scholarly journals Redefining the Smart City: Culture, Metabolism and Governance

Smart Cities ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zaheer Allam ◽  
Peter Newman

The Smart City concept is still evolving and can be viewed as a branding exercise by big corporations, which is why the concept is not being used by the United Nations (U.N.). Smart Cities tend to represent the information, communication, and technological (ICT) industry alone without considering the values and cultural and historical profiles that some cities hold as legacies. However, the technology inherent in Smart Cities promises efficiencies and options that could allow cities to be more “inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable” as required by the U.N. agenda including cultural heritage. There is a notable lack of Smart City application to cultural and historical urban fabrics. Instead, the modernist new town approach has emerged under this new rubric leading to many problems such as urban decay and unsustainable car dependence. This study therefore presents a review of the literature on the nature, challenges, and opportunities of Smart Cities. A new Smart Cities framework is proposed based on the dimensions of culture, metabolism, and governance. These findings seek to inform policy makers of an alternative viewpoint on the Smart City paradigm, which focuses on urban outcomes rather than technology in isolation.

Urban Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 004209801986366
Author(s):  
Zachary Spicer ◽  
Nicole Goodman ◽  
Nathan Olmstead

Studies of ‘smart cities’ in Canada primarily focus on large cities but not small, rural and remote communities. As a result, we have a limited understanding of the incentive structures for smaller, remote and rural communities to pursue smart city development. This knowledge deficit is concerning, since the introduction of technology can hold a number of unique benefits for these communities, including easier connections to the rest of Canada and large urban centres, reputation building, improved service delivery and enhanced opportunities for residents. Drawing upon localised forms of knowledge creation, policy development theories, adoption and local competition literature and primary interviews with private and public officials, we examine the challenges and opportunities of ‘smart city’ implementation through case studies of small and rural municipalities in Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia and a remote community, Iqaluit, Nunavut. We find that collaboration is essential for rural and remote pursuit of smart city development and is necessary to counteract the limitations of capacity, scale and digital divides. Challenges aside, however, the primary rationale for adoption of smart city technology remains the same regardless of size: enhanced quality of life for residents and sustained community health.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 4030 ◽  
Author(s):  
Negar Noori ◽  
Thomas Hoppe ◽  
Martin de Jong

The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) as the new paradigm of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and rapid changes in technology and urban needs urge cities around the world towards formulating smart city policies. Nevertheless, policy makers, city planners, and practitioners appear to have quite different expectations from what smart cities can offer them. This has led to the emergence of different types of smart cities and pathways of development. This paper aims to answer the research question: When comparing a selection of smart city projects, can we classify pathways for their implementation? We do this by using a cross-case research design of four cities to explore commonalities and differences in development patterns. An input-output (IO) model of smart city development is used to retrieve which design variables are at play and lead to which output. The four cases pertain to the following smart city projects: Smart Dubai, Masdar City, Barcelona Smart City, and Amsterdam Smart City. Our analysis shows that Amsterdam is based on a business-driven approach that puts innovation at its core; for Masdar, technological optimism is the main essence of the pathway; social inclusion is the focus of Barcelona Smart City; and visionary ambitious leadership is the main driver for Smart Dubai. Based on these insights, a classification for smart city development pathways is established. The results of the present study are useful to academic researchers, smart city practitioners, and policy makers.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Shirowzhan ◽  
Willie Tan ◽  
Samad M. E. Sepasgozar

Smart technologies are advancing, and smart cities can be made smarter by increasing the connectivity and interactions of humans, the environment, and smart devices. This paper discusses selective technologies that can potentially contribute to developing an intelligent environment and smarter cities. While the connectivity and efficiency of smart cities is important, the analysis of the impact of construction development and large projects in the city is crucial to decision and policy makers, before the project is approved. This raises the question of assessing the impact of a new infrastructure project on the community prior to its commencement—what type of technologies can potentially be used for creating a virtual representation of the city? How can a smart city be improved by utilizing these technologies? There are a wide range of technologies and applications available but understanding their function, interoperability, and compatibility with the community requires more discussion around system designs and architecture. These questions can be the basis of developing an agenda for further investigations. In particular, the need for advanced tools such as mobile scanners, Geospatial Artificial Intelligence, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Geospatial Augmented Reality apps, Light Detection, and Ranging in smart cities is discussed. In line with smart city technology development, this Special Issue includes eight accepted articles covering trending topics, which are briefly reviewed.


