Cities 

About: Cities is an academic journal published by Elsevier BV. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Urban planning & Population. It has an ISSN identifier of 0264-2751. Over the lifetime, 4145 publications have been published receiving 124582 citations.

Current trends in Smart City initiatives: some stylised facts

Abstract: The concept of Smart City (SC) as a means to enhance the life quality of citizen has been gaining increasing importance in the agendas of policy makers. However, a shared definition of SC is not available and it is hard to identify common global trends. This paper provides with a comprehensive understanding of the notion of SC through the elaboration of a taxonomy of pertinent application domains, namely: natural resources and energy, transport and mobility, buildings, living, government, and economy and people. It also explores the diffusion of smart initiatives via an empirical study aimed at investigating the ratio of domains covered by a city’s best practices to the total of potential domains of smart initiatives and at understanding the role that various economic, urban, demographic, and geographical variables might have in influencing the planning approach to create a smarter city. Results reveal that the evolution patterns of a SC highly depend on its local context factors. In particular, economic development and structural urban variables are likely to influence a city’s digital path, the geographical location to affect the SC strategy, and density of population, with its associated congestion problems, might an important component to determine the routes for the SC implementation. This work provides policy makers and city managers with useful guidelines to define and drive their SC strategy and planning actions towards the most appropriate domains of implementation.

What are the differences between sustainable and smart cities

Abstract: City assessment tools can be used as support for decision making in urban development as they provide assessment methodologies for cities to show the progress towards defined targets. In the 21st century, there has been a shift from sustainability assessment to smart city goals. We analyze 16 sets of city assessment frameworks (eight smart city and eight urban sustainability assessment frameworks) comprising 958 indicators altogether by dividing the indicators under three impact categories and 12 sectors. The following main observations derive from the analyses: as expected, there is a much stronger focus on modern technologies and “smartness” in the smart city frameworks compared to urban sustainability frameworks. Another observation is that as urban sustainability frameworks contain a large number of indicators measuring environmental sustainability, smart city frameworks lack environmental indicators while highlighting social and economic aspects. A general goal of smart cities is to improve sustainability with help of technologies. Thus, we recommend the use of a more accurate term “smart sustainable cities” instead of smart cities. However, the current large gap between smart city and sustainable city frameworks suggest that there is a need for developing smart city frameworks further or re-defining the smart city concept. We recommend that the assessment of smart city performance should not only use output indicators that measure the efficiency of deployment of smart solutions but also impact indicators that measure the contribution towards the ultimate goals such as environmental, economic or social sustainability.

A roster of world cities

Abstract: Although there is a general consensus on which are the leading world cities, there is no agreed-upon roster covering world cities below the highest level. This paper reports the construction of an inventory of world cities based upon their level of advanced producer services. Global service centres are identified and graded for accountancy, advertising, banking/finance and law. Aggregating these results produces a roster of 55 world cities at three levels: 10 Alpha world cities, 10 Beta world cities and 35 Gamma world cities. These are found to be largely geographically concentrated in three “globalization arenas”, northern America, western Europe and Pacific Asia.

Smart city policies: A spatial approach

Abstract: This paper reviews the factors which differentiate policies for the development of smart cities, in an effort to provide a clear view of the strategic choices that come forth when mapping out such a strategy. The paper commences with a review and categorization of four strategic choices with a spatial reference, on the basis of the recent smart city literature and experience. The advantages and disadvantages of each strategic choice are presented. In the second part of the paper, the previous choices are illustrated through smart city strategy cases from all over the world. The third part of the paper includes recommendations for the development of smart cities based on the combined conclusions of the previous parts. The paper closes with a discussion of the insights that were provided and recommendations for future research areas.