Publications

The unprecedented rapid urbanization will affect the sustainability of cities around the globe. City leaders are currently seeking to transform their cities into Smart Sustainable Cities to face this global urbanization trend and its related challenges. To ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of a transformation process, current city needs, future trends, readiness of a city for the change, quality of life of citizens, and the set of smart and sustainable initiatives and solutions should be considered. The latter could be achieved through a comprehensive roadmap and framework to guide the transformation process. Developing such a roadmap and framework require a deep understanding of the concepts of transformation, roadmap, and framework in the context of Smart Sustainable Cities. Definitions that currently exist in the literature do not take into consideration the different objectives of a Smart Sustainable City. This constitutes a gap in knowledge. This research paper bridges this gap by highlighting the weaknesses and deficiencies in existing definitions and introduce new definitions for the three concepts, taking into account the specificity of a Smart Sustainable City as a solution for the rapid urbanization while maintaining the sustainability of a city and ensuring a high quality of life for its citizens. The proposed comprehensive definitions of these three concepts namely transformation, roadmap, and framework aim at guiding city planners, policy makers, and key stakeholders in developing and designing Smart Sustainable City initiatives and programs.