of public policies do affect both negative externalities. Although the relationship between congestion and road safety is complex, we find that the promotion of certain modes of public transportation and the regulation of parking spaces may contribute to making cities more sustainable, both in terms of the time spent traveling and the probability of being affected by an accident. Considering whether policies addressing congestion improve or damage road safety as an indirect result is a useful approach for local policy-makers and planners in their attempt to get sustainable transportation outcomes.
Developing countries are embarking on ‘smart city’ programmes to rejuvenate their cities as engines of economic growth, applying smart solutions and managerial innovations. However, they ignore the powerful externalities of cities and are far from adopting ‘smart’ ways of financing urban infrastructure and services based on known theories and international practices. This article combines the Henry George Theorem (HGT) from Urban Economics and Mohring–Harwitz Theorem (MHT) from Transport Economics to suggest a robust strategy of financing infrastructure in cities. While the HGT emphasizes the taxation of urban land value, the MHT advocates the pricing of congestion externalities. The article suggests that if ‘beneficiaries pay’ and ‘congesters pay’ principles are combined, cities in developing countries like India can generate adequate revenues to service long-tenor debt incurred for core infrastructure facilities. It presents a toolbox of instruments to finance urban infrastructure.
Urbanization has become a universal phenomenon, which is evident from the fact that less-developed countries will experience a rapid pace of urbanization compared with developed countries. For instance, Africa, Asia, and Latin America will have more urban population than North America, Europe, and Australia by 2050. For the first time in the history of human civilization, the urban population exceeded the rural one in 2008. By 2030, it is also estimated that 70% of the worlds’ population will be concentrated in cities. In this regard, the smart city provides different advantages to different emerging new urban areas. Smart cities look to counter and decrease all kinds of challenges, such as lack of energy resources, inadequate health care facilities, poor infrastructure, irregular supply of drinking water, vulnerable housing conditions, etc. In 2015, to meet the growing aspirations of the city’s urban population, the Ministry of Urban Development selected Faridabad, among other 100 cities, to be first on the Smart City Mission list. The Smart City Mission has the basic objective to identify improvements in essential city infrastructure, provide a better quality of life, offer smart solutions to problems, and ensure sustainable development for the unified growth of the city. Analytical and descriptive methods were used in this study. For the collection of data, secondary data and primary survey were used. Qualitative and quantitative techniques were used to generate the results. Based on past experiences regarding the smart city and its role in the development of the city, a household survey was conducted in November 2016 in different towns of Faridabad, Haryana. There is an urgent need in Faridabad to deliver essential infrastructure in such a way as to fulfil the requirements of urbanization. Faridabad needs an inclusive approach to use the optimum potential of smart management because the inclusive approach is considered an efficient and effective tool to capture a healthy relationship among the environment, the government programmes, and the people. In this regard, awareness, public participation, and education can play a vital role in making Faridabad a smart city.
Agriculture and climate change are internally correlated with each other in various aspects, as climate change is the main cause of biotic and abiotic stresses, which have adverse effects on the agriculture of a region. The land and its agriculture are being affected by climate changes in different ways, e.g., variations in annual rainfall, average temperature, heat waves, modifications in weeds, pests or microbes, global change of atmospheric CO2 or ozone level, and fluctuations in sea level. The threat of varying global climate has greatly driven the attention of scientists, as these variations are imparting negative impact on global crop production and compromising food security worldwide. According to some predicted reports, agriculture is considered the most endangered activity adversely affected by climate changes. To date, food security and ecosystem resilience are the most concerning subjects worldwide. Climate-smart agriculture is the only way to lower the negative impact of climate variations on crop adaptation, before it might affect global crop production drastically. In this review paper, we summarize the causes of climate change, stresses produced due to climate change, impacts on crops, modern breeding technologies, and biotechnological strategies to cope with climate change, in order to develop climate resilient crops. Revolutions in genetic engineering techniques can also aid in overcoming food security issues against extreme environmental conditions, by producing transgenic plants.
