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Abstract

In recent years, the world’s population living in cities has been rapidly increasing. Cities are transforming their infrastructure in a smarter and more efficient way so that sustainable development forms part of their long-term strategy. However, this transformation does not always result in expected benefits due to a variety of factors such as an absence of social acceptance, a lack of holistic design and the development of unilateral interventions. An analysis of the scientific literature related to the evaluation of the impact of smart city actions revealed a gap in the holistic methods for their assessment. To this end, an accurate evaluation of implemented smart solutions focusing on the energy domain is necessary in order to assess the expected and realized impact of each solution. This paper proposes a seven-step methodology for assessing the impact of smart city interventions and presents a use case for the city of Espoo. A number of major findings were the outcome of our research and development work, such as the need for a thorough analysis of the long-term vision of the city, a combined top-down and bottom-up approach and the ongoing cooperation between all stakeholders involved in urban planning and transformation, in which necessary Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are defined.

1. Introduction

1.1. The Necessity of Impact Assessment
According to the United Nations [1] 68% of the world’s population is projected to live in urban areas by the year 2050; cities, therefore, are anticipated to face new challenges in sustainably integrating further populace, such as a lack of appropriate infrastructure for sustainable energy and automated systems, applications and commercial arrangements, digital security, network connectivity and data capacity [2]. Cities will be required to transform their infrastructures in a smarter, more efficient and resilient way so that sustainable development forms part of their long-term strategy and a better quality of life is assured to their citizens. The concept of the smart city is multidimensional [3], with the aim of increasing urban sustainability and quality of life while pursuing economic development among its citizens [4]. Additionally, sustainability has gained popularity among scholars, environmental policy makers and government agencies [5]. However, a smart city is not just about creating technically viable urban areas and stimulating economic growth; it requires a multifaceted and multidimensional approach that promotes a structural transformation in the urban ecosystem, directing the development of cities towards their “smartness” in areas such as economy, governance, social, environment, mobility and ICT [6].

Abstract

Introduction

Nancy Fraser’s conceptualization of justice

Affirmative versus transformative remedies for injustices

Justice in critical literature on smart cities

Redistribution

Recognition

Representation

From the smart to the just city in the digital age

From affirmative to transformative strategies

Retaining and regaining technological sovereignty

Conclusions

Acknowledgements

References

Abstract

     The smart city is the most emblematic contemporary expression of the fusion of urbanism and digital technologies. Critical urban scholars are now increasingly likely to highlight the injustices that are created and exacerbated by emerging smart city initiatives and to diagnose the way that these projects remake urban space and urban policy in unjust ways. Despite this, there has not yet been a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the concept of justice in the smart city literature. To fill this gap and strengthen the smart city critique, we draw on the tripartite approach to justice developed by philosopher Nancy Fraser, which is focused on redistribution, recognition, and representation. We use this framework to outline key themes and identify gaps in existing critiques of the smart city, and to emphasize the importance of transformational approaches to justice that take shifts in governance seriously. In reformulating and expanding the existing critiques of the smart city, we argue for shifting the discussion away from the smart city as such. Rather than searching for an alternative smart city, we argue that critical scholars should focus on broader questions of urban justice in a digital age.

Introduction

     We live in an age where digitization, digital networks, big data, and internet-based infrastructures are ‘mediating and augmenting the production of space’ and in so doing, are ‘transforming socio-spatial relations’ (Ash, Kitchin, and Leszczynski 2018, 29). The smart city is an emblematic expression of these transformations where data, sensors, and algorithms are presented as technical solutions for urban problems. After initially being dominated by affirmative perspectives, since about 2014 an increasing number of critical views on the smart city have been published by geographers and urban scholars (amongst by now many others, see Cardullo and Kitchin 2019; Cugurullo 2018; Greenfield 2013; Hollands 2008, 2015; Kitchin 2016; Leszczynski 2016; Rose 2020; Söderström, Paasche, and Klauser 2014; Wiig and Wyly 2016), with some of the earliest and most cited critiques being published precisely in this journal (Hollands 2008; Söderström, Paasche, and Klauser 2014).

