Smart Cities: Issues and Challenges: Mapping Political, Social and Economic Risks and Threats

Smart Cities: Issues and Challenges

Mapping Political, Social and Economic Risks and Threats

Editors

Anna Visvizi

Miltiadis D. Lytras

Table of Contents

Cover image

Title page

Copyright

List of contributors

Preface

Acknowledgment

Chapter 1. Smart cities research and debate: what is in there?

1. Introduction

2. Smart cities: definitional caveats

3. About the book and the conceptual framework it adopts

4. Review of the chapters' content

Part 1. Managing public space: democracy, participation, well-being

Chapter 2. Democracy and governance in the smart city

1. Introduction

2. Smart cities: the context

3. Democracy in the smart city

4. Conclusion

Chapter 3. Civic participation in smart cities: the role of social media

1. Introduction

2. Background

3. Framework for urban analysis based on civic participation

4. Conclusion and general discussion

Chapter 4. Citizen participation in the design of smart cities: methods and management framework

1. Introduction

2. Background: role of citizens in smart cities

3. Participation methods

4. Evaluation of participation

5. Conclusion

Chapter 5. Smart city as a platform economy: civic engagement and self-employment in focus

1. Introduction

2. Smart cities concept

3. Platform economy

4. The collaborative economy in smart cities

5. Self-employment in smart city

6. Conclusions

Chapter 6. Understanding sentiments and activities in green spaces using a social data–driven approach

1. Introduction

2. Related work

3. Experimental design

4. RQ1: green space effects

5. RQ2: impact of time

6. RQ3: green space proximity effect

7. RQ4: activities, sentiments, and recommendations

8. General discussion

9. Conclusion

Part 2. Safety, security, resilience

Chapter 7. Smart city is a safe city: information and communication technology–enhanced urban space monitoring and surveillance systems: the promise and limitations

1. Introduction

2. Architecture of information and communication technology–based urban space monitoring and surveillance system

3. Applications

4. Limitations

5. Vision and conclusion

Chapter 8. Risks, hazards, and disasters: can a smart city be resilient?

1. Introduction

2. Risk assessment

3. Literature review

4. Disaster risk management: the process

5. Can a smart city be a resilient city?

6. Conclusions

Part 3. Smart cities’ sustainability

Chapter 9. Smart city as a steering center of the region's sustainable development and competitiveness

1. Introduction

2. City as a socioeconomic and environmental system and a steering center

3. Steering the territorial socioeconomic system

4. Competitiveness and sustainable development of smart cities—two reconcilable priorities for policy

5. Smart cities in the process of changes: adaptability versus impact

6. Conclusions

Chapter 10. Smart cities and the search for global talent

1. Introduction

2. Smart cities and the global talent

3. Conclusions and recommendations

Chapter 11. Knowledge society technologies for smart cities development

1. Knowledge society in the new era

2. Knowledge society and new technologies in the governance of cities

3. Technologies for smart urban planning: a citizen-centric approach

4. Conclusions

Chapter 12. How can artificial intelligence respond to smart cities challenges?

1. Introduction

2. Main challenges in implementing smart cities solutions

3. Artificial intelligence: branches and applications

4. How artificial intelligence can answer challenges at various levels of smart cities

5. Conclusions

Part 4. Global contexts

Chapter 13. A framework of essential requirements for the development of smart cities: Riyadh city as an example

1. Introduction

2. Hypothesis and requirements of smart cities

3. The framework

4. Riyadh city

5. Contributions and future work

Chapter 14. Definition of public safety policies based on the characterization of criminal events using volunteered geographic information, case study: Mexico

1. Introduction

2. Crime analysis case study: Mexico

3. Density comparison

4. Different scale level analysis

5. Temporal patterns

6. Conclusions

Chapter 15. An outlook of a future smart city in Taiwan from post–Internet of things to artificial intelligence Internet of things

1. Introduction

2. Development of smart cities in Taiwan

3. Conclusions

Chapter 16. Smart energy in smart cities: insights from the smart meter rollout in the United Kingdom

