Abstract

Lots of research has been done on smart cities, however, only few studies can be found on smart cities from the educational perspective. This paper will discuss the framework of building smart city from educational perspective to identify the importance of promoting smart learning in smart cities. Then the characters of smart learning are elaborated, and the difference of traditional classroom learning, digital learning and smart learning are analyzed. After that, the paper analyzes the typical learning environments in cities: school, family, community, workplace, and museum. Based on the analysis, we develop indicators to evaluate learning environments in smart cities, which was used to evaluate the learning environments in the selected 68 cities in China.

Framework for Smart Cities from Educational Perspective

Smart cities are nowadays widespread all over the world to tackle urban sustainability issues. In the initial stage, both academic research and the practice of the smart city focused on how to utilize information technology to improve economic and political efficiency (Röller and Waverman 2001). With the development of smart city, the focus was no longer limited to the hardware facilities, but more attention was paid to the availability and quality of knowledge communication, as well as to social infrastructure (human and social capital).

Nam, T. and Pardo (2011) identified and clarified the key dimensions of smart cities, and re-categorized them into three categories of core factors: technology (infrastructures of hardware and software), people (creativity, diversity, and education), and institution (governance and policy). The most often cited dimensions of smart city appeared in the report of “Smart Cities-Ranking of European Medium-Sized Cities” by Vienna Univer‐ sity of Technology, University of Ljubljana, and Delft University of Technology, in which Giffinger (2007) identified the six characteristics as a roof for the further elabo‐ ration of smart cities: smart economy, smart people, smart governance, smart mobility, smart environment, smart living.