     Most of these critiques directly or indirectly invoke questions of justice; however, they rarely define its meaning. Consequently, the meaning of justice in critical smart city debates remains elusive and theoretically underdeveloped. This is despite the fact that critical urban geographers have of course long engaged with concepts of social justice, from Lefebvre’s (2003 [1970]) call for the right to the city, further developed for example by Marcuse et al. (2009) and Brenner, Marcuse, and Mayer (2009), to questions of spatial justice (Soja 2010; Marcuse 2009; Fainstein 2009), to Harvey’s (1973) seminal work on justice and the city, to interventions like Fainstein (2010) which highlight the importance of participatory engagement to expand understandings of urban justice (for on overview on some of them with reference to the smart city see Kitchin, Cardullo, and Di Feliciantonio 2019; for an application of David Harvey’s social justice theory on questions of the smart city see Vanolo 2019).

Conclusions

     We are currently observing the increasing centrality of digital technologies in public discourse, proposed as responses to current social and political problems of the city. In this article, we presented a comprehensive definition and framework of justice to guide progressive efforts in assessing and reimagining smart city initiatives and argued for transformative remedies for injustice. Building on Fraser’s tripartite framework, we examined justice in critical smart city literature along economic, social, and political lines. We observed notable tensions, marked by a recognition on the one hand of the ways in which digital practices mediate and reinforce domination, dispossession, disenfranchisement, and social differentiation, and on the other, a desire to exploit the emancipatory potential of digital practices as sites of generative possibility for thinking, acting, and being otherwise. In assessing visions of alternative smart cities, we highlighted the need for transformational change, for instance, through technology sovereignty movements which provide collective ownership of data-intensive digital and algorithmic platforms and services.

Abstract

Introduction

Review of literature on the current understanding and ongoing debate of smart cities

Method and data

Results and discussion

Conclusion

Declarations

References

Abstract

     Smart city is one of the fastest growing socio-economic and scientific initiative in the world. Still, it is only in principle and a mere blueprint for many developing countries. This study reviews literature on smart city in Nigeria and developing countries. Our aim is to explore ways to improve the quality of Nigeria’s urban areas, based on recent research on the concept of smart city and its implementation. We summarise key research findings, and gather evidence that shows what composition of urban governance, social, economic, and environmental factors, that would influence actualising a smart city in Nigeria. Although knowledge has grown tremendously in the current literature on the definition, significance, governance, policy, and implementation of a smart city, its significance in Nigeria and other developing countries is supplemental. As an environmentally friendly initiative, a smart city will support urban sustainability and livelihood in Nigeria in a myriad of ways—environmental protection, and mainstream urban services, including public security and safety, access to quality health care, efficient power supply, clean water distribution, assets management, smart transportation, etc. However, despite her unique traditional urban agglomeration trends, Nigeria is unambitious and constrained towards actualising a smart city. Actualising a smart city in Nigeria and other developing countries would require radical and ambitious policies on development of human and infrastructural capacity, as well as institutional reinforcement. This highlights the need for more research, of which we are optimistic that the findings of this research will support with its new insight and clear guidelines.

Introduction

     A smart city is modern architectural philosophy, focusing on the use of information and communication technology (ICT) to solve problems endogenous to the city, and to power vital activities. It represents a major transformation from the traditional urban agglomeration to a twenty-frst-century metropolis, which advances city functions, promotes economic growth, and improves the quality of life for citizens (Bakıcı et al., 2013). One obvious beneft of a smart city is the level of government response to the needs and well-being of citizens through positive interaction between the government and citizens, aided by technology-driven policies and services. When we look at some of the smart cities in the world today for example Singapore, San-Diego, Barcelona, and Hong Kong, we could fnd that smartness of cities creates applications and urban services that combine technology and promotes the development of policies and practices to address the social, economic, and environmental challenges facing today’s urban areas (Su et al., 2011).

Conclusion

     A smart city represents a shift both in mindset and architectural framework from the traditional agglomeration of roads, public utilities, and amenities to a modern system that uses big data and ICT to enhance the livelihood of the citizens and government policy and program of service delivery within the city. This is a major incentive for research and policy towards the sustainable development of cities. There is also an opportunity to tackle urban scenic distortion and to provide a more dynamic and diversifed science to address common issues – such as climate change, increasing frequency, and severity of crimes, social disorders, and disasters – arising from urban agglomerations and the burgeoning human population in cities.

