Smart cities; analyzing themes and concepts of smartness in urban environments

Abstract

Cities are grappled with a plethora of socio-political and environmental problems that necessitate the new type of solution models and strategies; such as, environmental pollution, scarcity of resources, cyber-attacks, and traffic congestion. These challenges, alongside constant population growth and densification in urban areas, have fostered cities to embrace and seek smart solutions which forced them to develop responsive and intelligent approaches to create economically viable, socially livable and environmentally sustainable cities. In the same vein, the smart city notion has gained particular traction in urban design and planning contexts. Yet, the definition and application of smart cities varied among academicians, practitioners, and urban planners. Smart cities are mainly characterized by the pervasive application of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in city functions, to deliver and provide efficient, safe, and reliable urban services to citizens. Following the ever-increasing focus in smartness in city planning, this research aims to review, explore, and analyze the smart city concept within the literature, followed by the complementary analysis of the pertinent smart city cases and smart city initiatives. Through identifying dominant domains in smart city platform, this study reveals the previous and current efforts of smart initiatives within the scope of smart urban practices, and provide a set of comparable implications for future researchers, architects and urban planners in the field.