YOUR GUIDE TO THE FUTURE

Berlin has been ranked as the top smart city in Europe by Juniper Research, followed by London, Barcelona, Rome, and Madrid. The rankingis based on the city's focus on enhancing traditional systems through digitalsolutions for the benefit of its residents and businesses.

Germany is introducing an affordable public transit offer,known as the Deutschland-Ticket, setting a new standard for encouraging carowners to switch to public transportation. For €49 a month, travelers can enjoyunlimited rides on city buses, subways, and trams across the country.

Trees has cooling properties by proving not only shades but also the evapotranspiration process that lower the temperature in the surrounding areas. Other literature also highlights other benefit of trees such as improving mental health and increased feeling of safety and comfort for urban dwellers.

Climate justice literature has indicated that vulnerable groups, such as the elderly, children and immigrants, may be disproportionately affected by climate change. Yang and Juhola (2021) investigated factors that may contribute to the likelihood of climate adaptation to be implemented in European cities, including whether a higher proportion of vulnerable population impact the likelihood of the city to adopt climate adaptation policies.

Dar es Salaam, the major port city in Tanzania, is experiencing rapid population growth and urbanization. About 70% of urban development in Dar es Salaam is unplanned, and a quarter of the population resides in the Msimbazi River basin and its tributaries. Consequently, the loss of drinking water and fertile floodplains for agriculture has occurred, and the city faces recurrent floods that cause damage to infrastructure, lives, and the environment.

Resilience has become a key focus in the urban development in India, with an emphasis on blue and green infrastructure. Two notable programs, the Smart Cities Mission and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), aim to enhance the governance and sustainability of Indian cities through infrastructure and management reforms.

In 2100, it is predicted that global investment and maintenance cost of protection of coastal cities can go up to US$ 70 billion annually. Flooding, erosion and sea level rise are just example of hazards that coastal cities are facing both as fast and slow onset disaster. To improve their resiliency, coastal cities has adopted advance technological systems that not only useful to inform inhabitants as disaster happening but also as a tool to educate the community. 

Disaster Risk Management in coastal cities includes all action, programs and measure that city government do before, during and after the disaster that minimise the loss or impact due to the coastal disaster happening and to speed up the recovery of the community that are impacted.

Smart cities as a response to urbanization and the need for sustainable development. The role of smart technology and innovation in transforming cities into smarter, more efficient, and livable spaces is ever more critical in the future. Angelidou et al. (2022) identifies several key trends in smart city development.

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction is a global agreement adopted in 2015 at the United Nations World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction held in Sendai, Japan. It sets out a comprehensive roadmap and guiding principles for reducing disaster risk and building resilience to disasters at the national, regional, and global levels.

Public sector organisations around the world often face challenges in implementing smart city initiatives and governing the process of digital transformation due to its novelty and complexity.

The UN Habitat conducted a survey to map these challenges by surveying 300 respondents knowledgeable on smart city governance in more than 250 municipalities in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America to examine what global smart cities face as challenges in creating and implementing smart city strategies.

While the Arctic faces unique challenges and opportunities, the concept of smart sustainable cities can be adapted and applied to promote sustainable development in this environmentally sensitive area. Technology and innovation play critical roles in supporting sustainable development in Arctic cities.

Smart city projects and their promises of improved efficiency, sustainability, and quality of life. However, these initiatives tend to prioritize the interests of powerful actors such as technology corporations and urban elites, neglecting the needs of marginalized communities.

Bodø’s ambition to be the smartest city in the world started in 2017 when the Norwegian government granted the move of their airport to Bodø. The city establishes the vision of being the most smart and sustainable city by creating thorough planning of a more compact city and focusing the development on the city centre.

Climatic, geographic and demographic factors often become a challenge for arctic city development and growth. Smart City concept then often adopted to boost the innovation and growth of the arctic cities. with approximately three-quarters of the Arctic population living in the urban area, many cities shift their economy by honing the knowledge-based economy.

A successful smart city project might inspire city stakeholders to expand the project or upscale the project into a wider area of application. Van Winden et al. (2016) distinguished three types of smart city project upscaling that can be useful to understand how the project can be applied in another context based on their type and goals of the project.

The development of a viable business model is key for continuation of the project and implementation of the results. Especially projects that depend on external funding or subsidy need to determine from the outset howthey will generate sufficient value and revenue streams to be able to continue the project after the subsidy it ended.

How advanced the technology or solution is not only the sole factor of success of a smart city initiative. How partnership of different stakeholders was built and organised is also critical to the success of the smart city projects.

van Winden et al. (2016) found that Smart City initiatives often forget to include the impact measurement of the project. It is often missed neither in the planning steps nor the end of the project.

Apparently 25% of Amsterdam canals are navigable waters. Yet, the canals are mostly used for leisure and tourism purposes. City Supplier is an initiative to reuse the canals to facilitate the city’s transport need.

One way City of Amsterdam reduces the pollution in city centre is to allow no gasoline trucks in the city centre area. Freight vehicles adapts to this regulation by electrifying the freight vehicle.

Office space in the urban area has become unaffordable for creatives in Amsterdam as population and the city continue to grow. When the Amsterdam Municipality opened a competition for development proposal of an abandoned wharf previously used by the shipbuilding industry, a group of architects proposed De Ceuvel as an office park development for creatives.

From the concern of the family-owned business, RIGO Paints rethink how the paints are produced to reduce its ecological impact. Petrochemical and acrylic paints are widely known for its environmental harm from its manufacturing process that use significant energy and produce harmful waste.

In the 1990s, Hoekenrodeplein was a city square in the South-Eastern part of Amsterdam known for its poor safety. The local municipality envisioned the area as a place for inhabitants and visitors to gather, to play and to shop in the area, with the help of better lighting.

Achieving the ambition of 40% CO2 emission reduction in 2025 require the City of Amsterdam to map and identify their energy use throughout many urban services, including from the electricity, water and sewage system.

In the construction of a new town development, city managers often find challenges in envisioning the Smart City needs of future citizens. A team of researchers study a German smart city district as it is being built and come up with concrete steps and procedures for developing digital solutions for the new smart town.

A new town development in Germany developed a game that promotes future mobility solutions to their future citizens. The game called MiniLautern created a city mobility simulation where the general public can participate in informing a more sustainable mobility solution.

Mu et al. (2022) conducted a study to fill in the gaps of knowledge of causal relationship between organisational conditions and government-led smart city projects. This exploration contrasts with the widely studied business-led smart city projects.

Mu et al. (2022) classifies four organisational conditions that influence the depth of technology enactment in government-led smart city projects. The four organisational conditions are Financial Capacity (FC), Information Sharing (IS), Human Resources Pressure (HR) and Leadership (LD).