Building Understanding of Smart City Initiatives

Abstract

Part 3: Open Government and TransformationInternational audienceThis study presents the first results of an analysis primarily based on semi-structured interviews with government officials and managers who are responsible for smart city initiatives in four North American cities—Philadelphia and Seattle in the United States, Quebec City in Canada, and Mexico City in Mexico. With the reference to the Smart City Initiatives Framework that we suggested in our previous research, this study aims to build a new understanding of smart city initiatives. Main findings are categorized into eight aspects including technology, management and organization, policy context, governance, people and communities, economy, built infrastructure, and natural environment

How to Become a Smart City: Learning from Amsterdam

“…For example: leadership and political commitment (Alawadhi et al 2012;Chourabi et al 2012;Hill et al 2011); governance and funding capability (Washburn et al 2010); coordination, sponsorship, and support across departments (Naphade et al 2011); collaboration between stakeholders and organizations across multiple sectors (Beck 2011;Paskaleva 2009); innovative business and operating models (Belissent et al 2010;Webb et al 2011); long-term vision, performance metrics and commitment from the top (Moss Kanter and Litow 2009); the capability to connect short-term ICT-based projects and initiatives to real local needs , and the benefits from "the enormous innovative potential of grass-roots efforts" (Ratti and Townsend 2011), avoiding the risks of an excessively top-down approach Deakin and Al Wear 2011).…”

Barriers to the Development of Smart Cities in Indian Context

“…The widespread use of information technologies also enables cities to empower the advancement of indispensable services for safety, health, governance and delivery (Hernández-Muñoz et al 2011;Pereira et al 2017). For assisting policymakers on smart city network design, the California Institute for Smart Communities explored ways of transforming a city into smart city along with the extent of utilisation of information technologies in smart city context (Alawadhi et al 2012;Albino et al 2015). As a highly significant and extremely sensible initiative, the European Commission started plans on smart cities in 2010 that underpin four dimensions for the cities including construction, heating and cooling systems, power and transportation.…”

In Search of ICT in Smart Cities – Policy Documents as Idea Carriers in Urban Development

“…The policy documents do not offer any new visions or ideas when it comes to ICT innovation. Of course we should not regard ICT as an end in itself, but it is definitely an important means to create and realize the visions of the smart city [1,10,12]. There might be many reasons for this situation to arise.…”

“…They pinpoint a smart city's main components as technology factors, human factors, and institutional factors. In order to understand smart city development we need to understand the relation between technology, people and policy, and how these interact with outer factors such as governance, economy, built infrastructure, and natural environment [1]. Building on this notion of several interacting aspects that together define a smart city, we will focus on social, environmental and ICT aspects when analyzing policy documents in urban development, below.…”

“…The smart city concept is often used to emphasize how modern urban planning initiatives use information and communication technology (ICT) to fulfil the goals in sustainable development [1,2,10]. Strategic policy documents and visionary programs are formulated both on international (e.g.…”