YOUR GUIDE TO THE FUTURE

While the Arctic faces unique challenges and opportunities, the concept of smart sustainable cities can be adapted and applied to promote sustainable development in this environmentally sensitive area. Technology and innovation play critical roles in supporting sustainable development in Arctic cities.

Smart city projects and their promises of improved efficiency, sustainability, and quality of life. However, these initiatives tend to prioritize the interests of powerful actors such as technology corporations and urban elites, neglecting the needs of marginalized communities.

Bodø’s ambition to be the smartest city in the world started in 2017 when the Norwegian government granted the move of their airport to Bodø. The city establishes the vision of being the most smart and sustainable city by creating thorough planning of a more compact city and focusing the development on the city centre.

Climatic, geographic and demographic factors often become a challenge for arctic city development and growth. Smart City concept then often adopted to boost the innovation and growth of the arctic cities. with approximately three-quarters of the Arctic population living in the urban area, many cities shift their economy by honing the knowledge-based economy.

A successful smart city project might inspire city stakeholders to expand the project or upscale the project into a wider area of application. Van Winden et al. (2016) distinguished three types of smart city project upscaling that can be useful to understand how the project can be applied in another context based on their type and goals of the project.

The development of a viable business model is key for continuation of the project and implementation of the results. Especially projects that depend on external funding or subsidy need to determine from the outset howthey will generate sufficient value and revenue streams to be able to continue the project after the subsidy it ended.

How advanced the technology or solution is not only the sole factor of success of a smart city initiative. How partnership of different stakeholders was built and organised is also critical to the success of the smart city projects.

van Winden et al. (2016) found that Smart City initiatives often forget to include the impact measurement of the project. It is often missed neither in the planning steps nor the end of the project.

Apparently 25% of Amsterdam canals are navigable waters. Yet, the canals are mostly used for leisure and tourism purposes. City Supplier is an initiative to reuse the canals to facilitate the city’s transport need.

One way City of Amsterdam reduces the pollution in city centre is to allow no gasoline trucks in the city centre area. Freight vehicles adapts to this regulation by electrifying the freight vehicle.

Office space in the urban area has become unaffordable for creatives in Amsterdam as population and the city continue to grow. When the Amsterdam Municipality opened a competition for development proposal of an abandoned wharf previously used by the shipbuilding industry, a group of architects proposed De Ceuvel as an office park development for creatives.

From the concern of the family-owned business, RIGO Paints rethink how the paints are produced to reduce its ecological impact. Petrochemical and acrylic paints are widely known for its environmental harm from its manufacturing process that use significant energy and produce harmful waste.

In the 1990s, Hoekenrodeplein was a city square in the South-Eastern part of Amsterdam known for its poor safety. The local municipality envisioned the area as a place for inhabitants and visitors to gather, to play and to shop in the area, with the help of better lighting.

Achieving the ambition of 40% CO2 emission reduction in 2025 require the City of Amsterdam to map and identify their energy use throughout many urban services, including from the electricity, water and sewage system.

In the construction of a new town development, city managers often find challenges in envisioning the Smart City needs of future citizens. A team of researchers study a German smart city district as it is being built and come up with concrete steps and procedures for developing digital solutions for the new smart town.

A new town development in Germany developed a game that promotes future mobility solutions to their future citizens. The game called MiniLautern created a city mobility simulation where the general public can participate in informing a more sustainable mobility solution.

Mu et al. (2022) conducted a study to fill in the gaps of knowledge of causal relationship between organisational conditions and government-led smart city projects. This exploration contrasts with the widely studied business-led smart city projects.

Mu et al. (2022) classifies four organisational conditions that influence the depth of technology enactment in government-led smart city projects. The four organisational conditions are Financial Capacity (FC), Information Sharing (IS), Human Resources Pressure (HR) and Leadership (LD).

Mu et al. (2022) classifies four organisational conditions that influence the depth of technology enactment in government-led smart city projects. The four organisational conditions are Financial Capacity (FC), Information Sharing (IS), Human Resources Pressure (HR) and Leadership (LD).

Depending on the city’s organisation capacities and conditions, a Smart City Project may display different level of technological “smartness”. Mu et al. (2021) specified three level of “smartness” of intelligent technology that cities adopted to support the government function.

There are four organizational conditions of governments that may influence the depth of technology enactment in smart city projects. The success of a smart city project usually depends not on how advance the technology that is being adopted but by the social, cultural and environmental attributes, such as political stalemates or interest conflicts in organisations.

Clarinval et al. (2023) introduce a workshop model that can help urban planners and decision maker facilitate a participation design that involves children, an often-overlooked demographic in the provision of Smart City development.

Despite the wide adoption of the Smart City concept in our cities, the concept mostly remains obscure to the general public. This is due to the lack of clear definition of Smart City but also the often limited participation to the urban development by the public, including to a specific demographic groups, the children.

Urban parks can promote city dweller’s quality of life as it provides a medium for various social activities. It also beneficial for city dweller’s physical and mental health and improve the sense of community. Inhabitants of Anyang City in South Korea has a strong park-going culture, with a survey indicating that 75% of the respondents has more that one year experience of visiting the parks regularly.

Urban agriculture gains relevance as it not only provides direct benefit in food security but also has other embedded environmental benefits. A study investigated Rooftop Kitchen Garden (RTG) as one urban agriculture initiative to assess and quantify the benefit of the urban agriculture at household level in South Delhi, India.

Rapid rate of urbanisation in major cities have driven many governments struggling to provide various public services to the inhabitants. Thus, many city governments resort to reaching out to Social Enterprise to support the mobilising & dispensing of socio-economic resources.

Compared to conventional green roofs that only installed vegetation or other green infrastructure, multilayer green roofs are an innovative tool that combine the green infrastructure with blue infrastructure with a rainwater harvesting system.

Addressing complex urban challenges require innovative problem solving, including through co-creation of urban solution with Urban Living Labs (ULL). ULL function as meeting arenas to support communities’ diversity, significance and connectedness, where participants can experiment with practical ideas and solutions towards a more cohesive, inclusive and sustainable every-day life.

Smart Cities thrive where innovation is fully supported in the governance. Urban Living Labs (ULL) is one medium that can provide the supporting environment for innovation. Urban Living Labs uses co-creation or a process of value creation by sharing information, promotes iterative, nonlinear innovation processes.

Land commodification and housing marketisation as a result of industrialisation in Chinese cities have pushed many traditional villages out of the market to make room for more profitable high-rise development. Architect Wu Liangyong pushed back by using the organic renewal concept, to repair the traditional courtyard houses in the Ju’er Hutong project.