For the developing countries (DCs) such as Nigeria – the focus of this study – a smart city’s conceptualization is slightly skewed because of the vagaries of challenges to its actualization. Thus, the idea of a smart city is still more utopian than realistic. However, the future of the DCs is arguably a smart city because of the complex urbanizations and predictions that places within the DCs will contribute signifcantly to the global urban populations, which is estimated at 90% of the global population by 2050. Therefore, to address the attendant problems that prevail presently in the DCs’ urban areas – which include environmental, economic, and human development issues – a smart city is a potent option.

Abstract

Introduction

Seeing the smart city

Smart city visibility

Visibility and stratagems

Three strategies of visibility

Visualizing smart cities

A politics of visibility

Declarations

References

Abstract

     Cities across the world are increasingly labelling themselves as smart in one way or another. At the same time, this smartness appears amorphous or invisible in its built urban environment. Critical researchers writing on the smart city regularly express confusion or exasperation about precisely the difficulty to locate the smart in the city. Visibility of the smart city is not a given. This article argues that visibility in the case of the smart city is instead strategically produced, and that the strategy opted for tells us something about the kind of urban imaginary put forward. The article introduces a provisional and non-exhaustive taxonomy of strategies of visibility based on analyses of three different cases of smart city projects (in Brazil, Sweden and Canada) and identifies the ways in which the smart city is made visible (or not)—symbolic presence of smart, modelling smart and ubiquitous invisible smart—and discusses what kind of city is envisioned based on each strategy.

Introduction

     The following article investigates the visibility of the smart city. The main argument is that smart city visibility is strategic rather than given, and the article presents three different strategies of visibility inferred from urban examples: the control room of Rio de Janeiro’s smart city operations (the COR), a proposed smart model city in Sweden (Plusstaden) and visualizations of the proposed and later discontinued project Sidewalk Toronto. These three cases represent three different strategies of making the smart city visible: symbolic presence of smart (manifestation through a representation of a smart object or space), modelling smart (constructing exemplary environments), and ubiquitous invisible smart (a strategic invisibility). The article, furthermore, argues that the way in which the smart city is made visible outlines different future imaginaries that produce different relationships between state, smart system, and inhabitants. Smart city visibility will therefore ultimately constitute a political question, not least with regards to transparency, and deserves more scholarly attention than has been the case up to now.

     The principal contribution of the article is to the under researched field of the smart city’s medial and material manifestations. While smart city visibility is touched on in a range of critical research into the following areas: material manifestations of the smart city (Halpern 2015; Picon 2015; Halegoua 2020), visualizations of smart city (Rose 2017, 2018a, b) and narratives of the smart city (Söderström et al. 2014), there is very little research concerning itself with its visibility as such, and even less on the strategic aspects of this visibility. In this sense, the article contributes to the field of smart city visibility through differentiating between different approaches to visibility of smart cities. The article provides a preliminary framework for further analysis of smart city visibility and offers a set of analytical concepts for future research and policymaking.

A politics of visibility

     Sometimes, the smart city is presented as a uniform corporate vision, at times juxtaposed with ‘civic hackers’ (Townsend 2013) or the ‘social city’ (Halegoua 2020), offering community-based non-corporate alternatives to the corporate smart city vision. The smart visions here discussed through their strategies of visibility cannot be neatly divided in this sense. Instead, the material suggests a bigger variation of smart city dreams—the municipal government (with IBM in Rio de Janeiro) vs the national Swedish platform proposed by Plusstaden and the corporate smart city of Sidewalk Toronto.

     I am not arguing that one smart city strategy of visibility is necessarily preferable to others, it would seem to be too early to decide, nor that all models are good or bad. Rather, they present different problems to its inhabitants, not only through the different subjectivities encouraged but also in terms of experience and transparency. These problems need to be addressed through other measures, through policy and laws. The strategies of visibility themselves require different societal responses and the strategies’ political effects will depend on these responses.