One of the efforts to improve the quality of urban environment is smart environment concept that has become one of six of smart city indicators such as smart government, smart economy, smart people, smart mobility, and smart living. Smart environment means an environment that provides comfort, resources, physical and nonphysical beauty, and visual for the people, also students in their schools. This research aimed to apply the concept of smart trash bin in schools. This smart trash bin that detects rubbish based on rubbish group (plastic and metal). In addition, the smart trash bin has a function as education for the students as well. It has explanation about knowledge and how to use the trash bin so the students have awareness to keep environment clean and beauty. The research used Research and Development method from Borg and Gall model. The target of this research was the students in elementary school. The final result of this smart trash bin was a feasibility test product. There will be a test for the students using questionnaire. So that this smart trash bin is effective to improve the knowledge of students about rubbish.
The rate of urbanization or the proportion of population that lives in cities in the world increases every year, a city should adopt the concept of smart city that may increase the quality of life. Indonesia is undergoing a historic change and is beginning to enter the urban economic stage. Cities in Indonesia are growing faster than cities in other Asian countries, hence it is interesting to implement smart economy concept in Indonesia. Smart Economy concerns an open, transparent, varied economy that adds value to smart cities. Its characteristics include a variety of employment opportunities with labor market flexibility, diversification that promotes entrepreneurship and innovation as well as more productivity through local, regional and global linkages. This characteristic of the smart economy embodies a high level of competitiveness worldwide and also at the local level. This research explores the variables and indicators used to measure the smart economy derived from the literature and also the opinion of 18 respondents from quadruple helix backgrounds namely, business player, government, expert/researcher and civil society. The study finds 10 variables and 34 indicators to measure whether a city has implemented the concept of smart economy from an Indonesian perspective.
The paper opens a series of publications within the framework of a project designed to investigate the impact of digitalization of the Russian economy on the qualitative change in its structure and long-term opportunities.
Historically, Industrial Automation and Control Systems (IACS) were largely isolated from conventional digital networks such as enterprise ICT environments. Where connectivity was required, a zoned architecture was adopted, with firewalls and/or demilitarized zones used to protect the core control system components. The adoption and deployment of ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) technologies is leading to architectural changes to IACS, including greater connectivity to industrial systems. This paper reviews what is meant by Industrial IoT (IIoT) and relationships to concepts such as cyber-physical systems and Industry 4.0. The paper develops a definition of IIoT and analyses related partial IoT taxonomies. It develops an analysis framework for IIoT that can be used to enumerate and characterise IIoT devices when studying system architectures and analysing security threats and vulnerabilities. The paper concludes by identifying some gaps in the literature.
Proactive-reactive scheduling is important in the situations where the project collaborators need to coordinate their efforts. The coordination is mostly achieved through the combination of the shared baseline schedule and the deviation penalties. In this paper, we present an extension of predictive Gantt chart to the proactive-reactive scheduling needs. It can be used to track the evolution of the relationship between dynamic and static elements through the time. The dynamic elements are evolving probability distributions due to the uncertainty and revealed information. The static elements are time-agreements in the baseline schedule. We demonstrate that in the state-of-the-art proactive-reactive scheduling, the baseline schedule is agnostic to the information received during the project execution. The sources of such inflexibility in the problem model and the scheduling methods are analyzed. The visualization is highlighted as a precursor to developing new methods that proactively change the baseline schedule in accordance with the gained information.
