Smart utopia VS smart reality: Learning by experience from 10 smart city cases

20 years after the appearance of literature evidence and the launch of the first, pioneering cases, the smart city domain remains ambiguous and generates an increasing argument with regard to its feasibility and potential. Indeed, today the smart city domain is being characterized by an emerging market that provides novel solutions for cyber-physical integration in the urban space; a competitive standardization arena that attempts to clarify the domain and homogenize these solutions; a growing network of city alliances, forums and market places that aim to bring together scientists, practitioners and city governments in an attempt to define a common urban future; and a promising international network of scholars that studies and evolves the domain. Nevertheless, a “common understanding” of what smart city is or could be missing and generates questions regarding whether a “smart utopia” - that is the outcome of the “wedding” of vendors and local governments - drives the above efforts and leaves out real community problems. The aim of this paper is to perform an analysis of 10 representative international city cases that claim to be smart. The analysis is based on a multi-method that combines literature evidence, official websites and reports, narrative city walks, and interviews with corresponding officials. The outcomes distinguish utopia from reality, introduce a pool of evidence that can justify whether a city can claim to be smart and depict a brief view of the future smart city.     

Engaging decision makers for an urban underground future

This paper will look into the topic of how decision makers can be engaged in the development of urban underground space. It will ask the question whether it is the decision makers we need to focus on, or if the development of urban underground space involves further stakeholders. The paper will look at the way the ITA Committee of Underground Space has worked in advocating underground space for the past 8 years. The question will also be asked where we stand 100 years on from the first advocates of underground urbanism.     

Problematizing data-driven urban practices: Insights from five Dutch ‘smart cities’

Recently, the concept of the smart city has gained growing popularity. As cities worldwide have set the aim to harness digital technologies to their development, increasing focus came to lie on the potential challenges and concerns related to data-driven urban practices. In the existing literature, these challenges and concerns have been dominantly approached from a pragmatic approach based on the a priori assumed ‘goodness’ of the smart city; for a small group of critics, the very notion of the smart city is questionable. This paper takes the middle-way by interrogating how municipal and civil society stakeholders problematize the challenges and concerns related to data-driven practices in five Dutch cities, and how they act on these concerns in practice. The lens of problematization posits that the ways of problematizing data-driven practices contribute to their actual enactment, and that this is an inherently political process. The case study shows that stakeholders do not only perceive practical challenges but are widely aware of and are (partly) pro-actively engaging with perceived normative-ethical and societal concerns, leading to different (sometimes inter-related) technological, legal/political, organizational, informative and participative strategies. Nonetheless, the explicit contestation of smart city policies through these strategies remains limited in scope. The paper argues that more research is needed to uncover the structural-institutional dynamics that facilitate and/or prevent the repoliticization of smart city projects.     

The smart city as a common place for tourists and residents: A structural analysis of the determinants of urban attractiveness

This article presents a structural modeling analysis of the performance determinants of urban attractiveness, in terms of resident population and international tourism demand, in 40 global cities. The analysis focuses on the impacts of a diverse set of innovative drivers of urban value creation and sustainable solutions for city development (urban functions), which are collectively subsumed under the heading of ‘sustainable smart city’. Recognizing that the dynamics and growth processes related to these urban functions may have different impacts on different types of stakeholders, potentially leading to the emergence of serious conflicts between guests/visitors and residents, we aim to derive model-based implications for urban and tourism management in the cities concerned in order to move towards the sustainable future city as ‘a place 4 all’. The results of our latent growth curve model confirm the existence of different impacts of urban functions on visitors' and residents' attractiveness. Cultural dynamics appears to be a major determinant for attracting new residents and supporting a strong international tourism industry. From an economic perspective, purely economic strength (in terms of absolute growth) appears to enhance city attractiveness for residents, while the dynamics observed in research and development activities influences the quality of employment instead of being a direct driver of population growth. While the social aspects of sustainability (framed under the concept of livability) and the urban environment typically exert higher impacts on urban attractiveness, accessibility appears mostly relevant for visitors. Our analysis suggests an uneasy balance between livability, environment, and population and visitor volume and growth.     