Abstract

1. Introduction

2. Integrated Data Exchanges: The Foundation of Smart Cities

3. Applying Governance Approaches to Provisioning IDE Services

4. Discussion: Governance and Sustainability of IDEs

5. Conclusion

References

Abstract

     Collecting, processing, and distributing information has always been a core function of government. This core function has evolved from the earliest ancient governments using clay tablets to today’s smart cities relying on integrated data exchanges (IDE). A smart city “uses information and information technology to make better decisions to improve the quality of life” (Nam and Pardo, 2011). The IDE framework builds upon the data platform literature (O’Reilly, Jan. 2011) by incorporating governance systems to manage a smart city’s activities. This conceptual paper takes existing research, synthesizes it, and creates a new framework to identify how cities can select the appropriate governance rules to facilitate the political, financial, and operational sustainability of their IDEs, and derivatively, their smart city efforts.

Introduction

     Managing information has always been a core function of government
Managing information has always been a core function of government. For example, one of the earliest civilizations in the world, the ancient city of Sumer in Mesopotamia (c. 4500 – c. 1900 BCE) (Anon Feb. 01, 2020) used cuneiform tablets (Anon Apr. 01, 2022) to record contracts and property transfers. In fact, most of the clay tablets that were unearthed, were used to support a public function. Some historians also believe that the expansion of these earliest empires critically depended on a code of law that could be communicated to the far-flung parts of the empire (e.g., the famous Hammurabi’s Code, 1758 BCE) (Charpin and Todd, 2010). Since then, new technologies have developed to improve the collection and distribution information, generating new challenges and opportunities for civilization and also how government should provide data and information1: including the printing press (Adelmann, Mar. 19, 2012) (McLuhan, 1962), the telegraph (Howe, 2007), the Internet (Castells, 2001), AI (Yigitcanlar et al., 2022) and block-chain (Tsampoulatidis et al., 2022). “Smart cities” are the latest conceptualization about how technology can improve government (Anthopoulos and Reddick, 2022) 2. Although by some accounts, the term has become a brand that businesses use to sell technologies (Smith and Prieto Martín, 2022), this study defines smart cities as those that “use information and information technology to make better decisions to improve the quality of life” (Nam and Pardo, 2011).

Conclusion

     If good public management is good decision-making (Simon, 1947), then information is the lifeblood of government. Creating, storing, and analyzing information is not only a core government function, but it is also foundational to the rest of society. As for government, evidence-based or data driven decision-making is key to be recognized as a “smart” city. Foundational to smart city efforts is an IDE to manage vast and disparate sources of information. One of the contributions of this study is defining an IDE and its role in curating, managing, and disseminating information.

     In constructing a conceptual framework for an IDE, dimensions of political sustainability, operational sustainability, and financial sustainability emerged. This study makes the argument that IDE sustainability may be dependent on different governance models: municipal, regional cooperative, and PPP. If an important goal is to use up-to-date technology to make sure that the city stays innovative, it makes more sense to have this function governed by public-private governance systems and their accompanying rules than to keep that within a municipal governance system. If, however, the strategic goal is to make sure that the public is actively involved in smart city efforts or to be transparent and accountable, a public governance system is more appropriate for those functions.

Abstract

1. Introduction

2. Literature review

3. Empirical framework

4. Empirical findings

5. Conclusion and discussion

Disclosure statement

Notes on contributors

References

Abstract

     The aim of the present study is to reveal the causal effects of Smart City policies on urban innovation. Using the panel data harvested from 103 cities in China, the constructed sample was analysed rigorously based on the combination of the strength of Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Difference-in-Differences (DID). As suggested by the empirical results, Smart City policies indeed positively and significantly impact urban innovation . Besides, whether policy effects vary with the regional location and city scale is explored; the results reveal that the impact is significantly positive only for the megacities as well as cities in central China.

Introduction

     Since the late 1990s, smart city projects have been rolled out globally. According to Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu’s report (Deloitte, 2018), the constructions of over 1,000 smart cities have been launched worldwide with 500 policy pilot areas in China, which noticeably outclasses Europe’s 90 of the second place. The mentioned projects are capable of not only enhancing the intelligence of specific socio-economic aspects of daily life, but also presenting a considerable number of other benefits, which cover fostering a competitive economy (Giffinger & Haindl, 2010), boosting more feasible governance (Nam & Pardo, 2011), expediting the innovation process (Paskaleva, 2011; Schaffers et al., 2012), advancing social capital (Hodgkinson, 2011), protecting diversity and individuality (Lind, 2012), etc. Nevertheless, some have argued that the potentials or benefits of smart cities have been overestimated; they considered that smart cities may not be as ‘smart’ as their name suggests (Hollands, 2008). Though considerable capitals have been invested in the advancement of smart cities, smart cities have not achieved their original goals (Yigitcanlar & Lee, 2014). Numerous risks also exist in the application of smart city strategies, e.g., the digital divide resulting from unequal use of ICT (Coe et al., 2001), the replication of technology solutions (Townsend et al., 2010), the overlook of city’s requirements and priorities (Caragliu & Del Bo, 2019), the slow progression attributed to budgetary issues and inadequate planning (Shwayri, 2013), etc.

