A global smart city with coordinated leadership and collaboration across government, industry and business, which leads the way and connects with its citizens
Previous article has explained Li et al. (2022) findings on the six factors that supports the policy transfer between smart cities. Further, this study recommends three action points that local governments can take to accelerate the process of policy transfer for the development of local smart cities.
Spicer et al. (2021) found that the main narrative in Smart City development focus on larger urban areas as the framework targets to solve problems such as congestions, pollution, and population growth. Smaller cities or rural communities are often overlooked in the discussion, despite them also could greatly benefit from the adoption of Smart City.
City development requires iterative process of planning, implementing and evaluating various policies and strategies. This encourages smart cities around the globe to adopt Digital Twin technology, an exact copy of a city created as a virtual model.
Implementing smart city strategy benefits the local government in accelerating various sector of urban management. Smart City can certainly reduce the cost, maximise efficiency, foster economic development and enhance the quality of life.
Razmjoo et al. (2021) believe that implementation of Smart City not only minimise the challenges that massive urbanisation imposes but also promotes urban development that are also sustainable. Through studying the transportation and energy system in the city, the study found 5 categories of barriers that every city should investigate to accelerate the development of their smart city, which are, Governance (G), Social (S), Technology (T), Environmental (Env) and Economic (Ec).
The pursuit of Smart City requires partnership of all elements of city actors. City of Boston established New urban Mechanics, a civic innovation group that support the city government to create innovative human-centred design solution for the city.
City of Fukuoka, Japan utilise technology to keep up with its aging population and ensuring everyone to get proper health and social care. CareTech is a tool that helps aging citizens especially those with dementia to retain their quality of life.
By comparing four American cities and four Chinese cities with advance level of smart city implementation that represented the countries’ major geographic regions, Hu and Zheng (2021) compares the similarity and difference of these two countries that have differing legal, political and institutional elements.
Clear vision with specific goals and objectives combined with clear division of role and responsibilities is critical in establishing Smart City. However, only 11 out of the 69 councils in Sydney dan Melbourne that Dowling et al. (2019) study, that shows local municipalities are equipped with appropriate Smart City Strategy for their local areas.
Upgrading the governance of a city is critical to the success of Smart City establishment. It is imperative that city authority use the data and technology of smart city to improve the governance system to achieve the growth, distribution and effective administration of public service.
The public involvement in the design, planning and implementation of smart city is one factor that determine the success of the vision. It is critical that smart city vision is constructed specifically to the local context. Thus, public participation is crucial to ensure that it is appropriate to the local citizens’ need.
The success of Smart City depends on the ability to innovate. One domain that are challenging but critical for innovation is the way we govern our city to improve the quality of life.
Despite having an ambitious vision of Smart City, there often a big gap in the existing city condition and the goals being set for the city. A study on City of Tallinn in Estonia, provide some insight on how city can better transition into Smart City.
City government's main goal as provider of public value or public goods in many cases is hindered by any of these challenges, complex technological adoption, high investment cost, legal & bureaucratic rules and lack of personnel with sufficient technological knowledge and development.
Barcelona and Madrid have successfully started to incorporate civil engagement and participation online, through the platforms called Decide Madrid and Barcelona Decidim. The function in these platforms include citizen debates, citizen proposal, citizen budget and citizen plan.
Adopting hybrid management model in smart cities is one way to bring together different actors, interests, and practice to share a same vision. It is a way to simplify and clearing up uncertainties in managing multiple complicated projects such as smart city.
Different from traditional business model, hybrid management model aims to respond to multiple mission. Smart city initiatives with hybrid management serve the purpose of not only generating profit, but also communicating with the citizens as well as managing multiple projects at once.
Housing affordability, traffic congestion, air pollution are common issues that cities across the world face with the pressure from various human activities. However, despite the similarities, each city may also have issues unique to them due to the varying socio economic or geographical condition.
A study in 2019 analysed the best practices that successful European cities use as part of their strategic principles in designing and implementing the vision of smart city. One of the critical strategic principles is to accelerate the city’s digital transformation by establishing a smart city accelerator.
Praharaj et al. (2018) study India, the world’s fastest growing economy to measure how its cities can support urban innovation. The Smart Cities Mission was rolled out in 2015 in India and have faced many obstacles. One of the main hurdles in the development of the Smart City in India is the overlaps of plan, jurisdiction and responsibilities across institutions.
Smart City is adapted more and more for the development of cities around the world. However, the pace of change may have differed from one another. Ooms et al. (2020) recognise that for each city the level of advancement of which they adapt the concept matters to the type of governance they required to thrive.
ICT is a powerful tool being adopted in Smart Cities across the globe, to achieve integration between agencies and enabling information to various city stakeholders. Example of the use of ICT around the city include sensors that are beneficial in gathering data in real time and social media as a bridge between the citizens and public service provider and the government.
To tackle the challenges cities are facing today, transformative action must be taken. Newton and Frantzeskaki (2021) suggest a new urban governance platform that could become a medium for experiments and decision making that could accelerate the transformative changes in cities.
Data or metrics are becoming an important urban resource in the city’s policy making. Social media as a platform that enables the analysis of geographic data also become an attractive region that city authorities refer to. Zook (2017) on the other hand, is on the fence with this idea.
A city is an ever growing and evolving system. Smart city as a concept of urban development, as well as cities are inevitably incomplete projects that requires constant upgrade and update, Houston et al. (2019) argued. Yet, often, smart city plan is viewed as a monolithic process without the consideration of the reality that the system is often “buggy, brittle and bugged”.
Through survey and content analysis, Vidiasova and Cronemberger (2020), study the perception of two important stakeholders in building smart cities, the local government and the citizens in St. Petersburg, Russia. The study found that despite a high level of engagement with e-government tools, citizens perceived smart city initiatives differently than the local government.
With the development of technology that are implemented in smart cities, it is now possible to create a digital twin for cities that could immensely help the urban planning and management process. White et al. (2021) defined digital twin as a digital representation of a physical condition, process, system or device of a place or cities.
City of Surabaya is one of the leading cities in Indonesia that has successfully implemented the Smart City Initiatives. Innovation in the governance is one element of Smart City that City of Surabaya has advanced.
