Leonidas Anthopoulos and Panos Fitsilis
Digital City extends the above approaches and older ones( Moon, 2002) and describes a“ mesh” metropolitan environment that interconnects virtual and physical spaces in order to deal with local challenges. Anthopoulos and Tsoukalas( 2006) define the digital city as the“ ICT‐based environment whose priorities concern a) the ICT contribution to local needs and transactions, b) the transformation of the local community to a local information society, c) the direct and indirect, official and unofficial information collection, in order to support the sustainable development of the local community”. This approach has been followed by various cities such as Hull( UK), Cape Town( South Africa), Tampere( Finland) and Trikala( Greece).
Smart City approach was described above and is currently fully applicable in Dubai, where the“ media city”( www. dubaimediacity. com) and the“ internet city”( www. dubaiinternetcity. com) offer broadband and media infrastructures to the enterprises. Other smart city representatives are Barcelona, Austin( USA), Tampere( Finland) and European cities( http:// smart‐cities. eu, http:// www. smartcities. info), which recognize several dimensions of intelligence to which the ICT can contribute: economy( Smart Economy), education( Smart People), governance( Smart Governance), transportation( Smart Mobility), sustainability( Smart Environment) and everyday life( Smart Living). Various ICT vendors( e. g., IBM, Microsoft, Hitachi and Oracle) have implemented commercial solutions for the smart city approach.
Ubiquitous City( u‐City) concerns the result of broadband costs’ minimization and commercialization of largescale information systems, cloud services and ubiquitous computing in urban spaces. U‐city has representatives New Songdo( Hyang‐Sook et al., 2007)( South Korea), Manhattan Harbour and Kentucky( U. S. A.), Masdar city( Abu Dhabi) and Osaka( Japan), where information is accessible anytime, from everywhere by anybody via ubiquitous ICT. In many cases( i. e., in South Korea and Abu Dhabi) this approach is accompanied with the construction of new urban spaces where pervasive computing will is included from the scratch in buildings.
Finally, the Eco‐city or Green City approach capitalizes the ICT for sustainable growth and for ecological protection. ICT sensors for environmental measurement and for buildings’ energy capacity’ s evaluation; smart grids produce energy for inhabitants’ consumption; encourage smart solutions for renewable energy production are only some of the eco‐city services. This approach has been followed by New Songdo and Dongtan( South Korea), Tianjin( Singapore) and Masdar( Abu Dhabi), while it is being followed by others( i. e., Amsterdam).
Except from the above approaches, various cities joined networks of common interests to provide with intelligence their urban spaces or to structure virtual teams of collaborative people. Eurocities network( http:// www. eurocities. org), Intelligent Communities( www. intelligentcommunity. org), the World Foundation of Smart Communities( http:// www. smartcommunities. org) and Community Networks( e. g. the Seattle Community Network( http:// www. scn. org)) are representative cases.
Table 1: The classification and current status of various smart cities Approach
Cases: Started – Current Condition
Virtual City America‐On‐Line( AOL) Cities( 1997‐ today) Today: City Guides for U. S. cities http:// www. citysbest. com Kyoto, Japan( 1996‐2001) Web prototype finished its experiments by September 2001 http:// www. digitalcity. gr. jp Bristol, U. K.( 1997‐ today) http:// www. digitalbristol. org / Amsterdam( 1997‐ today) It evolved to other approaches( broadband, smart, eco‐city) http:// www. amsterdamsmartcity. com
Knowledge Bases Copenhagen Base( 1989‐ today) Today it operates as a city portal http:// www. kk. dk and Copenhagen evolved to Eco‐City Craigmillar Community Information Service, Scotland( 1994‐ today) It operates as a community portal http:// www. s1craigmillar. com Blacksburg Knowledge Democracy, Australia( 2001‐ today) It evolved to the digital city approach
Broadband City / Seoul, S. Korea( 1997‐ today) Broadband Evolves with 84 % broadband penetration, it is expected to reach 1GB web connections by 2012, Metropolis and it provides with Wi‐Fi access its public buildings( Engadget, 2011) Beijing, China( 1999‐ today) It has been evolved to digital city, which focused on buildings of the Olympic Games 2008
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