1. Introduction

2. The smart energy vision

3. What is smart metering

4. Pros and cons

5. The connection between smart metering and smart cities

6. The European Union smart meter market

7. Aim

8. Methodology

9. Findings

10. Customer

11. Government

12. Industry

13. Academia

14. Media

15. Social media

16. Summary of findings

17. Discussion

18. Conclusion

19. Suggestions for future smart cities initiatives

Chapter 17. Smart city vision and practices across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—a review

1. Introduction

2. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: future vision

3. Holistic approach to smart practice

4. Smart city practices in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

5. Conclusion

6. Recommendations

Chapter 18. Reflecting on oikos and agora in smart cities context: concluding remarks

1. Introduction

2. The context of this volume: beyond the information and communication technology–hype

3. A few points on technology and smart cities

4. By means of conclusion

Index

Copyright

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List of contributors

Bander A. Al-Saud,     Department of Electrical Engineering, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Adel N. Alfassam,     ArRiyadh Dev. Authority, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Khaled A. Alshehri,     ArRiyadh Dev. Authority, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Estefanía Serral Asensio,     Faculty of Economics and Business, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

Samaa Badawi

Architecture Department, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt

Effat College of Architecture and Design, Effat University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Saad Haj Bakry,     Department of Computer Engineering, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Kwok Tai Chui,     Department of Electronic Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR

Rahma M. Doheim

Architectural Engineering Department, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt

Effat College of Architecture and Design, Effat University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Małgorzata Dziembała,     University of Economics in Katowice, Faculty of Economics, Katowice, Poland

Ahmed O. El-Kholei,     Professor of Urban Planning, Arabian Gulf University, Manama, Bahrain

Alshimaa A. Farag

Architecture Department, Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt

Effat College of Architecture and Design, Effat University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Yungang Feng,     School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

Giovanni Guzmán,     Instituto Politecnico Nacional, CIC, UPALM-Zacatenco, Mexico City, Mexico

Dave Kendal,     School of Technology, Environments and Design, The University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia

Kate E. Lee,     School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

Kwan Hui Lim

Information Systems Technology and Design Pillar, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore

School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

Ryan Wen Liu,     Hubei Key Laboratory of Inland Shipping Technology, School of Navigation, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China

Asunción López-Arranz,     Faculty of Work Sciences, University of A Coruña, A Coruña, Spain

Blanca López-Ramírez,     Instituto Tecnologico de Roque - Tecnologico Nacional de Mexico, Celaya Guanajuato, Mexico

Enric Serradell López,     Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain

Miltiadis D. Lytras

School of Business & Economics, Deree College – The American College of Greece, Athens, Greece

College of Engineering, Effat University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Otto Vik Mathisen,     Department of Business Administration, SRH Hochschule Berlin, Germany

Higinio Mora,     Department of Computer Science Technology and Computation, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain

Marco Moreno-Ibarra,     Instituto Politécnico Nacional, CIC, UPALM-Zacatenco, Mexico City, Mexico

Elham Naghizade

School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

Department of Infrastructure Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

Manuel Nieto-Mengotti,     University of A Coruña, Faculty of Economics and Business, A Coruña, Spain

Isabel Novo-Corti,     University of A Coruña, Faculty of Economics and Business, A Coruña, Spain

Raquel Pérez-delHoyo,     Department of Building Sciences and Urbanism, University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain

Laura-Diana Radu,     Department of Accounting, Business Information Systems and Statistics, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iasi, Romania

Madhulika Rao,     Department of Business Administration, SRH Hochschule Berlin, Germany

Lida Rashidi,     School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

Katarzyna Rybka-Iwańska,     Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland

Anthony Simonofski,     Faculty of Economics and Business, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

Maria E. Sørbye,     Department of Information Systems, SRH Hochschule Berlin, Germany

Vladimir Stantchev,     Institute of Information Systems, SRH Hochschule Berlin, Germany

