Evolution Roadmaps for Smart Cities : Determining Viable Paths
Leonidas Anthopoulos and Panos Fitsilis Technological Education Institute ( TEI ) of Larissa , Larissa , Greece lanthopo @ teilar . gr fitsilis @ teilar . gr
Abstract : Smart cities have emerged for more than twenty years from their primary website form to modern ubiquitous and environmental sensitive ones and they encounter an extensive number of representative cases , with an international spread . Today they are considered living labs , areas of smart growth and favorable e‐Government environments , while they structure a modern and globalized market with a raising and competitive industry . Various alternative approaches to smart city can be observed , which appeared and have evolved during this timeline . These approaches have attracted various and significant cases , which either evolved to other forms or they later declined . This paper recognizes these different smart city approaches and their evolution , and it seeks to answer the following questions : what different approaches to smart city exist or have existed ? How have the smart cities evolved ? Do particular evolution roadmaps exist for smart cities ? In order to answer these questions , this paper presents a worldwide smart city classification , which describes all the alternative approaches that appear in literature and determines representative city cases together with similarities and differences among these approaches . Literature review is combined with data from an investigation of the official websites of the representative cases , which returns groups of e‐services that are being offered by different smart city approaches . These e‐service groups are used to identify evolution roadmaps for smart city that can show how smart cities have emerged and to which particular directions are being evolved . The evolution roadmaps are depicted via technology roadmapping tool . Moreover , these roadmaps can become a useful tool for municipal decision makers , who have to choose between evolution forms and smart city projects that secure smart city ’ s viability . Viability is a crucial parameter for every project , especially due to recent financial recession , since smart cities concern extensive and demanding investments , which affect large communities and local life in a significant manner .
Keywords : smart cities , technology roadmapping , e‐Government , digital cities , e‐services , geographies , ubiquitous technologies
1 . Introduction
Various terms have been used to describe the application of the Information and Communications Technologies ( ICT ) and the deployment of various e‐services in the urban areas ( Anthopoulos and Vakali , 2012 ): web or virtual , broadband , wireless or mobile , digital , smart and ubiquitous cities are only some of these terms . Moreover , terms such as knowledge spaces , virtual or digital communities extend the physical urban limits and describe groups of citizens who distantly share virtual spaces for a common reason .
No commonly agreed “ umbrella ” term can be found in the literature to describe this “ booming ” phenomenon of the abovementioned metropolitan ICT environments , while the digital city and the smart city ones are the most usual . For the purposes of this paper the term smart city will be used to describe all these alternative terms . Smart cities are crucial because , they deal with important state‐of‐the‐art topics i . e ., e‐Government service delivery , e‐service adoption , smart growth , social networking , living labs etc .
Various cities around the world have approached the smart city . Each of them usually faced different challenges and prioritized alternative objectives , such as improvement of local everyday life ; development of knowledge‐based societies ; narrowness of the digital divide ; and promotion of e‐Government locally ( Anthopoulos and Vakali , 2012 ). Others emphasized on the enhancement of e‐commerce services and on local growth , while recently the environmental protection has been put first on the objectives ’ list .
The implementation of a smart city is based on sets of projects , which address these predefined priorities and objectives . However , these various smart city cases did not keep their initial forms and they have updated – even more than once‐ to different directions and objectives , a fact that questions the strategic purposes , the effectiveness and the viability of a smart city .
This paper tries to answer the following questions : what different approaches to smart city exist or have existed ? How have the smart cities evolved ? Do particular evolution roadmaps exist for smart cities ? The first question sounds simple , but the appearance of so many different terms that describe the same phenomenon can be confused and the similarities and differences have to be specified . The second question is very
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