Conclusion and discussion

     The present paper aims to evidence whether Smart City policies make cities more innovative – in the case of Chinese cities. To accurately estimate the policy effect, Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Difference-in-Differences (DID) are integrated to eliminate some biases that might affect the effectiveness of this study. To be specific, PSM technique is adopted to construct the matched control group that possesses similar observable city characteristics with treatment group. Subsequently, DID approach is employed to estimate the differences of those groups’ treatment effects before and after the policy implementation. Besides, our results comply with several existing studies (Caragliu & Del Bo, 2019; Veeckman & Graaf, 2014), revealing that Smart City policies indeed stimulate urban innovation. Though innovative is not a major objective of implementation of Smart City policies, our findings have demonstrated a positive spill-over effect of the policies on urban innovation. Compared with similar non-pilot cities, pilot cities of smart city policy are granted more patents.

Highlights

Abstract

Keywords

1. Introduction

2. Methods and materials

3. Results and findings

4. Discussion

5. Conclusion

Author statement

Declarations of Competing Interest

Acknowledgements

Appendix. : Review of selected articles in each research topic

References

Vitae

Abstract

There have been many attempts to transform cities into smart cities worldwide. However, it is difficult to understand and describe smart cities from different perspectives, given the widespread application of the concept of smart city in diverse disciplines, such as urban planning, electronic engineering, and computer sciences. This work conducted a comprehensive smart city literature review based on text mining of 3,315 papers on smart cities published in journals indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index databases. These include “all papers” classified as research articles published from 1999 to April 2020. Our findings show the state of the art of research on smart cities, including (i) smart city literature statistics from 1999 to 2019, (ii) 23 research topics related to smart cities, and (iii) geographical variations in smart-city research. Based on these findings, we offer theoretical and practical implications of (1) missing fields of studies, (2) future research directions, and (3) the applicability of text-mining techniques to literature reviews. We believe that this work, which aims to establish a common ground for understanding smart cities from multiple disciplinary perspectives, will encourage further research and development regarding smart cities.

1. Introduction

With the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IOT) technology, the idea of smart cities is attracting attention as a new growth engine and development strategy in many global cities. Many cities are introducing new urban services, using information and communications technology (ICT) to build smart cities that improve the quality of life of citizens. However, despite its obvious importance and popularity, there is a lack of in-depth understanding of smart cities in the literature, and the concept of “smart city” remains unclear. What is a smart city? What are the major smart city research areas and how are they related? What are the key technological factors of smart cities? What are the main application areas and how do they vary in different countries? In short, how should we describe “smart cities”?

A comprehensive review of smart cities across different fields may facilitate smart city planning and development. However, such integrative work is not easy to achieve because of the variety and volume of studies and applications related to smart cities. One of the commonly applied methodologies for integrative work is the bibliometric approach, which allows to identify how a specific concept or research discipline is formulated and how it correlates with other concepts by clarifying the relationships between all the concepts (Kalmaski and Kirby, 2012).

Highlights

Abstract

Graphical abstract

Keywords

1. Introduction

2. Theoretical background: resilience and urban studies

3. Material and methods: Rome, or more than 2750 years of a historic urban landscape

4. Discussion

5. Implications for urban management: the role of sentiment analysis and collective perception-based maps in fostering resilient thinking

6. Conclusion and future directions

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Appendix A.