Gerrit Tamm,     Institute of Information Systems, SRH Hochschule Berlin, Germany

Cláudia Toriz Ramos,     Universidade Fernando Pessoa, CEPESE-Centro de Estudos da População, Economia e Sociedade

Miguel Torres-Ruiz,     Instituto Politécnico Nacional, CIC, UPALM-Zacatenco, Mexico City, Mexico

Pandian Vasant,     Department of Fundamental and Applied Sciences, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Persiaran UTP, Seri Iskandar, Perak, Malaysia

Anna Visvizi

School of Business & Economics, Deree College – The American College of Greece, Athens, Greece

Effat College of Business, Effat University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Ana Iolanda Voda,     Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Institute of Interdisciplinary Research, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iasi, Romania

Jia Wang,     School of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

Yves Wautelet,     Faculty of Economics and Business, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

Yung Chang Wu,     College of Business Administration, National Huaqiao University, Quanzhou, China

Yenchun Jim Wu,     Graduate Institute of Global Business and Strategy, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan

Shiann Ming Wu,     College of Business Administration, National Huaqiao University, Quanzhou, China

Preface

This volume and, indeed, the process of making it come to live, attest to the key topic and the key message that this book conveys, i.e., that the dialogical relationship between information and communication technology (ICT) and our lives unfolds in the theater of modern cities. ICT proved to be the key enabler in the process of conceiving this volume, working with our authors and the Publisher as we were changing the geographical venues and—by default—were testing the degree of smartness of the cities that we visited. Athens, Berlin, Warsaw, Rome, Trikala, Jeddah, Mons, Mexico City, Ottawa, Barcelona, and New York are just a few of the places that we had the opportunity to visit when working on this volume and see into the ways advances in ICT are employed to benefit cities' inhabitants.

Given the potential inherent in sophisticated ICT-enhanced tools, applications, and systems and the great capacity of our engineers to apply technically and technologically complex solutions to everyday problems and challenges we face, it is absolutely necessary that the remaining stakeholders follow the suit. In other words, as advances in ICT become ever more accessible and useable, it is necessary that regulators and policy-makers join the conversation and develop commensurate ICT- and smart cities–friendly frameworks and strategies. But certainly, the discussion on smart cities and the making of smart cities require also direct involvement of the citizens. Clearly, one of the challenges in this respect is that many end users of smart city applications are intimidated by the technological aspect of ICT-enhanced tools. The whole idea and the broader framework are incompressible to way too many. Thus, the relevance and the value added of smart solutions are undermined.

Central in the discussion on smart cities are questions of ethically and socially sensitive use of ICT-enhanced tools and applications in the city space, starting with issues pertinent to privacy, through questions of democracy, participation, representation, and expanding beyond questions of inclusion, well-being, and prosperity. As cities transition toward being smarter, several contentious issues arise. These include seemingly irreconcilable juxtapositions such as the one of how much surveillance and monitoring is needed to ensure safety in city space or, for instance, to what extent feedback obtained from social media and decisions infused with that feedback are legitimate. A great number of questions are bound to emerge. The good news is that research on smart cities has been unfolding for a considerable while now. Today, the momentum has come for the diverse strands of research on smart cities to engage in dialog and cross-fertilize discussion otherwise taking place in a considerable disconnect.

This volume originates in the recognition that smart cities ought to be better understood by a broad spectrum of stakeholders. The technological sophistications of several topics pertinent to smart cities research notwithstanding, the rationale behind this volume was to facilitate readers otherwise ignorant of the topic to get a fair idea of what a smart city actually is. The volume — that we are so pleased to share with our readers — today establishes a platform, a meeting point for all stakeholders involved in the making of smart cities, to acquire an insight into key topics and issues that influence the process of cities transitioning to become smarter.

