Citizens’ Perception of Smart Cities: A Case Study

Abstract

The 21st century is considered to be “The Century of Cities”. By the end of this century, over 80% of the global population is expected to be living in urban areas. To become smart, a city should develop an approach of services that will focus mainly on citizens to be the primary beneficiaries of the services offered by a Smart City. In this work, we present through a survey of 545 participants, the citizens’ perception about the smart city concept and reveal the Greek and Cypriot citizens’ level of knowledge regards to a Smart City’s actions, applications, and elements. The final results of this study revealed several interesting outcomes. Firstly, this study showed that Cypriot citizens seem to know better what a “Smart City” is compared to Greek citizens, secondly, the study revealed that a large number of participants do not believe that any efforts have been made in their city in order to become “smart” and finally, regards to the most important challenges for the development of a smart city, the survey disclose that the cooperation of the private and public sector is the biggest challenge that needs to be tackled so as citizens can move towards a “smarter” future.

Public Perceptions About Smart Cities: Governance and Quality-of-Life in Hong Kong

“…Novita and Suryani ( 2019 ) examine public perceptions about smart cities in a study of Bekasi Smart City in Indonesia, finding that awareness about smart cities differs across population subgroups and is limited only to certain aspects of smart city initiatives; further, the public perceives that communication and information dissemination efforts by the government concerning such initiatives (e.g., information campaigns, exhibitions, and seminars) are inadequate. Similarly, in a study by Georgiadis et al ( 2021 ), Greek and Cypriot respondents perceive that no efforts at becoming ‘smart’ have been made by their cities and that public–private cooperation is the greatest barrier to smart city development. At the same time, some sentiments have been found ‘unjustifiably’ positive.…”

“…Macke et al ( 2018 ) propose that the ability of smart cities to improve quality-of-life is dependent on government taking a ‘citizen-centric’ approach, with a strategy that “encompasses different knowledge techniques, including community policy forums, action researchers’ interventions and policy formulation and implementation” (p. 724). There may be initial public interest and even optimism about the potential of smart cities to improve quality-of-life and governance, despite a lack of full understanding by the public about technical or operational aspects (Georgiadis et al, 2021 ). At the same time, public perceptions may also be mixed, based on political framing and source-effects (Martin et al, 2022 ); further, practitioners and experts may diverge on their perceptions about the quality and effectiveness of smart city programs (Lim et al, 2021 ; Vu & Hartley, 2018 ).…”

Study on the Citizen Perceptions of Smart Cities in China: A Mediating Effect of Citizen Quality of Life

“…Citizens' perception of smart cities Georgiadis, Christodoulou [66];Huang, Li [20];Chen and Chan [9]; [32] (Source: Author)…”

How to Enhance Citizens’ Sense of Gain in Smart Cities? A SWOT-AHP-TOWS Approach

“…Smart cities’ developments are criticized as being excessively technocratic which may not bring tangible and expected benefits to citizens (Cardullo & Kitchin, 2019 ; Kitchin, 2019 ). The topics of “citizens’ benefits”, “citizens’ feelings”, and “humanistic” concerning smart cities have received increasing attention (Georgiadis et al, 2021 ; Zandbergen & Uitermark, 2020 ), and the citizen-centric smart city has gradually become a consensus among the public, scholars, and decision-makers (König, 2021 ). The material acquisition and spiritual feelings of citizens are both important criteria to reflect the citizen-centric level of a smart city (Ju et al, 2018 ).…”