GeoScape ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 124-133
Author(s):  
Lucia Hýllová ◽  
Ondřej Slach

Abstract The aim of this paper is to provide a geographical urban policy perspective on the strategy of Smart Cities in the specific context of Czechia. Considering that the implementation of the Smart Cities (SC) concept is still relatively young in Czechia, it is highly relevant to examine the time-space diffusion of this concept in Czechia in the geographical lens: where the first initiative to build a smart city started, when the process was started and by whom; in other words, to provide basic empirical evidence of understanding the policy mobility and implementation of smart city policy into the urban development strategies. In the first of our approach, we evaluate the implementation of the term “smart city” in strategic city documents. The next step is the analysis of the strategic urban (city) and smart city documents by distinguishing conceptually distinct pillars of the SC concept and an overview of actors and policy-makers who initiate and support individual pillars of the concept of SC in Czechia. The results of the analysis highlight the differences between the implemented SC topics into city strategies which are caused by fragmented policy mobility, its modifications and influence of key actors who have found the opportunity to participate in policy-making processes at the certain spatial level.


2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-19
Author(s):  
Rytis Milkintas

The goal of the research is to prepare a theoretical model of smart cultural governance and to evaluate the smart cultural management of Šiauliai city according to it. The background of creating a smart culture governance model is to define the theoretical constructs of smart city and smart culture management by looking for correlations between these concepts in order to closely link cultural management with the implementation of cultural policy in city management processes and to highlight the specifics of smart cultural management. A systematic model of a smart city is formed and presented, of which cultural management is an integral part. The model highlights the links between cultural management and other dimensions of the smart city. The theoretical model of smart culture management, which was adapted to investigate the expression of smart culture management in Šiauliai city, is presented. This kind of research has not been done so far in analyzing smart culture management in Šiauliai city. The need for the research was inspired by culture specialists of Šiauliai City Municipality Administration and heads of cultural institutions. The qualitative content analysis of theoretical sources of foreign countries and Lithuania was conducted as well as in-depth interviews to collect information that was processed through qualitative content analysis and systematized using matrices. The assessment of model expression based on the informants’ attitudes enabled the researcher to draw substantive conclusions.The research is relevant to Šiauliai city culture field institutions (private, subordinate municipality, subordinate to the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania), Šiauliai city culture field policymakers. In a broader sense, the improvement in the quality of the intelligent social system highlighted in the study will significantly contribute to the general level of culture in Šiauliai. These positive changes will be experienced by the recipients of cultural services.Further research in the field of smart city cultural management is planned to analyze not only the situation of Šiauliai city but also the cultural field of Lithuania as a whole, in connection with the practices of the international cultural field. It is planned to study the smoothness of the transformation of cultural field institutions, adaptation to smart cultural management, and the emerging challenges. Further research is planned to analyze the scientific studies prepared by smart cities, to look for specific actions highlighted in them, challenges for the cultural sector in adapting to the gradual transformation of cities into smart cities.


Author(s):  
R. G. G. Alam ◽  
H. Ibrahim

Abstract. The development of information and communication technology has spread throughout the world. Many benefits can be obtained, but the risks cannot be avoided. Communication grows massively in cyberspace and thus poses a security threat to smart city services. This threat can be overcome through national spectrum by implementing cyberspace security strategies in developing smart cities. This paper describes cybersecurity strategies performed in supporting the development of smart cities. Security strategies are developed based on factors related to the perspective of three pillars of smart city implementation models, namely technology, people, and institutions. Factors related to cybersecurity from these three pillars are explored from the experience of policy makers, actors, and users of smart city services, and evaluated using the opinions of cybersecurity experts and smart cities. This strategy will be a standard document that will be used as a reference in carrying out all processes related to information security in supporting the development of smart cities.