Port Louis, the capital city of Mauritius, has been the preferred city for hosting the judicial, political and business activities of the country for the past two centuries. However, new policies have created nine new smart cities in greenfield locations within 10 km from Port Louis, so the capital city is facing economic decline as it is losing businesses, as well as administrative functions. This loss equates to an erosion in municipal revenue along with a reduced interest in contributing to the development of the city; all of which takes a toll on its urban economic landscape, as well as on the broader Mauritian economy. This paper builds from the findings of a focus group study to propose a smart urban regeneration model for the City of Port Louis, which could enable the old city to be restored and regenerated rather than redeveloped in modernist architecture, as has happened in the new smart cities model. A smart urban regeneration model is proposed backed by the pillars of smart infrastructure, culture, metabolism and governance. The proposed model is applied to the context of Port Louis to generate an urban regeneration scheme. The potential benefits in terms of financial outcomes, investment attraction and job creation are explored through a combined application of econometric forecasting models. The results support positive figures of both investment and job creation, and the findings of this study aim at informing and providing the governing bodies of Port Louis with a tangible solution for revamping the centuries-old capital city, as well as demonstrating to the world that smart cities can mean sensitive urban regeneration.
This article aims to identify main trends in scientific literature characterising urban
smart mobility, on the basis of bibliometric analysis of articles published in the ISI Web
of Science and Scopus databases. The study period was set from 2000 to 2017. Authors
used a basic technique of the bibliometric analysis of the scientific literature
characterising urban smart mobility with the support of the VOSviewer software.
The analysis included the number of publications, citation analysis, research area
analysis and the most frequent keywords. The analysis led to taking notice of current
research trends dealing with the urban smart mobility. The core of the paper is
a theoretical framework of research trends, which was developed through a review of
scientific literature. The result of this paper is a map showing the existing relationships
between key terms, research areas characterising publications dealing with the urban
smart mobility and intelligent transport system (ITS). "Smart city" is probably the most
"in vogue", debated and analysed concept among researchers and administrative/
governmental representatives from all over the world. This multidimensional concept
is mainly based on smart technology structured around few major components: smart
mobility, smart environment, smart governance, smart living, and everything that
targets the people’s wellbeing. This work focuses on a hot topic – mobility because of
its significant impact on the environment by pollution as well as living by requiring
intelligent transport systems.
The article aims to analyse the strategies of the selected progressive smart cities (London-Stockholm-Vienna) based on the methodology described below along with the strategy of the emerging smart city (Kyiv). The idea is to see which components of Smart Sustainable city Framework are covered by the "actual" strategies and how they are presented, which projects are currently underway and prioritised and how the evolvement process goes in different cities. We wanted to find common elements and approaches among the selected cities along with the best practices which can be taken into account by the cities when developing their own Smart City Strategy based on the experience already available.
Livability encompasses numerous factors that depend on locally prevailing economic, social and cultural circumstances and therefore becomes necessary to contextualize livability by enlarging focus beyond generic attributes. Livability now a day is prerequisite for healthy living coupled with economic and social survival therefore is very important for improving the quality of life [1]. The aim of this paper is to understand qualitative conceptions of livability in an Egyptian context through individuals' degree of satisfaction with the residential area they live in and its main indicators which should be present in the community, the analysis of the individual-related standards and indicators, and individual's conduct in the community. The objective is to identify livability attributes after thoroughly analyzing the recorded statements and observations made by inhabitants for their understanding of livability. The responses asked are for expressing the desires and expectations to making a residential area a livable habitat.
Circular economy (CE) is gaining popularity at different levels with the promise of creating more sustainable processes. In this context, cities are implementing a number of initiatives that aim to turn them into sustainable circular systems. Whether these initiatives achieve their sustainability goals, however, is largely unknown. Nevertheless, as the application of CE strategies is actively encouraged by many policies across the globe, there is a need to quantify the environmental impacts and to identify the strategies that support urban sustainability. This paper analyses the extent to which research focuses on quantifying the environmental balance of CE initiatives promoted at the municipal level. To this end, the analysis scanned CE initiatives reported in cities around the globe and classified them into urban targets and CE strategies. In parallel, the paper conducted a review of the literature that uses industrial ecology tools to account for the environmental impacts of CE strategies. Results show a diverse geographical representation, as reported cities concentrated in Europe, whereas for environmental research, the main results came from China. In general, cities encourage strategies relating to urban infrastructure (47%), with and additional focus on social consumption aspects, such as repair and reuse actions. In comparison, research mainly addressed industrial and business practices (58%), but the approach to infrastructure was similar to that of cities, both with a special interest in waste management. Research has yet to assess social consumption and urban planning strategies, the latter essential for defining the impacts of other urban elements. Hence, there is a need to define the environmental impacts of the strategies that cities select in their quest for circularity. Research and practice can also benefit from working collaboratively so as to prioritize the CE strategies that best fit into the features of each urban area.