Urban heat island mitigation strategies: A state-of-the-art review on Kuala Lumpur,Singapore and Hong Kong

Observing the rapid urban expansions and numerous infrastructure developments in the East-Asian context, many cities are suffering the urban heat island (UHI) effect and its associated environmental and social challenges. Moreover, the lack of sufficient attention to the application of effective heat mitigation strategies in current urban development in these cities can drastically intensify the eventual impacts of UHI. Therefore, many governmental sectors and policy makers have been implementing operative solutions for cooling cities. Nevertheless, this study argues that in Kuala Lumpur, despite the growing attention to this matter, there is still a need for more rigorous consideration by the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) professionals as well as more scholarly studies to reflect sustainable solutions to the UHI effect. As a result, today, some of the dense urban areas in Kuala Lumpur are characterized with the use of thermally massive building materials, urban surfaces with low albedo, complex urban morphology, waste heat, and low density of vegetation. On the other hand, recent studies demonstrate that there has been a rapidly increasing interest in studies related to UHI in other East Asian regions such as Singapore and Hong Kong. Hence, this study develops a comparative analysis to provide a state-of-the-art review of the recent attempts towards mitigating the UHI effect in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Among several available UHI mitigation strategies, this study is limited to the analysis of the environmental impacts of urban vegetation (green roofs, green facades, vertical greeneries and green pavements). Findings reveal that in general, urban greening can significantly mitigate the UHI intensity, both directly and indirectly, resulting in the decrease of global air temperature and mean radiant temperature up to 4 °C and 4.5 °C respectively. Overall, the study develops new practical guidelines, discusses the public benefits and elaborates on the future directions of UHI studies.     

智慧城市技术对未来城市空间发展的影响

大数据、人工智能、移动网络、云 计算等新技术的发展,正在引发一场全球新 一轮的技术革命。智能技术的发展不仅成 为国家经济、社会发展的创新动力,而且也 对城市的运作和发展产生了深刻的影响。智 慧城市在这样的大背景下,正以比我们想象 得更快的速度在城市的各个领域展开,如智 慧交通、智慧能源、智能通讯、智慧政务、智 慧医疗等等几乎涉及了城市运作的各个层面 和各个方面,这些智慧技术的应用已经对城 市生活产生了巨大影响,那么它将对未来城 市空间格局产生什么影响,对城市设计带来 怎么样的机遇和挑战,或者反过来说,我们 可以利用智慧技术在城市设计领域做些什 么,值得我们进一步思考。本文将通过对国 内外智慧城市研究领域前沿研究的分析,揭 示智慧城市技术对城市各个方面产生的影响 和潜在机遇,并提出未来城市设计利用智慧 技术将面临的新的课题和值得关注的研究 方向。     

Water quality monitoring in smart city: A pilot project

A smart city is an urban development vision to integrate multiple information and communication technology (ICT), “Big Data” and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions in a secure fashion to manage a city's assets for sustainability, resilience and liveability. Meanwhile, water quality monitoring has been evolving to the latest wireless sensor network (WSN) based solutions in recent decades. This paper presents a multi-parameter water quality monitoring system of Bristol Floating Harbour which has successfully demonstrated the feasibility of collecting real-time high-frequency water quality data and displayed the real-time data online. The smart city infrastructure – Bristol Is Open was utilised to provide a plug & play platform for the monitoring system. This new system demonstrates how a future smart city can build the environment monitoring system benefited by the wireless network covering the urban area. The system can be further integrated in the urban water management system to achieve improved efficiency.     

Does collaborative tree planting between nonprofits and neighborhood groups improve neighborhood community capacity?

In the past decade, urban tree canopy cover goals and tree-planting initiatives have proliferated among local governments and nonprofit organizations across the globe. While research has documented many benefits new trees will provide, less has considered whether active participation of city residents in urban forestry activities might also benefit urban neighborhoods. This paper examines nonprofit tree-planting programs in four cities in the Midwestern and Eastern United States to determine whether and to what extent neighborhood participation in a nonprofit tree-planting project might increase ties between residents, social cohesion, and shared trust in that neighborhood. We leveraged a unique dataset of ecological and social information about tree-planting neighborhoods and matched comparison (non-tree planting) neighborhoods (total neighborhoods = 197; total survey respondents = 1551). The evidence for a social effect of nonprofit tree-planting programs is mixed. When asked directly, neighborhood residents reported observing positive changes. Linear regression analysis reveals significantly higher neighborhood ties reported by individuals in planting neighborhoods. However, we find no significant relationship between tree planting and social cohesion or trust. In single-city models, planting's association with neighborhood ties and social cohesion is only significant in one city, and associations with trust are not significant in any city. Models that aggregate responses at the neighborhood level find no significant association of tree planting. Findings suggest that tree planting may increase neighborhood ties, but that increases in social cohesion and/or trust are not guaranteed.     

