Current trends in Smart City initiatives: Some stylised facts
Introduction
Current cities are complex systems that are characterised by massive numbers of interconnected citizens, businesses, different modes of transport, communication networks, services and utilities. Population growth and increased urbanisation raise a variety of technical, social, economic and organisational problems that tend to jeopardize the economic and environmental sustainability of cities. The rapid growth faced by several cities has generated traffic congestion, pollution and increasing social inequality (Kim & Han, 2012). In this context, a debate has emerged on the way new technology-based solutions, as well as new approaches to urban planning and living, can assure future viability and prosperity in metropolitan areas (Alawadhi et al., 2012, Dirks et al., 2009, Nam and Pardo, 2011, Nijaki and Worrel, 2012). In this discussion, the concept of Smart Cities (SCs) (Hollands, 2008) has been the subject of increasing attention and it now appears as a new paradigm of intelligent urban development and sustainable socio-economic growth, whose origin can be traced back to the Smart Growth Movement of the late 1990s (Harrison & Donnelly, 2011). However, despite the rise in SCs in the urban planners’ debate on the future of cities, the diffusion of SC initiatives in countries with different needs and contextual conditions (e.g. in either developed or developing nations) makes it difficult to identify shared definitions and common current trends at a global scale. There is still in fact no general consensus on the meaning of the term SC or on what its describing attributes are. However, there is wide agreement about the fact that SCs are characterised by a pervasive use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which, in various urban domains, help cities make better use of their resources. However, ICT-based solutions can be considered as just one of the various input resources for projects and approaches to urban planning and living that have the aim of improving the economic, social and environmental sustainability of a city. This implies that those cities that are more equipped with ICT systems are not necessarily better cities, and that the number of “smart” initiatives launched by a municipality is not an indicator of city performance, but could instead result in an intermediate output that reflects the efforts made to improve the quality of life of the citizens.
As a consequence of the lack of a common view, investigating the diffusion patterns of SC initiatives around the world may help to generate a better understanding of the characteristics and future trends of SCs and contribute to the current debate. The importance of this analysis lies in the awareness that various obstacles tend to slow down the diffusion process of SC initiatives. According to recent evidence (The Economist, 2013), most of the companies on the market for ICT solutions for cities have not met their revenue targets from 2010 to 2013.
Because of the obstacles that slow down ICT diffusion, and the central role of political, economic and cultural contexts in shaping the way cities try to become smarter, it can be expected that there is not just one unique paradigm of SC evolution throughout the world. As a result, the aim of this research activity was to investigate whether, and how, the emerging models of SCs differ from the concept of SC developed by city planners, technology visionaries and academicians.
This work is an attempt to fill the research gap in the diffusion of SCs through an empirical study on the role that SC initiatives play on the functional domains of urban living. The role of economic, urban, demographic, and geographical factors on the planning approach to the building of a smarter city is investigated by analysing the coverage ratio that SC initiatives have in relation to the extent of their application domains. The paper may thus be considered as a support for local policy-makers and city managers as it articulates the value proposition of SCs in a basket of appropriate initiatives and applications.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. The key elements that characterise the notion of SC in the literature are examined and integrated in an extended taxonomy of SC application domains. On the basis of this taxonomy, a sample of 70 international cities has been analysed through the lens of a Coverage Index (CI), which takes into account the number of application domains wherein cities have launched their projects. The relationship between the CI and the economic, social, geographic, demographic and environmental characteristics of a city allows one to find common points and differences in the way the SC paradigm is applied throughout the world. The implications of these analyses are discussed in the final part of the paper with the aim of providing policy-makers with recommendations on the levers that are likely to foster SC initiatives. Finally, possible future research directions are discussed.
Section snippets
Literature review on the Smart City notion
This section is aimed at clarifying the meaning of SC by discussing its characterising features and their application domains. To this end, a categorisation of the possible domains of an SC has been proposed to represent the patterns of SC initiatives in the empirical work presented in this paper.
Context variables that characterise the development trends of Smart Cities
A variety of factors can influence the way cities choose to develop SC initiatives. In this paper, we choose to focus on four groups of contextual conditions that have key importance on the resources and the needs of investing in SC cities (see Fig. 1). The following subsections discuss how and why these conditions are expected to be relevant for the development of SC trends around the world.
Sample characteristics
The empirical analysis was conducted on a sample of 70 cities that have claimed to have developed projects and best practices in one or more of the SC domains listed in Table 2. The analysis adopted to identify these cities and their related best practices was carried out referring to city rankings
Findings
The data analysis had two objectives. First, when the descriptive statistics were analysed, the goal was twofold: (i) to identify the fields with the greatest diffusion of SC initiatives throughout the world; (ii) to detect commonalities and differences in the patterns of SC trends across continents.
The second step of the empirical study involved a more comprehensive analysis on how the contextual factors discussed in the conceptual model could influence the different dimensions of the CI. This
Discussion
In the era of knowledge economy, urban areas should not only redistribute their local wealth, but also invest in the quality of life of their citizens. In this context, SC is a wide notion that encompasses many different socio-environmental aspects and ICT applications. However, it has so far received limited attention by academic empirical researchers. Despite the recent growing interest in the topic, public administrations still need support to structure the concept of the smartness of a
Conclusion
This work can be considered a preliminary contribution to the development of empirical research in order to obtain a better understanding of the current phenomena of SCs.
To this end, six main domains and the associated sub-domains of SC deployment have been classified (i.e.: natural resources and energy, transport and mobility, buildings, living, government, as well as economy and people) and a CI has been defined as the ratio of domains covered by a city’s best practices to the total of the
References (58)
- et al.
The internet of things: A survey
Computer Networks
(2010) - et al.
General purpose technologies: "Engine of Growth"
Journal of Econometrics
(1995) Brazilian policies on climate change: The missing link to cities
Cities
(2011)Cities in Asia 2012: Demographics, economics, poverty, environment and governance
Cites
(2012)City size and skill intensity
Regional Science and Urban Economics
(2010)City futures in transformation: Emerging issues and case studies
Futures
(2011)Socioeconomic effect on perception of urban green spaces in Guangzhou, China
Cities
(2013)- et al.
The effects of high-density suburban development on commuter mode choices in Seoul, Korea
Cities
(2013) - et al.
City profile: Seoul
Cites
(2012) Smart cities. The Singapore case
Cities
(1999)