The Editors

Anna Visvizi

Miltiadis D. Lytras

Acknowledgment

This edited volume is the outcome of a realization that to a large part of our societies smart city, seen as a concept and policy-making consideration, remains an under-understood concept, frequently associated only with the debate on advances in information and communication technology. This book, by promoting a truly inter- and multi-disciplinary approach to the study of smart cities, seeks to bypass this issue. In this way, it hopes to involve in the debate on smart cities audiences otherwise not particularly keen on doing so. This volume offers a comprehensive insight into what smart city is, what it is not, and how it is evolving. The chapters included in this volume attest to that. We are grateful to the contributing authors, who responded to our invitation to join this project. We would like to thank them for their hard work and patience. We are grateful to the Publisher and the entire team that dealt with the book production process.

The Editors

Anna Visvizi

Miltiadis D. Lytras

Chapter 1

Smart cities research and debate

what is in there?

Anna Visvizi ¹ , ² , and Miltiadis D. Lytras ¹ , ³       ¹ School of Business & Economics, Deree College – The American College of Greece, Athens, Greece      ² Effat College of Business, Effat University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia      ³ College of Engineering, Effat University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Several developments have led to an increased interest, and a resultant debate, on the possible use of information and communication technology in cities and urban space. As the debate gains on momentum, a great number of new insights populate the field, thus ostensibly redefining it and delineating its disciplinary boundaries anew. Interestingly, if smart cities are the buzzword of the popular debate today, sustainability has become the keyword defining the thrust of that debate. This volume recognizes the scope, the breadth, and the illuminating insights that scholars active in the field have brought to the debate over the past decades, thereby adding to our knowledge and understanding of the variety of issues and topics pertinent to smart cities. Against this backdrop, this chapter dwells on the conceptual caveats inherent in smart cities research and outlines the scope of the book.

Keywords

Conceptual frameworks; Interdisciplinary research agenda; Multidisciplinary research agenda; Smart city; Sustainability

1. Introduction

2. Smart cities: definitional caveats

3. About the book and the conceptual framework it adopts

4. Review of the chapters' content

References

1. Introduction

Several developments have led to an increased interest, and a resultant debate, on the possible use of information and communication technology (ICT) in cities and urban space. As the debate gains on momentum, a great number of new insights populate the field, thus ostensibly redefining it and delineating its disciplinary boundaries anew. Apart from scholarly research on smart cities, the topic has been skillfully taken up by think tanks and consulting firms, making smart cities one of the key topics discussed in fancy settings and environments. Interestingly, if smart cities are the buzzword of the popular debate today, sustainability has become the keyword defining the thrust of that debate (Lytras et al., 2019). The smart cities–sustainability nexus that this debate embodies has been driven by a number of factors, the validity and relevance of which have been recognized, among others, in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Agenda, especially Goal 11 Sustainable cities and communities (UN, 2015).

Following in the footsteps outlined in the 1976 United Nations Conference on Human Settlements and Sustainable Urban Development, Goal 11 highlights that it is necessary to think about urban space in a holistic manner. That is, our thinking about cities and urban space should be founded on the recognition of a dynamic nature of cities and urban space, their evolution, and hence the necessity to make both cities and urban space resilient to risks, threats, and other kinds of challenges (Klopp, Petretta, 2017; Lützkendorf, Balouktsi, 2017) and sustainable. Increasingly, the debate on smart cities, more or less explicitly, endorses the normative and prescriptive components that the SDG11 entails. As a result, the specific to that debate focus on the value added of ICT-enhanced tools and applications is seen as a function of the broader concept of sustainability. Not surprisingly, therefore, given the centrality of policy-making considerations geared toward sustainability in contemporary political discourse, having endorsed the imperative of sustainability, the debate on smart cities too has turned into one of the most topical fields of academic research and popular debate.

Apart from the bigger narrative on sustainability, the exponential growth in interest in smart cities has also been triggered by such factors as increasing pace of urbanization, growing awareness of the complex challenges that cities face, followed by a reconceptualization of cities as hubs of human interaction, and indeed, centers of authority. Liberalization of trade, increasing labor mobility, increased dynamic of cluster development, and a tendency to decentralize state administration, reinforce the process of cities gradually turning into centers of authority. This is followed by the sinking in of the understanding that the fourth Industrial Revolution is taking place here and now, and so influences every aspect of our lives. The debate and policy-making considerations that follow endorse the recognition of the value added of ICT as an enabling and mitigating factor in city space. In other words, today, as never before, the time is ripe not only to discuss smart cities as a piece and parcel of the broader process of socioeconomic growth and development but also to devise strategies that will make cities sustainable.

