Publications

Smart Sustainable Cities are gaining global attention rapidly. They are becoming a reality and hundreds of related initiatives around the world are taking place. Accordingly, cities are claiming to be smart and even smarter than others. However, smartness, as a concept, still has no standardized definition noting that it does not exist until it is defined and measured. For selected researchers and practitioners, it is assessed through the city’s participatory governance, economy, mobility, environmental strategy and management of natural resources, and the presence of aware citizens. Others focus on the advancement of technologies and the infrastructure needed to introduce smart solutions. For smartness to be properly assessed, its boundaries should be clearly set. By setting these boundaries through a comprehensive definition, it becomes possible to build an assessment model that methodologically monitors smartness of cities. In this research, a literature review on existing interpretations of smartness is presented and followed by an analysis of the goals of a Smart Sustainable City with lights shed on the quest of sustainable development. Through an analytical discussion, smartness is proved to be a dynamic process enabling change. It uses technologies to infuse innovation thereby achieving multidimensional urban efficiency. Also, a mutually reinforcing relationship between smartness and sustainable development is shown. The research paper concludes with introducing a holistic definition of smartness which contributes to clarifying the concept and constitutes a cornerstone in assessing the performance of Smart Sustainable Cities. It also provides the grounds for supporting or defying self-proclamation of a city for being smart and/ or smarter than others.