Owing to the dramatic pace and scale of its transformation, Nigeria is considered Africa’s next urban giant. Between 1960 and 2010, Nigeria added approximately 62.5 million inhabitants to its urban population, with forecasts to 2050 projecting an additional 226 million. As Nigeria forges ahead into the next chapter of its urban transition, there is an unmet need to take stock of past experiences, identify trends, and speculate on future growth trajectories. Taking advantage of recently available datasets from the United Nations and the Africapolis Project, this paper launches an inquiry into the nature and causes of Nigeria’s rapid urban transition between 1960 and 2010. It disaggregates urbanization into its individual components of urban growth and calculates their contributions to the overall urban increment. Several notable findings are highlighted. Nigeria, which is considered a late urbanizer, is currently in the accelerated stage of its urban transition and is projected to enter the terminal stage by 2030. Urban natural population increase has been the dominant component of urban growth in the post-colonial period and will likely continue to be so in the immediate future. Despite this, policies aimed at stemming rural to urban migration appear to have been the preferred mechanism for lessening the pressures posed by the contemporary urban transition, suggesting a potential policy mismatch.
This literature review has focused on smart governance as an emerging domain of study that attracts significant scientific and policy attention. More specifically, this paper aims to provide more insight in the definitions of and relationships between smart governance and concepts such as smart and electronic government, in the context of smart cities. The literature review shows that smart government can be considered as a basis for developing smart governance, through the application of emergent information and communication technologies (ICT) for governing. Smart governance as the intelligent use of ICT to improve decision-making through better collaboration among different stakeholders, including government and citizens, can be strongly related to government approaches. In this case ICT-based tools, such as social media, and openness can be factors that increase citizen engagement and support the development of new governance models for smart government. Smart governance may also have an important role in smart city initiatives, which require complex interactions between governments, citizens and other stakeholders. Based on the literature review, this paper coins a definition of ‘smart city governance’ and contributes to developing a framework for building new, smart governance models addressing the challenges of the digital society, collaborative governance, information sharing, citizen engagement, transparency and openness.
Any adaptation activity needs a reliable evidence basis for the climate itself as well as for the exposition and sensitivity of the social, economic or ecological system and its elements. This requires an assessment of recent climate impacts as well as potential future climate change impacts in order to select tailor-made adaptation measures. For a methodologically coherent assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had introduced the requirement of a parallel modeling approach which means that demographic and socioeconomic changes are projected in parallel to the changes of the climatic system. This paper discusses a conceptual framework of a parallel modeling approach and presents its application in four case studies of climate change impact assessments in Germany, covering the national, regional and local scale. The results from the different applications prove the hypothesis that the change in sensitivity (i.e., demographic change, economic change and change in land-use patterns) often determines the magnitude of climate- and weather-related impacts in the near future significantly. The case studies, however, also show that adaptation processes have to be organized in a collaborative way, which takes the knowledge, and also the concerns of the addressees into full account. A broad mandate from all social groups is especially needed when political decisions are based on uncertain knowledge — which is the case whenever climate change impacts are assessed.