References

Vitae

Abstract

Resilience has been intensely investigated as the viable quality of individuals, groups, organizations, and systems to respond productively to notable change without engaging in an extended period of regressive behaviour. Recently, there has been growing attention to the relationship between resilience and cities. To contribute to this stimulating debate, this paper first provides the theoretical framework and links the concept of resilience to urban studies. Subsequently, it enlightens, through a systems perspective and the aspect-based sentiment analysis (ABSA) methodology, the possibility to enrich the information variety endowment of urban policymakers, generated by new information units, to foster resilience capabilities in the urban context. Specifically, a large-scale text analysis study was conducted on the city of Rome to understand the sentiments expressed within the text generated online by citizens and visitors. The positive or negative sentiments linked to the hidden problems of the urban context were organized within collective perception-based maps for each of the analysed points of interest (POIs). Since cities represent complex decision-making contexts, this study aimed to outline a methodology and a tool that would help foster resilient thinking in urban policies by enriching the diversity of the information variety endowment of urban decision-makers.

1. Introduction

From physics to ecology, from engineering to social sciences, resilience has been increasingly investigated as the viable capability of individuals, groups and social systems to respond productively to notable change or challenges without engaging in an extended period of regressive behaviour (Home III & Orr, 1998; Kobasa et al., 1982). Managerial and organizational scholars (Contu, 2002; Durodie, 2003; McManus et al., 2007; Pooley & Cohen, 2010; Seville, 2009; Sutcliffe & Vogus, 2003; K.E. Weick, 1993; K.E. Weick & Sutcliffe, 2006) have further defined resilience as the “ability to survive” while maintaining adaptive, proactive, and reactive strategies to deal with threats, risks, and disruptive challenges.

In recent years, thanks to its usefulness for understanding complex systems such as cities, in urban studies, there has also been a growing effort to uncover what makes an urban context “resilient”. Resilience is thus the potential to exhibit resourcefulness by using an available internal and external slack of resources in response to different contextual and developmental challenges. Accordingly, urban resilience is defined herein not only as the capacity of an urban system to adapt to changes either by absorbing sudden disturbances (absorption) or by managing to maintain or restore initial functions without limiting future adaptability (adaptation) but also, when intense alterations and disturbances occur, the capacity to design and undertake broader and deeper changes that can even lead to transformation (transformability).

By focusing on the city of Rome (Italy) and applying a robust research methodology, this paper aims to contribute to the stimulating debate on the resilience capability of urban contexts and to promote – at both the theoretical and managerial levels- a resilient thinking in managing complex urban contexts. As complex systems, urban contexts configure wicked problems (Rittel & Webber, 1973), whose understanding (requisite variety) depends on the richness of the information variety endowment owned by the decision makers. The methodology (ABSA) and the related tool (collective perception-based maps) proposed herein help to enrich the information variety of the policy-makers with respect to their awareness of the “perceived” urban resilience and its dynamic. This draws the attention to the crucial relevance that the “perceived” context should play for policy makers involved in resilient thinking, i.e. a thinking aiming to make the urban context more and more resilient.

It is the year 2027 and your day is full. As you finish your coffee and start to organize your desk to leave work, your boss tells you that you need to stay late. A quick moment of panic sets in, but you push past it and take action. In order to pick your son up from school you call an autonomous car with a quick swipe of your thumb and the service sends his smartphone the Quick Response (QR) code to access the car moments later. As you settle back into your chair, your son James walks out of school and into the autonomous vehicle school loading zone to find a shiny black autonomous car awaiting him with the air conditioning at his profile’s preferred setting. Once you begin putting the finishing touches on the extra project, you half-consciously check in on James’ journey via his smartphone’s Global Positioning System (GPS) and see that he is leaving the food stop you approved in order to avoid a stern talking to by your spouse. The autonomous car app shows you that James’ car was rerouted to avoid congestion on the highway and he should arrive at home shortly. Meanwhile, at home, the house smart systems kick into high gear in anticipation of James’ arrival and change the temperature to make sure the air conditioning is used only when needed. With a dull buzz, your smartphone informs you that your son is picked up, fed, and comfortably sitting at home. Considering the technologies mentioned all exist today, such a scenario is not far fetched. It is the seamless intersection of these technologies that seems so futuristic, and that is exactly what a smart city seeks to offer. However, it will be necessary to anticipate various security and privacy threats during the construction of smart city systems. For example, by completing the route from school to the home, intimate details about your child’s schedule, preferences, and whereabouts are being provided to the service provider. The service provider now has stored information on what fast food James enjoys eating and what route he travels home, opening up numerous opportunities to make suggestions to James and his parents on where and what to eat.