The more the better? The role of stakeholder information processing in complex urban innovation projects for green transformation

To fight climate change and to cope with the energy crisis, a green and sustainable transformation of the existing urban space is needed. Key for the increase of a city districts’ energy efficiency is the successful management of urban innovation projects. Urban innovation projects target heterogeneous innovation fields like heat supply, thermal insulation, mobility, and smart city approaches. They cover various technological and social innovations, affect almost all areas of urban life and economy, and, hence, need to involve heterogonous stakeholders. As such, urban innovation projects are more complex than many other projects, which results in difficulties of the implementation of the innovations alternatives in the local urban environment. This study focuses on the role of stakeholder involvement breadth and depth to foster the likelihood of implementation of new solutions in urban innovation projects. We ask how information processing capabilities affect the efficacy of stakeholder involvement. The empirical analysis provides evidence based on text mining of planning documents and survey data from 106 German urban innovation projects. The results reveal the benefits and challenges of stakeholder involvement and show how digital tools may help to overcome information processing obstacles.     

Shaking for innovation: The (re)building of a (smart) city in a post disaster environment

This paper begins by exploring a smart city approach in post-earthquake Christchurch, New Zealand, by telling the city's story so far. We take the position of critical scholars who are engaged in a live smart cities project that involves the measurement of air quality by using sensor tools. As the project is still ongoing, the final results of the work are yet to be seen, but, nonetheless worth documenting. This article is composed as an early analysis of the air quality sensing project as a framework for the larger smart city story of Christchurch. It provides an overview of the experiences and lessons learned about the implementation of new technologies in a post-disaster environment. We examine how the narrative of the smart city is constructed, with focus on the terminology used by citizens, academicians, government and corporations. We then argue that top-down technocratic solutions to urban problems alone do not suffice to improve life in the city; rather, they can result in misaligned expectations or outcomes for stakeholders at the government and citizen level. We conclude by suggesting that citizen-led initiatives may be a way to promote more nuanced and inclusive ways of addressing local urban problems in a smart cities context.     

Possibilities and limits of brand repositioning for a second-ranked city: The case of Brisbane,Australia's “New World City”, 1979–2013

This article examines the role of city brand repositioning in the economic and sociological transformation of a second-ranked city, developing a conceptual framework that identifies the possibilities and limits of city brand repositioning to enhance a city's global status and reputation. Brisbane, a second-ranked Australian city, is selected to study the influence of city brand repositioning on the process of urban transformation over a 34 year period from 1979 to 2013. The findings of this historical analysis highlight the efficacy of targeted rebranding campaigns and incentives for different market segments (i.e. tourism, investment, education). In particular, positive demographic and economic outcomes for the city were associated with real and psychological repositioning of the city brand. These repositioning strategies communicated substantive changes in the city's demographic and industrial structure, underpinned by multi-level government policies and programmes to cultivate a few globally connected clusters where the city could be competitive – tertiary education and professional, scientific and technical services – both within Australia and globally.     

Diurnal thermal behavior of selected urban objects using remote sensing measurements

This research analyzes and summarizes some thermal behavior of various urban surfaces in time and space using high-resolution video thermal radiometer situated at a height of 103 m, in the city of Tel-Aviv. The physical properties of the various urban elements, their color, the sky view factor (SVF), street geometry, traffic loads, and anthropogenic activity are important among the factors that determine the radiant surface temperature in the urban environment. During daytime, asphalt paved roads and rooftops were found to be the warmest urban elements in our study area. In contrast, exterior walls and trees hold the highest surface temperatures at night. Open spaced surfaces that are exposed to direct solar radiation during daytime and to heat loss at night were characterized by the highest diurnal temperature range. The radiometric stationary experiment revealed the temperature differences between diverse urban coverage to be at most 10 °C; such maximum temperature differences were measured in the early noon hours. The minimal temperatures were observed just before sunrise, when the temperature contrasts (4–5 °C) were smaller than in the early noon hours. The daytime hours between 9–10 a.m. and 5–8 p.m. turned out to be problematic for remote sensing of the urban environment, because the thermal differences between different objects were found to be insignificant. A remote survey aiming to study the urban environment should be conducted twice: in the early morning hours before sunrise (5 a.m.) and in the early noon hours (12–1 p.m.). The knowledge of thermal behavior of various urban components is an important tool for designers and decision-makers. If utilized properly, it can lead to climatic rehabilitation in urban areas and a reduction of the UHI.     