Urban transport is considered the basis of properly functioning cities and their development. The main aim of the paper is to attempt the assessment of urban transport development in selected voivodeships (provinces) as a crucial factor of macro logistics. The research also aimed to identify the underdeveloped areas of urban transport in Poland as the basis for the implementation of support policy. The source of information in the investigation process was data drawn from the Central Statistical Office in Poland for 2013–2016. In the scope of dealing with the research problem, chosen classical and order multivariate statistical measures were implemented into the research process. Next, the taxonomic measures for the years of interest served as the basis for the construction of the total (general) synthetic measure applicable to the entire period. The main results and findings of the research indicate that the level of urban transport development is correlated with the whole transportation system which affects the socio-economic development of some regions of Poland. The research can lead to a better understanding of Polish urban transportation development in selected regions. Hence, the results can be helpful in the investment process and for shaping the right transportation policy to improve the use of financial resources.
Machine learning is a promising technology for analyzing diverse types of big data. The Internet of Things era will feature the collection of real-world information linked to time and space (location) from all sorts of sensors. In this paper, we discuss spatio-temporal multidimensional collective data analysis to create innovative services from such spatio-temporal data and describe the core technologies for the analysis. We describe core technologies about smart data collection and spatio-temporal data analysis and prediction as well as a novel approach for real-time, proactive navigation in crowded environments such as event spaces and urban areas. Our challenge is to develop a real-time navigation system that enables movements of entire groups to be efficiently guided without causing congestion by making near-future predictions of people flow. We show the effectiveness of our navigation approach by computer simulation using artificial people-flow data.
Some of the local government in Indonesia claimed they already created a smart city. Mostly the claim based of IT utilization for their governance. In general, a smart city definition is to describe a developed urban area that creates sustainable economic development and high quality of life by excelling in multiple key; economy, mobility, environment, people, living, and government. For public services, the law guarantees good governance by setting the standard for e-government implicitly including for local government or a city. Based on the arguments, this research tries to test the condition of e-government of the Indonesian city in 34 provinces. The purpose is to map e-government condition by measuring indicators of smart government, which are: transparent governance and open data for the public. This research is departing from public information disclosure law and to correspond with the existence law. By examining government transparency, the output of the research can be used to measure the effectiveness of public information disclosure law and to determine the condition of e-government in local government in which as part of a smart city.
The Circular Economy (CE) is currently a popular notion within the policy and business advocacy groups. Despite being visionary and provocative in its message, the research on the CE concept is emerging. The two intertwined objectives of the paper are; first to identify, discuss and develop the various definitions provided by the emerging literature. Secondly, to suggest an initial research approach with which research on CE can be conducted. Our analysis shows that the existing CE work is mainly done on the practical and technical levels of the actual physical flows of materials and energy in production-consumption systems. The focus of the extant literature is on concrete metrics, tools, instruments and computations. Therefore, the basic assumptions concerning the values, societal structures, cultures, underlying world-views and the paradigmatic potential of CE remain largely unexplored. We argue that CE has already become what Gallie (1955) more than six decades ago termed as an “essentially contested concept” (ECC). The paper further suggests a model for CE research that helps in the categorization, classification and organization of research and investigation on CE. The model can help in limiting the observed unbalance and enhance the contribution of the CE approach to a more sustainable global society.
This article presents the results of an analysis comparing the competitive position of Poland and other countries of the Visegrad Group (V4) in the post‑accession period (2004-2015). The assumption is that among the V4 countries, Poland has joined those countries where the diverse effects of EU membership are clearly visible. In the study, analysis was applied to secondary data pertaining to pillars of economic competitiveness, as determined by the ‘Global Competitiveness Reports’ prepared by the World Economic Forum. The article ends with a list of vital conclusions based on the presented analysis.
(Full text: https://www.westminster.ac.uk/eco-cities/reflections) - This paper presents the results of a discourse analysis of documents describing six different eco-city projects: Dongtan Eco-City, Masdar City, Sonoma Mountain Village, Hammarby Sjöstad, Eco-village Ithaca, and Malmö bo01. The aim of the research was to uncover the diversity underneath the various uses of the term eco-city, and to determine the extent of convergence or divergence in the way projects conceive of what an eco-city should be. The research looked at five categories of urban sustainability discourse: the aspect of sustainability emphasised, whether eco-city projects saw themselves as a model for future urban development or as an educational tool, the way in which eco-cities proposed to make urban living more sustainable, the extent to which projects looked at achieving sustainability by design or through governance and management, and the type of actors that play a role in the eco-city. The results suggest that there is a great deal of diversity among projects considered to be eco-cities. In this sense, we argue, it is better to think of the eco-city as an ambition or objective which there will be multiple ways to achieve.
