Toward people-centric Smart City
Urban planning in many governments may still mostly use the top-down approach, including in the development of Smart City. However, this approach often neglects what the citizens’ actually want and need. Building a people-centric smart city shows a benefit of services being used more by the citizen, as they perceived them crucial in their well-being in their urban life. From a study in Taiwan cities by Ji et al. (2021) for example, although the city administrator provides a variety of smart city services, the citizens preferred services in three domain that they perceived crucial, which are energy, transport, and safety.
Thus, city may need to prioritise the domain that the citizen deemed more important. On the other hand, city may need to come up with strategies that would promote and encourage the use of other smart city service that the city had already built-in other domains. It is also encouraged that to stimulate wider usage of smart city service that cities are developing, it is worth investing and the advancement of smart city technology. Making the hard infrastructure more accessible and affordable for people of different groups of age and ability to utilise the service that can improve their quality of life.
Reference:
Ji, T., Chen, J. H., Wei, H. H., & Su, Y. C. (2021). Towards people-centric smart city development: Investigating the citizens’ preferences and perceptions about smart-city services in Taiwan. Sustainable Cities and Society, 67, 102691.