Introduction

The concept of ‘Smart Cities’ has become very important in developing economies. Here, we look at what exactly is a Smart City and why they are needed. The Services and Applications which are needed to be implemented to make a City ‘Smart’, is described in detail.

Smart Cities: Definition

There is no universally accepted definition of a smart city. It means different things to different cities. The conceptualisation of Smart City, therefore, varies from city to city and country to country, depending on the level of development, willingness to change and reform, resources and aspirations of the city residents. A smart city would have a different connotation in Brazil than, say, Europe. Even in a country, there is no one way of defining a smart city. The definition is constantly changing due to technology innovation. A city is a complex system, involving many different domains, infrastructures, organizations and activities. All of these, needs to be integrated and work together effectively for that city to become Smart. A Smart sustainable city can be considered as an innovative city which uses multiple technologies and other means to improve the efficiency of the city’s operation and services, thereby enhancing the quality of life of its citizens and ensures sustainability with respects to economic, social and environmental aspects [1]. A Smart sustainable city should have forms of Smart ICT infrastructure, Smart mobility, Smart living, Smart economy, Smart environment, Smart governance and Smart citizens. It is about integrating solutions, providing interoperability and cohesion among systems within a city in full collaboration with all stakeholders involved. The fundamental objective of a Smart City would be to ensure that the residents are assured of adequate water, power and gas supplies; good sanitation facilities, reliable and fast urban transport to ensure that they can reach their destination quickly and safely. It should provide good governance and ensure that the residents are involved and participate in decision making process. It should ensure the safety and security of residents at their homes and elsewhere including public places like streets, bus stops, train stations, airports, shopping centres, places of worships etc. It should enable residents to have access to quality healthcare and education even in remote places [2].

In the theory of urban development, the evolutionary perspective is becoming dominant. Cities are understood as complex systems shaped by bottom-up processes with outcomes that are hard to foresee and plan for. This perspective is strengthened by the current turn towards smart cities and the intensive use of digital technologies to optimize urban ecosystems. This paper extends the evolutionary thinking and emerging dynamics of cities to smart city planning. It is based on recent efforts for a smart city strategy in Thessaloniki that enhances the economic, environmental, and social sustainability of the city. Taking advantage of opportunities offered by the IBM Smarter Cities Challenge, the Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities, the World Bank, and the EU Horizon 2020 Program, Thessaloniki shaped a strategy for an inclusive economy, resilient infrastructure, participatory governance, and open data. This process, however, does not have the usual features of planning. It reveals the complex dimension of smart city planning as a synthesis of technologies, user engagement, and windows of opportunity, which are fuzzy at the start of the planning process. The evolutionary features of cities, which until now were ascribed to the working of markets, are now shaping the institutional aspects of planning for smart cities.

Smart Cities from an Evolutionary Perspective: Frame of Reference

Masdar City is a landmark in twenty-first-century urban development as it is the first zero carbon city, opening up an era of technology-led sustainability and green growth. But, is Masdar a city? According to The Guardian (Goldenberg, 2016) only 300 people so far live on the site and all are students at the Institute of Science and Technology. In fact, Masdar is actually a group of buildings, a large physical complex; more an engineering construct than a city. It will become a city in the future, when people and human activities, culture, institutions, and behaviors give purpose and use to infrastructures and buildings. Masdar will evolve into a city, as all cities do; they evolve and become cities rather than being constructed as cities from scratch. This idea of “cities becoming cities” rather than “cities planned as cities” is a core premise of evolutionary thinking about urban development. Cities are extremely complex and chaotic systems; many forces work simultaneously in their making and even small variations in the outcome interact and produce huge changes in results. Economic and political forces create numerous constraints on cities, yet there is room for genuine development that is not bound by deterministic conditions. Evolutionary thinking holds a preeminent position in urban and regional development theory. Cities and regions offer resources that are actualized by selective mechanisms that drive change and growth. Lambooy (2002) argues that urban regions offer effective contexts for development through an evolutionary process where cognitive, innovative, and organizational competencies are influenced by a selection environment composed of institutions, markets, and spatial structure. This environment drives the choice between alternative planning ideas and designs for new investments in city services and infrastructures. Here there is an analogy to the way Nelson and Winter (1977) have described innovation as a purposive, but inherently stochastic activity, which is guided by an external selection environment that determines how different technologies are selected and change over time. The innovation selection environment is shaped by market and nonmarket forces, consumer preferences, investment, and imitation processes, as well as political and regulatory control over firms. Simmie and Martin (2010) widen this understanding of how innovation in cities is produced, connecting the development of cities and regions to four conceptual frameworks that offer an evolutionary account of resilience and adaptation: (1) generalized Darwinism which places emphasis on variety, novelty, and selection; (2) path dependence theory that underlines historical continuity “lock-in” and new path creation; (3) complexity theory with its emphasis on self-organization, bifurcations, and adaptive growth; and (4) panarchy that links resilience and “adaptive cycles.” Boschma (2004) points out the uniqueness of urban and regional growth paths from an evolutionary perspective, since the competitiveness of a region depends on intangible, non-tradable assets resting on a knowledge base embedded in the region’s specific institutional setting. Transferring growth models from one region to another is questionable as there is no “optimal” development model, and new successful trajectories and developmental paths emerge spontaneously and unexpectedly in space. Bettencourt et al. (2010) argue that agglomeration non-linearities connect most urban socioeconomic indicators with population size, making larger cities centers of innovation, wealth, and crime. They find that local urban dynamics display long-term memory, so cities under- or out-perform their size expectation and maintain such advantage for decades.