Author(s):  
Bogdan-Constantin Ibănescu ◽  
Alexandru Bănică ◽  
Mihail Eva ◽  
Alexandra Cehan

The modern concept of smart city rose from a relatively ambiguous term dealing with the future of urban areas to one of the most popular contemporary fields of research. Tackling a considerable range of topics from digitalization, citizen involvement, sustainability or governance, it managed to rapidly attract both academics and policy-makers. This study reviews the research papers published on smart city concept with application to European Union, and especially to the new member states from Central and Eastern Europe. The results indicate many common features of smart cities in EU, but also some peculiarities of CEE in this regard, many deriving from their socialist inheritance. Meanwhile, it can be noticed the rather incipient status of smart cities approaches, the insufficient resources allocated by local authorities, which rely extensively on EU funding, the lack of awareness from citizens and the lack of a comprehensive and structured strategic approach. In order to tackle the abovementioned issues, our paper suggests a series of measures and directions for policy-makers, local administrations and business environment.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parul Srivastava ◽  
Ali Mostafavi

The concept of Smart City aims to provide its citizens with infrastructure systems that make cities safer and more livable. One of the methods for doing so is collecting data from the crowd itself—termed crowdsourcing—and incorporating their ideas to improve the existing facilities, as well as build new ones to cater to their arising needs. This paper aims to inspect the attributes that govern crowdsourcing, evaluating its feasibility in attaining solutions in the present scenario. A systemic review of the existing literature on crowdsourcing platforms was conducted and major findings have been summarized adequately. The areas of environment, disaster management, public safety, innovation, transportation and health have been explored in connection to the existing crowdsourcing platforms and selected examples have been mentioned. Next, the attributes that affect crowdsourcing have been discussed in detail under three broad categories: (1) human characteristics; (2) data characteristics and (3) system characteristics. In the end, some recommendations for improvement in the implementation of the crowdsourcing platforms have been proposed for their enhanced applicability and effectiveness.


Smart Cities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeshna Jessie Dabeedooal ◽  
Vickramsingh Dindoyal ◽  
Zaheer Allam ◽  
David S. Jones

Mauritius, a small island developing state (SIDS), has an approved government-issued smart city framework geared at facilitating the development of smart cities through an application of Internet of things. In an attempt to move away from privately-operated urban developments in the form of newly built smart cities, an alternate framework has been proposed by Allam and Newman to redefine this timely concept for existing cities with the main dimensions being metabolism, culture, and governance. This new framework focuses on liveability and sustainability that builds on the cultural and historical dimensions of existing cities. This study adds to the redefined smart city paradigm by proposing a new pillar in the form of smart tourism for the city of Port Louis, Mauritius. This paper reviews models of smart tourism and explores how this can be grafted to the Allam and Newman’s smart city model. The findings of this study seek to inform policy makers on alternate and the more relevant economic potential of smart tourism for the city of Port Louis.


Author(s):  
Н. Колодий ◽  
N. Kolodii ◽  
Владимир Трифонов ◽  
Vladimir Trifonov

<p>The territories of many single-industry towns and smaller settlements with a oncedeveloped industry at the present stage of development do not satisfy the new needs of people. Without a carefully developed concept of development of these territories, the latter become zones of alienation. Weak attention to these objects leads to their degradation, the formation on their territory of storage areas, small and not always legal production, the concentration of questionable business. To date, there are three competing programs that claim to implement and implement in urban development practices: Smart City, Culture-led (leadership through intensive cultural development), Livable City (comfortable city). All of them can improve the quality of life of the main socio-demographic groups or simply contribute to the economic prosperity of cities. The content of the research area: the identification, analysis and resolution of the formation and development problems of the theory and practice of «smart cities» management as social and economic systems with the aim of revealing the stable links and regularities that determine the nature and content of these problems, the logic and mechanisms for their resolution. The project of socially responsible design of the «smart city» in the case of the monotown of Yurga, Kemerovo region, will contribute to the formation of practices of public discussion and the solution of issues related to the formation of a stable comfortable and safe urban environment.</p>


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