What do people want in a smart city? Exploring the stakeholders’ opinions, priorities and perceived barriers in a medium-sized city in the United States

Abstract

Many cities in the United States are pursuing agendas to implement ICT-based solutions to tackle urban challenges, thus achieving the 'smart city' label. While the discussion on this urban development paradigm has revolved around the intensive use of technologies, the academic literature increasingly calls for shifting the focus to the people living in the cities. This paper argues that to achieve a people-centered smart city, cities should include the perspectives of all the local stakeholders. Under this assumption, this paper provides the views of the local stakeholders in a medium-sized city in Tennessee, Chattanooga. Particularly, this study explores their perceived smart city concept, the ethical standards that should guide smart city projects, the desired future projects in their community, and the barriers to implementing them. The data was collected using a combination of participatory budgeting, five focus groups, and twenty-eight interviews with city dwellers, entrepreneurs, university faculty, non-profit members, and government officials. The results suggest that, far from the image of a highly technological city, the stakeholders' envision a city dedicated to improving the quality of life and environmental sustainability. Furthermore, to achieve this smart city, the projects need to be based on full transparency and the promotion of social inclusion. In contrast to the dominant trend towards the privatization of urban space, this study finds that the stakeholders prefer public based smart city projects such as ICT-based public transport services. However, its successful implementation will have to overcome the barriers caused by funding constraints, public acceptance, and political interests. Cities may use the results of this study to design more responsible smart city projects that strike an optimal point between citizen engagement and technological applications and innovations while supporting all stakeholders' needs.

Residents’ Quality of Life in Smart Cities: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Vidiesova and Cronemberger [3] 2020 "Enhancing citizens' quality of life and experience with city services is often regarded as the ultimate goal for smart city initiatives" (p. 3).…”

“…Smart governance includes citizen engagement in addition to e-government. It was found that citizens' engagement is dependent on their maturity and participatory habits, as well as effective communication [3].…”

“…Transformation of a city system into a smart system is meant to improve the quality of life for its people and their way of living, its environment, economy, transportation, and governance [2]. It has been argued that innovation for the sake of innovation is not smart, but rather that a SC is intertwined with and responsive to its community [3]. A SC should be an urban area with accessible and secure ICT infrastructures, reliable and efficient physical infrastructures, productive and innovative economy, equal and inclusive society, sustainable and resilient environment, and participatory and transparent governance [4].…”

A Smart City Is a Safe City: Analysis and Evaluation of the State of Crime and Safety in Polish Cities

“…This direction of change seems obvious and very logical. This is because it stems from the need to create the most favorable living and working conditions for residents and all other stakeholders, while respecting the environment and utilizing the social potential of residents [31,32]. The introduction of this concept makes modern cities strive to be smart and sustainable and become more ecological and humane [33].…”

Smart Streets as a Cyber-Physical Social Platform: A Conceptual Framework

“…The challenge with smart cities is one of scale. Working at city scale requires an often unprecedented investment of public funds, coordination, and a suitably long term horizon which presents significant governance, economic, and technology challenges, amongst others [ 5 , 6 ]. Furthermore, the focus on cities also neglects the needs of those who live in small and rural communities [ 7 ].…”