大数据和智慧城市技术在城乡规划中的应用

传统的城乡规划在经历不同阶段发展之后,迎来了以大数据和智慧城市为技术手段的新时期。大数据和智慧城市技术在城乡规划领域逐渐得到认可,并在近几年被广泛研究和应用。本文将浅析大数据和智慧城市技术在城乡规划中的应用,探寻新兴技术和概念如何协调和配合传统政策,从而辅助提出传统城乡区域解决问题的新的解决方案。文章的创新点在于,将大数据和智慧城市技术综合考虑分析,相互协同,统筹数据分析和利用资源,用信息时代的方法为城市空间和基础设施的发展提供参考。     

Standby power use in Chinese homes

This paper presents the first study of standby power use and its saving potential in China. Standby power use refers to power consumed by appliances when they are switched off or are not providing their intended functions. Appliances in 28 urban Chinese homes were surveyed and standby power use was measured. The combined standby power use was about 29 W per home. However, many occupants unplug appliances when not in use, so standby energy use accounts for 50–200 kWh per year in an average urban home. Residential standby power consumption in China requires the electrical output equivalent of at least six 500 MW power plants. Levels of standby power use in Chinese homes are below those observed in developed countries but still high in part because Chinese appliances have higher standby than similar products in developed countries. Existing technologies are available to greatly reduce standby power at low costs.     

智慧城市解读与未来城市发展的思考

随着信息时代的到来和城市问题的日益突出,智慧城市作为新的城市发展理念迅速成为当前全世界范围内城市发展与规划关注的焦点领域。本文在解读智慧城市的发展起源、内涵和特性的基础上,根据国内外智慧城市的发展态势,总结了自上而下和自下而上两种智慧城市发展模式。同时智慧城市理念的探索和实践对未来城市发展产生了意义深远的影响,对城市数据系统的整合性、城市规划的协调性、开放式数据库的建立以及对市民的参与鼓励都提出了更高的要求。然而,由于对ICT技术的依赖性,我们仍要清新认识到智慧城市发展过程仍有可能带来的问题和风险。     

促进社区设计和管理中的参与性行动:泰国昂西拉地区集体智能数字平台

Advancements in data collection, computing, and visualization methods have given rise to a new form of urban concept over the last decade: the smart sustainable city which tackles various urban challenges with digital technologies. However, earlier approaches omit the importance of citizens’ involvement in decision-making processes, which leads to an imbalanced information asymmetry between individuals and authorities and an increasingly reduced agency for the vulnerable. In this article, a tool and process was proposed which integrates the voices of evolving self-organizing entities to solve collective action challenges: Named as CoDAS (Co-Design Ang Sila), it is a digital platform which facilitates continuous communication between citizens and authorities during different development phases of a given project. By including a large number of stakeholders to participate in the codesign process as co-creators, CoDAS aims to improve communication efficiency while achieving equitable outcomes in design and development, along with post-occupancy common resource management. To test this hypothesis, a site design experiment was conducted on a site near a historical fishing village of Ang Sila, Thailand.     

Daylighting control performance of a thin-film ceramic electrochromic window: Field study results

Control system development and lighting energy monitoring of ceramic thin-film electrochromic (EC) windows were initiated at the new full-scale window systems testbed facility at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in Berkeley, CA. The new facility consists of three identically configured side-by-side private offices with large-area windows that face due south. In one room, an array of EC windows with a center-of-glass visible transmittance T_v range of 0.05–0.60 was installed. In the two other rooms, unshaded windows with a T_v = 0.50 or 0.15 were used as reference. The same dimmable fluorescent lighting system was used in all three rooms. This study explains the design and commissioning of an integrated EC window-lighting control system, and then illustrates its performance in the testbed under clear, partly cloudy, and overcast sky conditions during the equinox period. The performance of an early prototype EC window controller is also analyzed. Lighting energy savings data are presented. Daily lighting energy savings were 44–59% compared to the reference window of T_v = 0.15 and 8–23% compared to the reference window of T_v = 0.50. The integrated window-lighting control system maintained interior illuminance levels to within ±10% of the setpoint range of 510–700 lx for 89–99% of the day. Further work is planned to refine the control algorithms and monitor cooling load, visual comfort, and human factor impacts of this emerging technology.     

A simple model of domestic lighting demand

This paper presents a new model of domestic lighting demand. The model is based on half-hourly data measured for a sample of 100 UK homes. It represents one sub-model in an end-user based distributed load model that is being developed to support investigations into the effects on low voltage urban electricity networks of future wide-scale uptake of solar technologies. To capture these effects and to serve applications involving renewable energy technologies (RETs) generally, the model is capable of representing load variations on very fine time-scales, down to 1 min intervals. Additionally, scaling factors are provided to enable prediction of long-term trends and to model some of the most important elements of diversity between connection points that are likely to impact on network performance and design below the 11 kV substation level.