Defining smart cities in a changing world-modern trends

Abstract

"Cities have played a more important role in shaping the world than empires" (quote from M. Bloomberg, former mayor of New York (in office 2020-2013). For the past two decades, the world has seen its population increasingly concentrated in urban areas. This trend is not new but will speed up at a remarkable rate in years to come (UN 2018 Urbanization Report). The beginning of the 21st century has been strongly characterized by growing urbanization and the pressing need for sustainable development. More recently due to climate change and global warming, a need has emerged, as a modern trend, for a more resilient city ecosystem as well urging cities to rethink their planning and specifications especially for future new projects. So-called “smart cities” seem to be a forward-thinking model, which attempts to direct and transform urban areas toward more suitable living conditions. Smart cities leverage technology, data design focusing on citizens, targeting to improve daily urban life and make it more efficacious, inclusive and resilient. This thesis aims to explore the ways that smart cities are modifying urban spaces according to city needs to overcome the modern somewhat complex obstacles. Such cities can integrate digital infrastructure and novel technologies to make better most essential services for living, such as energy and transportation, as well as healthcare and public safety issues. Nevertheless, challenges are not absent. Issues including urbanization, resource scarcity, overpopulation, data ethics, inclusiveness, interoperability of systems, Big Data storage, the creating and coordinating operation control centers, cybersecurity, privacy, public funding, high costs of new technologies, difficulties in public-private partnerships, even public safety contingency plans, (i.e. 2009 Economic Crisis, COVID -19 pandemic, Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Palestine wars, “Daniel” Flood in Thessaly, Greece, “Armageddon” in Valencia, Spain, hurricane disasters in the USA, etc.) seem to pose some major obstacles to city evolution. Further obstacles may also be recording the needs of cities to create a type of ERP (Enterprise resource planning) system for cities to help organize, automate and manage core city business processes for optimal performance. The key to grasp the ways that these cities can overcome such hurdles effectively is portrayed through understanding actual basic core components and strategies which are capable of defining a city as “smart”. In this thesis, core elements, technologies and the worldwide standards, which shape smart cities at a global level, are examined. Besides, the advantages and the possible disadvantages along with future prospects of smart cities are evaluated since, they continuously evolve in order to satisfy the expectations of a fast-forward changing world. The first chapter of this thesis includes the definition of a “smart city”. Referring to a historical timeline in regards to the topic through the available literary review, key elements, as well as the push and pull factors for the growth of such cities. Whereas, the second chapter provides evidence for the technologies and the key components and dimensions of smart cities including the International Standardization Organization (ISO) Standards of a smart city. Subsequently, the following chapter evaluates the Strengths, the Weaknesses, the Opportunities and Threats via a SWOT analysis of the smart city, as well as the key indicators of assessing smart cities. Moreover, the forth chapter presents the sustainability of their urban development and the resilience strategies for modern urban obstacles of smart cities and the succeeding chapter illustrates some common global framework of smart cities as well as a few common case studies of them and the best practices they implement thus becoming excellent paradigms for future candidate smart cities. The final chapter discusses future challenges and threats in addition to the prospects- potential hereinafter of smart cities. Consequently, the thesis ends by arriving to certain conclusions and making suggestions regarding the previously mentioned topic taking into consideration modern trends.