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Are you interested in the three main domains involved in smart cities? Our summary today works with the article titled Defining smart city: A conceptual framework based on keyword analysis from 2014 by Farnaz Mosannenzadeh and Daniele Vettorato, published in the Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment. Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see the smart city concepts’ keyword analysis and its results. This article presents the three main domains involved in smart cities, and a framework to translate smart city to each of these domains.

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Welcome to today’s What is The Future For Cities podcast and its Research episode; my name is Fanni, and today I will introduce a research paper by summarising it. The episode really is just a short summary of the original paper, and, in case it is interesting enough, I would encourage everyone to check out the whole paper. Stay tuned until because I will give you the 3 most important things and some questions which would be interesting to discuss.

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Smart city is a concept that has been receiving increasing attention in urban governance and planning. Smart city can be the response to recent urban challenges, like increasing urban population, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission. At the same time, this concept exploits new opportunities with growing ICTs. Regardless of these positive aspects, some experts doubt the smart city initiatives and state that smart city is a celebratory label, nothing more. This article focuses in understanding what the smart city means and investigates the open questions: the why, what, who, how, where and when of smart cities.

So what does smart city mean currently? This term has been used in many different situations and by many different stakeholders. The smart city concept has been developed in three main areas: academic, industrial and governmental. The smart city meaning is not yet settled but the involvement of ICT is clear from the literature. The various meanings are present in all domains for the smart city and even for smartness. In academia, smart covers a range of technological characteristics, such as self-configuring, self-healing and self-optimizing. In industrial terms, smart refers to intelligent-acting products and services, like artificial intelligence and thinking machines. In governance, smart is used in urban planning theory with smart growth, which means the reduction of urban sprawl and the support of compact, mixed-use and walkable cities.

Although the definitions vary in their scope and approach, being very detailed or general, the use of technology and social innovation seems to be the core issue in the concept. Smart cities are various because of the diverse interests of the different stakeholders. A common definition for the smart city is not yet established, but the literature review implies that smart cities are future urban areas that aim to help human beings overcome their problems. They use ICTs to improve urban functions and they require collaboration of urban stakeholders. To further understand the meaning of the smart city, the authors analysed the collected smart city definitions and created keywords based on the starting questions: why, what, who, where, when and how in the three domains, academia, government and industry.

The why of smart cities come from urban challenges. Recent rapid growth in urban population, along with economic and technological changes caused by the globalisation has led into many challenges and opportunities for cities, services and infrastructure. Smart cities aim to decrease cities’ challenges including scarcity of resources, such as energy, healthcare, housing and water, inadequate and deteriorating infrastructure. Meanwhile, the smart city concept wants to exploit the recent opportunities provided by evolution. In academic terms, a holistic approach emerges covering a wide range of issues, like governance, social development and environment. Industrially, smart cities are for the interaction between competitiveness and sustainable urban development, with efficiency and social development. Governmental literature is more concerned with international challenges including quality of life, energy, environment and sustainability.

The what question focused on the smart city components, as the main targets for stakeholders and investors. Academic literature focuses on a more holistic but general view, while industrial and governmental approaches have more practical and short-term ideas, and those that can be affected by urban authorities, like transportation and energy.

The main actors, answer to the who question, are those who have an active engagement in creation of smart cities. Academia again presents a holistic and general point of view, involving people, companies, government and universities as the key actors. The industry details it more adding NGOs, investors, planners and developers, contractors etc. The governments have the most precise description of the actors – they may consider mayors and politicians, administration, utilities, energy companies, developers, architects, planners, construction companies, component manufacturers, ICT companies, R&D institutes and universities, and inhabitants.

Well, then how to create smart cities? The most important thing seems to be conceptualising them. All domains utilise technology, but also highlights that technology is not solely enough, because to create smart cities, governmental, social, economic, and environmental aspects should get smart. Naturally, the industry pays more attention to instrument-based approach, while governmental literature emphasize proactivity and the need for metrics to measure urban systems.

Finally, when and where to create the smart city. The timing was not a serious concern, but generally smart cities are the future. There is no time limit for creating of smart cities – possibly implying the continuous nature of smart cities. Because of this continuous development, any city can become smarter and many factors can accelerate and hinder this. However, there is no limitation against implementation of smart cities.

The authors utilised their knowledge in creating a conceptual smart city framework. The smart city is a sustainable and efficient city with high quality of life that aims to address urban challenges, like improving mobility and health and safety and social development, optimising the use of resources, and supporting economic growth and participatory governance. It applies ICT in its infrastructure and services, collaborate between its key stakeholders who are citizens, universities, government and the industry, and integrate its main domains which are the environment, mobility, governance, community, industry and services, and invest in social capital.

Smart city is a holistic approach that aims to address recent urban challenges and exploit recent opportunities due to the ICT and urbanisation advancements. Since each city has its unique economic, social and administrative situation, and different priorities, the authorities should keep the main structure of the ideology but then create their own concept based those differences. Creating a smart city needs to incorporate the answers to the basic questions: why, what, who, how, when and where. However, application of ICTs in urban services and infrastructure, integration of different systems in planning and implementation, collaboration of different stakeholders in all the stages of urban development, and investment in social capital and innovation are basic alphabet of smart city concepts.

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What was the most interesting part for you? What questions did arise for you? Do you have any follow up question? Let me know on Twitter at WTF4Cities or on the wtf4cities.com website where the transcripts and show notes are available! Additionally, I will highly appreciate if you consider subscribing to the podcast or on the website. I hope this was an interesting paper for you as well, and thanks for tuning in!

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Finally, as the most important things, I would like to highlight 3 aspects:

1. Smart city is a holistic approach that aims to address recent urban challenges and exploit recent opportunities provided by the advancements in technology and urbanisation.
2. Smart city needs to include ICT, integrate different domains, collaborate across stakeholders, and invest in social capital and innovation.
3. Each city needs to find its own smart city meaning based on their specifics answering the questions of why, who, what, how, when and where.

Additionally, it would be great to talk about the following questions:

1. Is there smartness without technology? What ideas can you think of which are smart but doesn’t require technology?
2. What is your city’s answer to the smart city questions? Does your city have answers?
3. What are your answers to the smart city questions of why, who, what, how, when and where?

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