A city that invests in innovation and provides a roadmap and infrastructure to support successful business outcomes and attract industry and investment in smart sectors.
Despite many international or national push for smart city development, it is the local context, constraint and enablers in a specific municipality that determines the degree of innovation a city will have. A study examines 22 smart cities in Switzerland to find out what elements of a city that are significant in the development of its Smart City vision.
Cities are expected to generate up to 2.2 billion tonnes of solid waste in 2025. City of Glasgow takes an initiative to create a more sustainable production and consumption value chain by embracing the Circular Economy Concept.
To enhance the quality of life in the city, the city government must take advantage of the clustering resource and knowledge that the area accumulates. Cities as the place of clustering citizens, private enterprise, social organisation, and higher education hubs may benefit from smart cities with open governments.
The concept of smart city is about utilising the combined intelligence, skills and resources that a city possesses from the heterogeneous stakeholders that work together to find solutions to the city’s problems. Part of becoming a smart city is the ability to be more open and encouraging for opportunities for new business models and entrepreneurship.
One indicator of a successful Smart City is its ability to adapt the vision and strategies to local context. Yet, through the study of 15 cities globally, many Smart City visions and strategies poorly accommodate the local needs. Failing to incorporate the unique physical characteristics, demography, and culture of a local area in the Smart City implementation, a municipality risk themselves in loosing the comparative advantages with other cities.
The massive investment in Smart City development should come with a suitable risk management. To assist municipalities in identifying and managing their risk in smart city implementation, Ullah et al. (2021) had identified a technology-organisation-environment or TOE-based risk management.
Smart City development risks may interfere with the success of the goals that municipalities set for their cities. Thus, risk management is required to reduce the probabilities of negative impact and even increase the probability of positive opportunities in Smart City implementation.
In 2019, Dowling et al. documented the smart city initiatives Australian Local Governments’ employ in their jurisdiction. With the limited resources and scale that municipalities have, local governments should be deliberate in implementing Smart City Initiatives in their jurisdiction.
ICT is a powerful tool to achieve smart city including in the dimension of the governance system. Utilising ICT to encourage better public participation in the policy design and decision making is considered one of the goals of smart city approach.
The complex and unpredictable nature of urban problems make ways for big data to contribute to addressing it. Big data analytics that are applied to urban governance and planning, could inform decision makers and city governments in the strategic, long term urban policy, Kandt and Batty (2021) argue.
Responding to the finding of five key factors that are affecting the smart city transformation readiness, Yigitcanlar et al. (2021) developed four steps that could help policy maker, planners, and city managers to encourage smart and sustainable cities.
Yigitcanlar et al. (2021) identifies five key factors that determine 65% of smart city transformation readiness in Australian cities. The factors were identified through the analysis of 180 LGAs in Australia that prioritise their policy and public fund to support the smartness and competitiveness of the city.
Helsinki provides an example on how to encourage innovation in the region that would eventually improve the quality of life of its citizens. The government held competitions that utilised the existing Open Data service to the citizens and start-ups that encouraged the creations of products and services that would benefit the city.
Smart City is a city that is resilient and capable of adapting to current and future pressure to its urban system, such as the intense climate change impact, Fernández et al. (2020) suggests. From best practices in Barcelona, Rotterdam and Vienna, indicate that integration of economic and environmental strategies are crucial in contributing to ensure better quality of life.
A big part to attain the Sustainable Development Goals by the UN includes the transformation in how we do the economy. The business as usual of a linear economy where a product will end up in a landfill when its lifecycle ends is no longer sustainable as this promotes the extraction of our limited and ever more scarce natural resource.
The wide use of smart technology has allowed us to get accurate geographic information of a city or area. The use of spatial data should enhance the analysis of planner and provide evidence on how the city tackles inequalities. Du et al. (2021) take New York City as a case study to introduce a new qualitative methodological approach to assess how urban resource are distributed.
With the ever-complicated urban service provision and high population growth, developing countries implemented Smart City with the aim of improving government efficacy and improving the quality of life of its citizen while also promoting transparency and inclusivity of governance with the public.
On the previous article, the significant positive impact of Smart City for the urban economy was explored. Caragliu and Del Bo (2019) investigated further on how Smart City impacted the urban economy. Study was conducted to see whether urban innovation is how cities achieve the positive urban economic outcome by implementing Smart City Policies.
With 34 Province and 514 cities in Indonesia, the problem and priorities among the local governments varied significantly. With limited resource and capital, local governments are encouraged to be innovative in solving challenges and issues in their areas.
To encourage the development of Small and Medium Enterprises in City of Jogjakarta, the government invites young entrepreneur by creating and facilitating creative and collaborative space through-out city. Government agencies such as the Department of Tourism and Culture and the ICT Department open up their office spaces as co-working spaces for young entrepreneurs that needs space for their new start-ups.
City of Batam prioritise the creation of a city environment that supports innovation and creativity as part of their economic development strategies. As city island with limited resourece, City of Batam sees the potential of their manufacturing and creative industry as their future economic power.
City of Batam is unique as the administrative area includes three main islands and several smaller islands. This geographical condition has an impact on the limited clean water that can be used for daily consumption of drinking and cleaning.