Introduction

Increasing individual use of connected smart devices, rapid growth of worldwide urban population, gradual aging of society in many countries as well as the rising demand for sustainable energy resources have given momentum to the emergence of smart cities and smart spaces [1]. Smart city services span a wide spectrum of applications ranging from smart utilities, to smart health, smart transportation, smart governance, and smart environment [2], which Utilize real-time sens- ing, knowledge engineering, and presentation of the analyzed data in an interpretable format. To fulfill the requirements of diverse applications and services, a smart city architecture consists of five planes as illustrated in Fig. 1 in a minimalist manner. The application plane provides services to the end users for any relevant application such as smart utilities, energy, transportation, health, environment and safety. Serving mobile, home, and corporate sectors, these applications rely on an underlying substrate, which encompasses sensing, communication, data, and security planes as the core of a smart city architecture [3]. The data acquisition (sensing) networks—implemented by utilizing either hard sensors or soft sensors—form the sensing and actuation plane; whereas processing, analysis, and storage of data shape the main functionality of the data plane. These two planes are bridged by the communication and aggregation plane. Addressing users’ growing cognizance about smart city cybersecurity, each component shown in Fig. 1 calls for security and privacy assurance mechanisms. The challenging task of satisfying these requirements is relegated to the security and privacy plane. As shown in Fig. 1, a comprehensive and effective security and privacy plane must be implemented adjacent to every individual building block of this architecture. The Internet of Things (IoT) is a major enabler for diverse smart applications that involve massive data acquisition and intelligent decision making [4]. Therefore, in the realization of smart cities, the IoT is a bridging component between the sensing devices and the data plane [5, 6]. Indeed, in order for the IoT concept to operate thoroughly, its interface with the local wireless networks, backhaul networks, as well as local wired networks needs to be addressed properly. Furthermore, protocols for reliable and efficient data acquisition methodologies for fusing data are of paramount importance particularly to ensure a robust communication back-end in a smart city infrastructure. In a smart city architecture, communication back-end is one of the most crucial components, which is responsible for pre-processing and aggregation of the sensory data. Reliability, usefulness and trustworthiness of the data acquired by the communication back-end depends on the effectiveness of the sensing plane. As studied in [2], sensors in a smart city setting can be deployed in either a dedicated or non-dedicated manner; each deployment strategy has its own pros and cons. Based on the observations above, in this paper, we present a smart city architecture by briefly introducing its building blocks (termed planes), namely the application, communication, sensing, data, and security planes. Upon brief introduction of the architectural building blocks, we move to our main foci, which are the sensing, communication and security planes. In the study of the sensing plane, we present the dedicated and nondedicated sensing paradigms from the standpoint of various smart city applications. We thoroughly investigate the sensor types, problems experienced by the corresponding smart city applications, existing solutions and the communication technologies used by the sensors. Sensing plane is followed by the communication plane, which is studied in terms of the requirements, implications, and common solutions. We partition the communication plane into several sub-planes to study the communication infrastructure and protocol design for a smart city with fine granularity.