In this view, also the notion of sustainability requires a few words of clarification. It is to stress that sustainability is not only about environmental sustainability but also about establishing a socioeconomic equilibrium allowing individuals, societies, and current and future generations of cities' inhabitants to grow and excel, to exercise civil liberties, to live well, and to prosper. Topics pertinent to these considerations have been long present in the debate on smart cities (Vanolo, 2016; Mattern, 2017; Deakin, 2013). Other old–new topics step in the debate too, including, for instance, the imperatives of ethically and socially sensitive ways of using technological advances in city space (Visvizi et al., 2017; Mazzucelli and Visvizi, 2017). Another issue that appears prominently in the debate is the very accessibility and usability of ICT-enhanced services (Visvizi et al., 2019) seen as a measure of cities being inclusive and democratic (Lytras and Visvizi, 2018; Barns, 2018). In brief, several avenues of research in smart cities debate can be identified (Bibri, 2019), and, as several authors emphasize, research on smart cities requires inter- and multidisciplinary approaches if the plethora of topics and issues that are pertinent to the field are to be effectively addressed (Kitchin, 2015, 2016 Visvizi and Lytras, 2018a).

The interesting point that needs to be made here is that even if over the past decade the debate on smart cities developed exponentially, respective arguments and conversations run largely in parallel to each other, i.e., they were frequently confined to very specific fields/disciplines of research effectively preempting dialog and cross-fertilization among diverse fields of research. Today, drawing on work and publications pertaining to urban geography, urban studies, architecture, engineering, computer science, but also sociology, political science, communication studies, and many more (Datta, 2015; Marvin et al., 2015; Karvonen et al., 2018; Wiig and Wyly, 2016; Cardoullo and Kitchin, 2018 ), inter- and multidisciplinary approaches are not only well-received but, indeed, encouraged. Clearly, only by drawing from each other's work will be able to deepen our understanding of what the concept of smart cities entails, to enhance the existing conceptual tools and frameworks, and thereby more effectively infuse the policy-making process with valid research findings.

This volume recognizes the scope, the breadth, and the illuminating insights that scholars active in the field have brought to the debate over the past decades, thereby adding to our knowledge and understanding of the variety of issues and topics pertinent to smart cities. Featuring contributions of scholars active in fields as diverse as sociology, political science, international relations, geography, urban studies, architecture, computer science, and engineering, this volume brings selected strands of the debate on smart cities together to showcase the broad conceptual and empirical framework against which the smart cities debate unfolds today. In this sense, this volume seeks to add to the ongoing debate and, by reaching diverse stakeholders, including also those otherwise not really involved with the topic, steer their interest and encourage them to meaningfully join the debate. The remainder of this chapter is structured as follows. First, the caveats related to the definition of smart cities are discussed briefly. Then, a few points on the conceptual framework underpinning the discussion in this volume are made. In the third move, an overview of key topics and issues addressed in this book is presented along with a more detailed description of chapters included in this book. Then conclusions follow.

2. Smart cities: definitional caveats

Even if the academic debate on smart cities matures and ever more sophisticated insights into the sphere of the technically possible in urban space are proposed, for the preponderant part of city dwellers, smart solutions remain a misunderstood, unrecognized, or feared product of science fiction (Lytras and Visvizi, 2018). In other words, considerable gap exists between what citizens expect vis-à-vis ICT-enhanced solution in city space and, importantly, what they are able to use. From a different angle, many smart services have been embedded in the city space so seamlessly that their existence has become a part of the daily routine for masses. In this sense, many aspects of what would be referred to as smart city applications or solutions remains underrecognized for the very users of those solutions (Lytras et al., 2019). In brief, as the public debate is filled with references to smart cities, frequently, confusion steps in as to what exactly the concept smart city implies, what is at stake, and how it fits in the broader framework of debates unfolding in other fields and disciplines. This volume seeks to navigate this issue and make the concept of smart cities more approachable to those who have had the opportunity to engage in its thorough study.

