Social Inclusion Indicators for Building Citizen-Centric Smart Cities: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Despite the rhetoric of “citizen-first,” which has been tokenized in recent years by the smart city administrations, what it means has long been unclear to many, including the public at large. Put simply, this rhetoric concerns the mindset of the members of a local community and places them at the heart of the smart city initiatives. In order to bring further clarity to this issue under the current neoliberal urbanism, this study aimed to identify the key indicators of citizen-centric smart cities from the perspective of participative governance practices and citizens’ responsibilities. To achieve this aim, this study involved a systematic literature review of the social inclusion indicators for building citizen-centric smart cities. The social inclusion indicators that were formed were verified by practitioners to suit the local contexts of an emerging and developing country, in this case, Malaysia. The findings of the review revealed that: (a) the acceptance of social inclusion indicators was mainly limited to the realm of democratic developed countries, leaders’ understanding of citizenship, the delegation of decision-making power in governance practices, the participative culture of societies, and individual citizens’ self-discipline; (b) the social inclusion indicators may not be welcomed in emerging and developing countries; (c) in the long term, these indicators would shed light on the rise of self-organizing cities that will gain popularity in potential city developments, be it in developed or developing countries.

The Role of Public-Private Partnerships in Housing as a Potential Contributor to Sustainable Cities and Communities: A Systematic Review

“…Second, it also allows the authors to expose the gaps that can be filled by the PPP. Thus, the PRISMA statements support the research when reporting from the literature on housing development in the Nordic context (see [45] for a similar approach). Third, concerning the issues of reliability and validity, the systematic literature review underpinned by the PRISMA statement ensures reproducibility and replicability of the study [43,46].…”

Brought by Degrees: A Focus on the Current Indicators of Lean ‘Smartness’ in Smart Cities

“…An interesting observation of these indicators is that many of the aspects of 'Smart Living' could be considered to straddle both social and structural smartness categories, which further shows the challenges associated with looking for binary indicators. Malek et al (2021) have also looked at socially-focused indicators, however from a more formalised citizen-centric perspective. The outcomes of their review reveal indicators that are almost as much do with civic governance as they are with social smartness.…”

Post-Materialist Values of Smart City Societies: International Comparison of Public Values for Good Enough Governance

“…From the findings, political participation is the most necessary improvement to make when considering all the important values in life. The political participation value is an important means of creating a smarter society with a higher degree of citizen involvement in smart city initiatives [19,43,44]. Although Big Data and ICT are centered on smart city development, they should always be identified as part of the means and not the ultimate end of sustainable development [45].…”

“…Various discussions explore the role of ICT and IoT applications in Malaysia in solving materialist issues such as mobility, energy, and economic gains [16][17][18]. Several scholars have discussed non-materialist issues in Malaysia, such as citizen participation [19][20][21][22][23], freedom of speech and expression [24], and environmental sustainability and politics [25]. The availability of discussions on such post-materialist values are positive signs and can be viewed as a rising alternative trend in the human-driven method of smart city development [4].…”