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Technology Assessment: Smart City Development Initiatives and Issues

Nagendra K. Sharma1, Vimal Kumar2, Pratima Verma3, Tugrul U. Daim4, Haydar Yalçın5, and Kuei-Kuei Lai6

1Department of Management Studies, Graphic Era (Deemed to be University), Dehradun 248002, India

2Department of Information Management, Chaoyang University of Technology, Taichung 41349, Taiwan

3Department of Strategic Management, Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, Kozhikode 673570, India

4Mark O. Hatfield Cybersecurity and Cyber Defense Policy Center, Department of Engineering and Technology Management, Portland State University, Portland, OR 97201, USA

5Department of Business Administration, Ege University, Izmir 35800, Turkey

6Department of Business Administration, Chaoyang University of Technology, Taichung 41349, Taiwan

1.1 Introduction

“A smart city is a city well performing built on the ‘smart’ combination of endowments and activities of self-decisive, independent, and aware citizens” (Giffinger et al. 2007). Urban population concentration and other environmental challenges are among the key antecedents to the concept of smart cities around the world. Traditional cities are not adequately structured to provide a good quality of life for people in today’s fast-moving world. The smart cities concept came into the picture with the advent of high-end technologies and corresponding new policies that make it possible to live smartly (Letaifa 2015).

We are facing several kinds of challenges because of population growth in the old cities, which is straining limited, basic resources for their residents. Therefore, a new planning program must be implemented so that cities can be a better place to live. The challenges are compounded because people continue to migrate to urban areas for employment and a better standard of living. Urban jobs and infrastructure attract people looking for a better quality of life. The United Nations (UN) predicts that by 2050 there may be 6.5 billion people living in cities (Streitz 2015).

In some ways, they find this better lifestyle in the cities. However, migration is putting much pressure on the urban established cities and their systems and is not likely to stop in the near future (Okai et al. 2018). The proposal of smart cities is therefore widely accepted as a way to deal with such challenges. Cities play a crucial role in building socioeconomic and ecological counterparts around the world.

Because of the expected and current population growth, cities are suffering from various kinds of challenges as the available resources and the built infrastructure are limited and are under pressure. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop new infrastructure that can have a problem-solving approach to these challenges in the cities. Smart cities offer the hope that everyone can survive in a better way with the use of technology and engineering. For a city to be called a smart city, the smart city (SC) projects require several important criteria to be met: smart mobility, safety and security of the people, smart healthcare system, clean water and air, major dependencies on renewable energy systems, prompt disaster response system, economic development, and higher social and cultural values among people (Kosowatz 2020). Innovative technological solutions will be needed to develop all these factors for smart cities – solutions that can be easily adopted and fixed in the current or a new system.

Figure 1.1 shows several key components of smart cities. Smart cities implement technologies to become smart and it leads to better quality of life, economic development, a traffic management system for a robust supply chain in the city, and an effective health care system in the city with a proper network of emergency vehicles and ambulances. Beyond the listed factors, an effective communication system is necessary for appropriate information travel among the public and authorities (Ismagilova et al. 2019). Understanding the importance of smart cities and their development requires understanding the main priorities identified in the researchers’ smart city concept agendas (Camero and Alba 2019). These researchers are adding knowledge in all the SC areas, such as architecture and planning, civil engineering, information technology, management, policy, and governance.

Figure 1.1 Components of smart city.

Source: Developed by Authors.

In recent studies, it was found that SC development is greatly strengthened with the latest technological developments. The challenges in the cities can be minimized with the appropriate utilization of technologies. Information communication technology (ICT), artificial intelligence (AI), the internet of things (IoT), deep learning, machine learning, neural networking, cognitive computing, and big data analytics are some of the promising technologies used in the development of the smart city projects around the world. The engagement of these technologies is aimed to convert the conventional systems of the city into the autonomous system (Ahad et al. 2020). Inclusion of high-end technologies makes the entire system of the city smart work, such as smart mobility, which connects the vehicles on board to the traffic system and users can easily understand the traffic situation in the real-time. Smart mobility can also reduce fatalities that result when people injured in traffic accidents cannot get immediate treatment. In this case, smart mobility can be helpful for running ambulances or emergency vehicles with the help of an automatic traffics system linked with these vehicles. Real-time monitoring systems and global positioning systems (GPS) showing hospitals and clinics to the users are some of the smart systems that can save lives. These examples confirm how important the smart city project is for every nation in the world and the significance of the innovation agendas of the government, research agencies, and technology partners toward the development and implementation of smart technologies in the cities (Okai et al. 2018). In today’s context, many cities are interested in transforming into smart cities for achieving developmental goals, although the journey is full of challenges and complexities as it includes lots of planning with a public-private partnership (PPP) approach, experts with ICT, government support, and significant funding (Lai et al. 2020; Razmjoo et al. 2021).

This chapter focuses on the technological issues in the development of smart cities around the world and technological engagement in the development process. The major objective is to highlight smart city initiatives adopted by the cities and technology engagement for the same. Another task is to find the issues that are linked to technological aspects. These objectives are important to achieve because it helps in understanding the complexities of adopting the high-end technologies by the countries for smart city development projects. Studies show that most SC projects fail to achieve success because of poor technology adoption or affordability. Hence, this chapter endeavors to highlight these issues with appropriate possible solutions for the successful development of smart cities. This chapter may be helpful for the decision-makers who are engaged with smart city development projects and for researchers who may use this research for exploring future research opportunities.

1.2 Evolution of the Smart City

Urbanization has accelerated the evolution of smart cities. According to De Marco and Mangano (2021), it is expected that by 2050, approximately 66% of the global population will be living in urban areas. The term smart city has gained traction around the world, influencing urban development plans and government policies (Berry 2018). Overpopulation of smart cities also has many space challenges. The challenges are traffic congestion, waste management, pollution, and parking allocation – but opportunities exist to solve these problems. One of the biggest challenges or problems is traditional safety and security infrastructure that arises from rapid urbanization (Isafiade and Bagula 2017).

There is no widely accepted definition of the smart city. It varies according to perspective. The SC concept arose a few years ago as a collection of “ideas on how information and communication technology might improve city functioning” (Camero and Alba 2019). In other words, a smart city is a sustainable city that uses fourth-industrial-revolution technology and stakeholder governance to solve urban challenges and improve inhabitants’ quality of life (Myeong et al. 2022). Smart cities are also known by different names: Digital City (Ishida 2002); Eco-City (Register 1987); Green City (OECD 2013); Intelligent City (Komninos 2006); Knowledge City (Edvinsson 2006); Sustainable City (Haughton and Hunter 1994); and Wired City (Dutton et al. 1987).

1.3 Need for Smart Cities

The increasing burden of population on the planet and certain other types of environmental challenges led by overexploitation of the limited resources made the cities a poor place to live. The basic utilities such as getting safe drinking water are even a challenge for the common public, especially in...