Leonidas Anthopoulos and Panos Fitsilis
interesting , since many smart city cases – i . e ., Amsterdam and Barcelona‐ have changed their approaches even more than twice . and questions rise regarding the reasons that lied behind this change . The third question seeks for answers regarding whether the evolution of smart city approaches is logical and based on technological evolution or it concerns strategic choices and priorities ’ update .
The remaining of this paper is organized as follows : in the following background section 2 a classification of different smart city approaches is performed . Moreover , representative city cases for each approach are extracted and the evolution of these cases is presented . Then , section 3 structures smart city evolution roadmaps according to the provided e‐services . In section 4 this paper ’ s questions are discussed according to the extracted outcomes . Finally , in section 5 some conclusions and some future thoughts are given .
2 . Background
In this section , a bibliographic review on smart city is performed and many cities appear to follow alternative approaches . Authors combined literature findings with information from the official websites of the extracted cases in order to explore the current condition of the identified cases ( Table 1 ).
According to ( Giffinger et al ., 2007 ) the term smart city is not used in a holistic way describing a city with certain attributes , but is used for various aspects which range from mesh metropolitan ICT environments to a city regarding the education ( or smartness ) of its inhabitants ( Giffinger et al ., 2007 ), ( Komninos , 2002 ). Smart city was originally introduced in the Australian cases of Brisbane and Blacksbourg where the ICT supported social participation , narrowness of the digital divide and accessibility to public information and services . Smart City was later evolved to ( a ) urban spaces for business opportunities , which was followed by the city network of Malta , Dubai and Kochi ( www . smartcity . ae ); and to ( b ) ubiquitous technologies installed across the city , which are integrated into everyday objects and activities .
Moreover , smart city has been approached as part of the broader term of digital city by ( Anthopoulos and Tsoukalas , 2006 ), where a generic multi‐tier common architecture for digital cities was introduced and assigned smart city to the software and services layer of this architecture . For the purposes of this article , the term smart city will refer to all alternative approaches to metropolitan ICT cases .
An investigative literature review returns eight ( 8 ) different smart city approaches and 31 representative city cases , which have evolved since the early ‘ 90s and faced different challenges . Web or Virtual City is the primary smart city form with representatives the America‐On‐Line ( AOL ) cities ( Wang and Wu , 2001 ), the digital city of Kyoto ( Ishida , 2002 ), ( Ishida et al ., 2010 ) and the digital city of Amsterdam ( Lieshout , 2001 ). This approach concerns web environments , which offer local information , online chatting and meeting rooms , and a city ’ s virtual simulation .
The second approach is the Knowledge Bases , which was adopted by Copenhagen and then ex‐industrial area of Craigmillar ( Edinburgh , Scotland ) ( Van Bastelaer , 1998 ). Copenhagen developed a public database entitled Copenhagen Base , which had crowd sourcing options , it delivered local information and it was accessible via the Internet and via text‐TV . The case of Craigmillar concerns a Community Information Service , which capitalized the ICT to structure groups of citizens who shared knowledge and collaborated to deal with unemployment and with other local needs .
The city of Seoul introduced the third approach entitled Broadband City / Broadband Metropolis , where fiber optic backbones were installed in the city and enabled the interconnection of households and of local enterprises to ultra‐high speed networks ( Townsend , 2007 ). Last mile connections to the backbone were established with fiber optic channels ( Fiber‐to‐the‐Home , FTTH ), composing a flourish environment for telecommunication vendors and for private investments in general . Other cities that can be classified in this category is Beijing ( China ) ( Sairamesh et al . 2004 ), Antwerp ( Belgium ), Helsinki , Amsterdam and Geneva ( Van Bastelaer , 1998 ). Antwerp and Amsterdam collaborated and interconnected their broadband networks .
Another approach is the Mobile or Wireless or Ambient Cities , with representatives New York City and Atlanta ( Ganapati and Schoepp , 2008 ) ‐ , which installed wireless broadband networks in the city , accessible ( with or without charge ) by its inhabitants .
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