Several conceptual and methodological issues have to be clarified before outlining this volume's content, including the very definition of smart city, and indeed other concepts that tend to be used—wrongly so—interchangeably in the debate. One of such concepts is the concept of megacity. Frequently conflated, there is a significant qualitative difference between megacity and smart city, with each of them triggering quite distant research questions and topics (Visvizi and Lytras, 2018a). A megacity can be defined as an urban agglomeration with a total population of 10 million people or greater, consisting of a continuous built-up area that encompasses one or more city centers and suburban areas, economically and functionally linked to those centers (Safarik et al., 2016). It can be argued that megacities research originates from very pragmatic considerations related to spatial considerations, urban infrastructure planning, including urban design and resilience of urban space, and related questions of governance and sustainability. The key cognitive lens applied in the debate on megacities are defined by the questions of population size, geographical location, and exposure to risks and threats, including those related to geographical location and so natural disasters, etc. (Safarik et al., 2016; Meerow, 2017; Commons, 2018). The smart cities debate—because of its emphasis on harnessing advances in ICT seen as a function of citizens' well-being—adds a qualitatively new kind of considerations to the debate on cities in general. Seen in this way, a megacity might benefit from smart applications and hence become smarter; yet, a smart city will not necessarily become a megacity. In other words, the two concepts are ontologically separate.

Although smart city is not a new concept, the past few years have brought substantial developments both in the field of research (Bibri and Krogstieb, 2017; Bibri, 2018; Reddy Kummitha and Crutzen, 2017; Kitchin, 2019 and Rose, 2017 ) and in the very fabric of cities, including the problems they face, how these are resolved, etc. (Anthopoulos, 2017). Therefore, as the debate on smart cities gains its new momentum, the group of stakeholders involved in the debate broadens, and new insights are brought to the discussion on smart cities. Driven by advances in sophisticated ICT and an accompanying set of considerations originating from social science, computer science, natural sciences, engineering, architecture, and so on, today, smart cities research revolves around ideas and considerations related to the possibility of generating added value to a city's inhabitants by means of ICT-enhanced services (Visvizi and Lytras, 2018b). Clearly, the focus of smart cities research is directed at new ICT-enhanced services, service responsiveness, and sustainability. However, other considerations such as agency of individual city inhabitants, society, and discourses and ideologies that come to play in the process of making a city smart form an equally important part of the debate (Cardullo and Kitchin, 2018; Cardullo et al., 2019).

Given the diversity of disciplinary, conceptual, and empirical approaches employed in the smart cities debate, there is no single definition of what a smart city entails. A smart city may be referred to as representing an urban development model geared toward the utilization of human, collective, and technological capital within urban agglomerations (Angelidou, 2014, 2015; Ahvenniemi et al., 2017). In this vein, a smart city may also be conceptualized as an ultramodern urban area that addresses the needs of businesses, institutions, and especially citizens (Khatoun and Zeadaly, 2016). In a commonsensical manner, the concept of smart city is associated with advances in ICT and the possibility of effective use of ICT-enhanced tools and applications in city and urban space. Smart city is thus bound to be an aggregate concept that highlights the interconnectedness of diverse aspects of a city's functioning, including questions of governance, participation, and representation; economy; energy; mobility; living, and well-being; and of course environment. The imperative of sustainability, as explained earlier, frames these considerations. Consensus has consolidated that the following conceptual and policy-making pillars delineate smart city, seen as a concept and policy-making imperative: economy, mobility, energy, environment, governance, and living. A case can be made that it is the space in-between these pillars, a space populated by issues such as (tele)communication, representation, participation, safety, security, inclusiveness, transparency, accountability, access to information, etc., and that is as valid as the pillars themselves. What brings these pillars, and the space in-between them, together, and hence makes cities ‘smart’, is responsible, visionary, ethically and socially sensitive use of advances in ICT geared toward cities’ sustainability.

