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How small but smart cities are changing the way data and decisions are influencing urban life
Abstract
The popular concept of using technology to improve urban life gained traction over a decade ago. But researchers and practitioners say that the focus has shifted from big cities to small cities that are transforming organizational structures and implementing new technologies.
Smart city mobility faces mounting challenges as urban mobility systems grow increasingly complex. Large language models (LLMs) have promise in interpreting and processing multi-modal urban data, but issues like model instability, computational inefficiency, and concerns about reliability hinder their implementations. In this Comment, we outline feasible LLM application scenarios, critically evaluate existing challenges, and highlight avenues for advancing LLM-based mobility systems through multi-modal data integration and developing robust, lightweight models.
City planners are seeking ways to incorporate human-centric urban projects that combine smart technology, good infrastructure and people’s perception as well as their participation. Smart city developments are increasingly being applied to smaller scales at which communities can co-design hard infrastructure and the resulting services. Experiences from city projects at this level have produced a plethora of designs, challenges and success factors, particularly from cases in countries with long legacies in city development. In the Gulf Cooperation Council region, young cities and new planned cities house the bulk of the population and face environmental challenges related to urban segregation, urban sprawl and large consumption footprints. The political-economy of this region in terms of central urban planning and government-led economic development offers valuable insights on the limits and challenges in implementing projects related to smart and connected communities (SCC). SCC as a label for smart urban interventions towards more connectedness between hard and soft (human-related) infrastructure can provide opportunities for participatory and sustainable urban planning in the region. This paper analyzes the role of community-level interventions within the smart city policies of Gulf countries. It shows that only few local-level projects exist, while the barriers to large-scale SCC initiatives are related to demographics, community characteristics, technological sophistication, lack of conducive regulations, and the prevalence of central urban planning. The success of local smart city approaches in the Gulf is dependent on public leadership in terms of clearing obstacles, designing broader strategies, and expanding projects to include the residential sector. Considering the potential of SCC projects to enhance the transition to sustainability in the predominantly urban Gulf societies, broader engagement of local governments, utilities, and community-level developers can result in tangible benefits in terms of more sustainable, smart and tailored local services.
Cohen's Smart City Generational model has been the basis of understanding for the evolution of the Smart Cities movement. However, how does this model align with practitioners' conceptualization of the term? Our research focuses on Infrastructure Canada's Smart City Challenge (SCC). Through 14 primary interviews and 20 finalist applications, this research reveals that practitioners overwhelmingly understand Smart City building as a government-driven, data-centric endeavor (Smart City 2.0), as opposed to being about vendor transactions (Smart City 1.0), resident engagement (Smart City 3.0), or community co-creation (Smart City 4.0), where the specific technology is of secondary importance to project objectives. We conclude that, rather than moving through distinct generations, the smart cities movement should be understood as a gradual process of municipal public administration modernization as local governments are becoming increasingly savvy and experienced about contracting with technology firms to address urban problems.
The retrofitting and renewal of modern-era socialist housing estates is a prominent issue throughout the world. There are different political choices to deal with dilapidated socialist housing estates. The transformation of such estates in post-socialist cities has so far focused primarily on improving their physical conditions and increasing the energy efficiency building-by-building. However, an integrated and area-based regeneration approach would have greater potential to influence the entire neighbourhood, as well as the inhabitants’ environmental behaviour. The Smart City is a concept that can achieve environmental sustainability ambitions as well as large housing estate regeneration goals. This chapter describes the implementation of the Smart City concept to the renovation of a Soviet-era apartment buildings area, based on the example of the SmartEnCity project in Tartu, Estonia.
- A Zwick
- Spicer
Zwick, A. & Spicer, Z. Urban Aff. Rev. 60, 1229-1253 (2024).
- M Al-Saidi
- E Zaidan
- Front
Al-Saidi, M. & Zaidan, E. Front. Built Environ. 10, 1341694
(2024).