The present article addresses how smart city initiatives can positively impact development, with a special emphasis on developing countries. Extant definitions and maturity models on smart cities have a very strong focus on the mere use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), thereby ignoring the special needs and factors to be considered in developing countries. Thus, by using the extant literature on Smart Cities and Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D), a comprehensive Smart City for Development (SC4D) model is introduced. The article argues that a favorable ecosystem for SC4D is one that is backed by both national and local sustainability, infrastructure, human capital, services, apps, and data. Moreover, successful SC4D initiatives include bottom-up approaches, citizen participation, a fit with both the national and the local culture, as well as a fit with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals and the Capability Approach.
To promote sustainable urban development and green industrial process are critical solutions for sustainable and low-carbon society transition in China, considering the significant environmental impacts derived from the industrialization and surging urbanization. Under this background, China adopts top-down programs on smart cities and smart industrial parks to forward the above efforts. While practices and lessons from these programs will be valuable to enlighten other regions and practitioners, to date, rather few studies have paid attentions to this issue. Particularly, the emerging smart technologies strongly support the practice, via offering smart solu- tions like better renewable energy projection, low-carbon life styles transformation, as well as energy planning and management. However, there has been a lack of discussing their future role in-depth. With this circumstance, this paper conducts an integrated and in-depth review on China's promotion on smart cities and smart industrial parks. In detail, the national pilots, key technical innovations, incentives and policies framework, as well as spa- tial features were discussed in-depth. Particularly, we further explored how the smart solutions can contribute to better decision making on low-carbon urban and industrial system planning. Finally, we highlighted policy recommendations targeting on future smart cities and industrial parks promotion, focusing on the perspectives of technological and social system innovations, innovative decision support tools, and smart management frame- work. Our results expect to offer critical enlightenments for policy makers to address future concerns on smart cities and industrial parks promotion and management.
This paper builds on institutional theory to understand the role that the institutional environment plays in emerging economies which encourage citizens to create Internet of Things (IoT)-based interventions. The research included a field-based study in Hyderabad, a south Indian smart city, using a qualitative explorative research methodology. The research found that, although a supportive regulatory environment helps to create a positive regulatory and cognitive institutional context, normative institutions continue to discourage the positive environment that this context has created. Such a scenario may lead to a 'talent-in and talent-out' situation that reduces the entrepreneurial potential of the cities. Thus, city governments in emerging economies need to focus on building not only a regulatory environment, but also create a conducive environment for the key stakeholders in the ecosystem to encourage and promote citizen-led IoT interventions that would result in building inclusive smart cities.
There is much enthusiasm about smart city development, but the actual implementation of smart projects creates a need for specific methodologies to assess smart city projects. This paper proposes a holistic framework for assessing and interrelating smart city projects and urban challenges in a specific region and for evaluating the projects’ potential to generate effects. A generalized Smart City Projects Assessment Matrix (SC[PAM]) is proposed as a tool and applied to the South and East Mediterranean Region at both the regional and project levels. The tool is validated through its application to five case studies. Guidelines for project implementation in the area are extracted.
Nineteenth-century urbanization and industrialization in western Europe have clearly contributed to the formation of societal knowledge and self-reflexive cultural iconographies. Especially from the 1820s onwards, one major context for discussing the social and cultural diversity of the city and concomitant socio-political tensions was the emerging market of journals and magazines. Based upon the writings of two exemplary authors, this article investigates with which techniques and metaphors nineteenth-century journalistic sketches depicted urban sociability and conditions. Furthermore, it reflects on how not only the ever more differentiating urban environments but also the proximity of different networks and institutions of knowledge encouraged the refinement of social observation and thought. Exploring a neglected genre of social knowledge production, the article proposes new perspectives for urban history and aims at stimulating a critical review of contemporary research practices in all branches of the social sciences.