3. About the book and the conceptual framework it adopts

The discussion in this volume is divided in four parts. Part 1 looks at smart cities from a broad perspective that incorporates the recognition that with the onset of the fourth Industrial Revolution, the degree of change our societies are bound to embark on is immense (Visvizi and Lytras, 2019). Considering the increasing pace of urbanization, cities and urban space are bound to serve as the venue where the nonlinear evolution of our societies will unfold. Questions of modes and models of governance, democracy and civic participation, social inclusion, intergenerational solidarity, and prosperity building form just a few of the dimensions along which that evolution will unfold. Clearly, the latter will require both physical structures and virtual space, i.e., services and platforms facilitated by advances in ICT. In this sense, the question of managing urban space acquires a new dimension. Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 form this section sketch and explore the key lines of the argument either already discussed in detail in the literature or still waiting to be explored, including civil liberties, participation, democracy, and social inclusion in a context infused with new ICT-enhanced tools and applications.

In part 2, questions of safety, security, and resilience of cities and urban spaces are discussed. The starting point of that discussion is the recognition that safety and security are ontologically distinct (Visvizi, 2015). That is, safety is a concept most closely associated with public space and, therefore, is best defined by reference to well-being and stability. Security, on the other hand, denotes absence of threat. The really important point that should be made here is that safety, embedded in public sphere and public space governance, necessitates quite different policy tools and policy responses than the harder concept of security does. In other words, whereas safety would be most closely associated with policing and relevant regulatory frameworks, security, associated with external threat, might imply the use of the military and related tools. That is, key in the discussion on safety is the acknowledgment that it is possible to identify nascent risks and, thus, preempt them (Beck, 1992). Hence, with regard to safety, most closely associated with measures and toolkits specific to internal policy, e.g., policing and rules of public order, emphasis is placed on prevention. Security, in contrast, requires measures most commonly linked to the necessity to react, i.e., to address imminent threats to our population and infrastructure. In smart city space, the distinction between safety and security is vital in that it highlights the sensitive and yet necessary issue of division of competences among agencies dealing with safety and security within the same city or the same urban space. It suggests that different sets of policy prerogatives and different logics of action will underpin respective agencies' action. It also suggests that ICT-enhanced services and applications designed to manage both safety and security in city space are interoperable. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 included in this part offer a fair insight into the most pressing issues and developments in this respect.

By means of expanding the discussion, in part 3 of this volume, new perspectives to our thinking on smart cities are presented. Founded on the recognition that following the adoption of ICT-enhanced tools and applications cities acquire a yet another tool to boast their efficiency and sustainability, the chapters included in this part frequently implicitly view smart cities as the nascent centers of power, influence, and authority. In this sense, the authors of Chapters 9, 10, 11, and 12 address issues as diverse and as salient as those related to talent management, knowledge management, cluster development, and many more. ICT-enhanced tools and applications are seen in this way as the key enablers of sustainable growth and development of cities. The volume closes with a selection of carefully conceptualized and elaborated case studies, including that of Mexico City and Riyadh, as well as Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom. The case studies add the very much needed empirical angle to the discussion in the preceding chapters. The following section offers a detailed overview of the chapters' content.

4. Review of the chapters' content

Following this introductory Chapter 1, in Chapter 2, titled Democracy and governance in smart city, Cláudia Toriz Ramos discusses smart cities as the encounter of growing urbanization with technological innovation. As the author argues, smart cities are said to have a potential to foster livability, workability, and sustainability (Smart Cities Council, 2016). The salient question that Toriz Ramos poses is do smart cities also have a potential to foster democracy? To address this question, the discussion in the chapter initially addresses smart urbanism as functional and normative utopia and discusses whether democracy is necessary and feasible in smart city. It is argued that democracy in smart city is a matter of choice, rather than a deterministic outcome or sheer unfeasibility. There is indeed a risk that functional concerns will prevail over democratic choices, given the powerful technological instruments on which the smart city is built, and their possible connections with either market-biased options or authoritarian surveillance. Examples of democratic procedures in the smart city—networking, decentralization, increased transparency and accountability, new modes of popular participation via the virtual agora, and hence collaborative democracy and citizens' empowerment—are discussed.

