About 4,313,794 results for "Sustainable cities"

Abstract: Nowadays, the concept of smart sustainable governance is wrapped around basic principles such as: (i) transparency, (ii) accountability, (iii) stakeholders’ involvement, and iv) citizens’ participation. It is through these principles that are influenced by information and communication technologies (ICT), Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence, that the practices employed by citizens and their interaction with electronic government (e-government) are diversified. Previously, the misleading concepts of the smart city implied only the objective of the local level or public officials to utilize technology. However, the recent European experience and research studies have led to a more comprehensive notion that refers to the search for intelligent solutions which allow modern sustainable cities to enhance the quality of services provided to citizens and to improve the management of urban mobility. The smart city is based on the usage of connected sensors, data management, and analytics platforms to improve the quality and functioning of built-environment systems. The aim of this paper is to understand the effects of the pandemic on smart cities and to accentuate major exercises that can be learned for post-COVID sustainable urban management and patterns. The lessons and implications outlined in this paper can be used to enforce social distancing community measures in an effective and timely way, and to optimize the use of resources in smart and sustainable cities in critical situations. The paper offers a conceptual overview and serves as a stepping-stone to extensive research and the deployment of sustainable smart city platforms and intelligent transportation systems (a sub-area of smart city applications) after the COVID-19 pandemic using a case study from Russia. Overall, our results demonstrate that the COVID-19 crisis encompasses an excellent opportunity for urban planners and policy makers to take transformative actions towards creating cities that are more intelligent and sustainable.

Abstract: Achieving urban sustainability through smart cities is necessary to manage urban environmental problems that threaten human survival. Smart city policy emphasizes the environmental aspects of urban areas while embracing the social and economic sectors, allowing for the development of practical plans for urban sustainability. This study suggests smart sustainable city policy directions that can improve the transition to smart cities. It defines concepts such as smart sustainable cities, developing frameworks, and indicators. In this research, a smart sustainable city facilitated sustainable development by incorporating smart technologies into urban activities and services. In this study, indicators for smart sustainable city evaluation and diagnosis were derived. These were applied to selected case areas, such as Incheon Metropolitan City and Goyang-si, Gyeonggi-do in the Republic of Korea. These indicators play an important role in assisting policymakers in making decisions, simplifying a wide range of complex information and providing integrated perspectives on existing situations. The results of this study suggest transition directions for a smart sustainable city and application strategies for related plans and policies.

Abstract: Currently, around 56% of the world’s population -4.4 billion people -live in cities. With 80 million people added to the urban population every year, the figure is set to rise close to 60% by 2030 and to almost 70% by mid-century. Over 90% of this growth will take place in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. This rapid urbanization which is largely unplanned and unregulated raises a myriad of development challenges, including, massive environmental, socio-economic and spatial challenges. The slum population has crossed 1 billion and is increasing in proportion and absolute terms every year with more than 80% of slum dwellers living in Asia and Africa. At a conservative estimate, there are around 350 million children living in slums with limited access to housing, basic infrastructure and quality essential services.

Abstract: The conscious push for sustainable cities to be smarter and thus more sustainable in the era of big data is due to the problematicity surrounding their development planning approaches and operational management mechanisms, as well as the fragmentation of their designs and technologies. This has a clear bearing on their performance with respect to the contribution to and balancing of the goals of sustainability. This situation is compounded by the negative consequences of the expansion of urbanization, an irreversible global trend involving a multitude of environmental, social, economic, and spatial conditions that pose unprecedented challenges to policymakers and planners. The underlying argument is that more innovative solutions and sophisticated methods are needed to enable sustainable cities to tackle the kind of problems and complexities they embody. This in turn brings us to the question related to the weak connection between sustainable cities and smart cities as approaches as well as their extreme fragmentation as landscapes, both at the technical and policy levels. Therefore, sustainable cities need to embrace and leverage what smart cities have to offer so that they can optimize, enhance, and maintain their performance and thus achieve the desired outcomes of sustainability. This paper aims to develop a novel model for data-driven smart sustainable cities of the future, and in doing so, it provides a strategic planning process of transformative change towards sustainability. This model combines and integrates the prevailing paradigms of sustainable urbanism and the emerging paradigms of smart urbanism —based on the outcomes of the four case studies conducted on compact cities, eco-cities, data–driven smart cities, and environmentally data-driven smart sustainable cities. As the core of this aggregate model is how to bring about the different forms of infrastructural transformations needed to reach a vision of a sustainable future in the era of big data. Especially, it has become feasible to attain important improvements and advancements of sustainability by amalgamating sustainable cities and smart cities thanks to the proven role of advanced ICT and the untapped potential of data-driven technologies.