Research on smart cities lacks a systematic understanding of the different components of smart city governance, the metrics to measure these components, their envisaged outcomes and potential contextual factors influencing both components as well as outcomes. This study analyzes the relevant body of literature and proposes conceptual insights. A research scheme is generated and used for an extensive discussion of the literature. The systematic literature review indicates that various smart city governance definitions exist. Also, this study reveals substantial variances in contextual factors, measurement techniques and outcomes among the concepts of smart city governance.
Driving economic growth through a low carbon trajectory will be
a challenge as well as an opportunity for India in next three
decades with a billion plus population. Cities are going to play a
major role in this rapidly urbanising India. The scope of this article
is to focus on some of the ongoing city-scale actions, which
clearly indicate that India can strengthen its response by going
beyond its NDCs. A combination of technology penetration,
individual behaviour, community actions and policy
interventions is driving such experiments. Ongoing investments
in infrastructure are targeted towards creation of new facilities as
well as modernisation of existing, and traditionally sustainable
practices such as public transport, shared mobility, walking,
cycling and rickshaw rides. Policies, supplemented by statutory
mandates, are trying to command and regulate, nudge and
incentivise climate responsive actions. Shifting public
preferences towards star-rated household appliances is
emerging as a social norm. Increased concern towards local air
pollution is also driving changes. Large construction projects are
being mandated to comply with building codes. Urban rooftops
are facing competing demand from solar panels, organic
gardens. Participation in the process of change is thus defining a
new urban lifestyle, efficiently and sufficiently, energised by
modern energy forms, and is thus paving the way to a new low
emission future for India with global mitigation benefits.
Financing sustainable urban development has become a major issue, especially in Asian countries where the size and scale of construction efforts are vast. Shenzhen International Low Carbon City (ILCC) is a demonstration project of the China-EU Partnership on Sustainable Urbanization (CEUPSU) and an intriguing example for understanding innovative forms of funding with the specific aim to do this in environmentally, socially and economically sustainable ways. This article examines which financial vehicles are utilized in ILCC, in what way these contribute to sustainability and which implications the lessons drawn from it have for other eco and low carbon cities in China and elsewhere. The authors find that Urban Investment and Finance Platforms and Public-Private-Partnerships (PPPs) in a broader context are the two financial vehicles ILCC uses. A broad approach to PPPs is chosen in which stakeholder involvement is key and social conflicts are avoided by balancing the interests of various stakeholders. In particular, planning the village area as a whole and arranging finance through ‘metro + property’ provide a replicable and operable example for other cities in funding urban renewal and community transformation and dealing with the issue how residents can share the benefits of urban development with developers. The combination of these financial arrangements facilitates ILCC to achieve the triple bottom line in sustainable urbanization. ILCC is environmentally sustainable by promoting low carbon transition, socially sustainable through resident and villager involvement, and financially sustainable through diversification of funding sources. The financing experience gained from ILCC provides practical lessons for other cities and has significant implications in adapting institutional and organizational arrangements to create enabling conditions for innovative financing activities.
The growing importance of the concept of the circular economy as a way to attain sustainable development has encouraged scholars to propose different ways to understand it. Given the large number of studies done on the circular economy, their differing approaches and their multiple applications, this paper attempts to propose a consensus view of the basic notions of the circular economy framework and highlight its relationship with eco-innovation. To that end, this study carried out a systematic literature review that resulted in four main outputs: a knowledge map of the circular economy, an analysis of the main notions of the concept, principles, and determinants of a circular economy. Finally, this study brings to light some remarkable examples of eco-innovations developed for implementation in the circular economy.