In Chapter 3, titled Civic participation in smart cities: the role of social media, Marco Moreno-Ibarra and Miguel Torres-Ruiz query the prospect of boosting civic participation in context of smart cities via more effective use of social media. As the authors argue, cities face the problems of accessibility of information. This hinders citizens' participation in the process of day-to-day governance of the city space. However, what if social media was employed more effectively, i.e., precisely, to enable citizens to acquire information necessary for both their daily lives and civic engagement? As the authors argue, social media has become a very prominent source to obtain data and information. As cities are exposed to a variety of challenges such as health care, environment, energy consumption, traffic congestion, housing, education, public safety, economic development, demographics, diversity, and inclusiveness, the ability of tapping into data and information and the prospect of engaging in meaningful discussion with all stakeholders bear the promise of addressing these challenges and risks more efficiently.

Chapter 4, titled Citizen participation in the design of smart cities: methods and management framework, by Anthony Simonofski, Estefanía Serral Asensio, and Yves Wautelet, queries the prospect of citizens being actively involved in the design of smart city space. As the authors argue, over the past few years, smart cities have attracted considerable attention because they are considered a response to the complex challenges that modern cities face. Smart cities can provide innovative solutions in various domains such as environment, economy, mobility, and safety with technology as enabler. However, this is only possible if the citizens, the end users, are involved in the design of the smart city. The aim of this chapter is to provide a repository of methods and useful guidelines to manage citizen participation in the design of smart cities.

In Chapter 5, titled Smart city as a platform economy: civic engagement and self-employment in focus, Manuel Nieto-Mengotti, Asunción López-Arranz, and Isabel Novo-Corti make a case for platform economy and its benefits in context of smart city. Currently, most companies tend to outsource productive resources, taking advantage of the virtualization capacity of their jobs, thanks to the extensive coverage of connectivity networks deployed in cities. This situation facilitates the entry into the market of new agents that can solve this growing demand. Accordingly, the chapter examines different business platforms capable of implementing compatible self-employment activities, to facilitate labor insertion through sustainable and quality self-employment that respond to the demand for services in cities.

Chapter 6, titled Understanding sentiments and activities in green spaces using a social data–driven approach, by Kwan Hui Lim, addresses the question of citizens' well-being seen as a function of green space availability in cities. Green spaces are believed to enhance the well-being of residents in urban areas. Although considerable research that explores the emotional benefits of green spaces exists, most early works are based on user surveys and case studies, which are typically small in scale, intrusive, time intensive, and costly. In contrast to earlier works, the argument presented in this chapter is based on a nonintrusive methodology to understand green space effects at large scale and in greater detail, via digital traces left by Twitter users. Using this methodology, an empirical study is conducted on the effects of green spaces on user sentiments, emotions, and activities in Melbourne, Australia. Against this backdrop, a sentiment-aware activity recommendation system is developed. The novelty of this study rests in the combination of psychological theory, alongside data collection and analysis techniques on a large-scale Twitter dataset, which builds on traditional methods in urban research and provides important implications for urban planning authorities.

In Chapter 7, titled Smart city is a safe city: information and communication technology–enhanced urban space monitoring and surveillance systems: the promise and limitations, Kwok Tai Chui elaborates on urban space monitoring and surveillance systems. As the author explains various forms of sensing devices such as closed-circuit television, smart phone and camera have become common place in cities. To use them effectively, a robust and an easy-to-manage ICT-infrastructure is needed. Smart adoption of such systems could influence, manage, direct, and protect human beings and property. Nevertheless, it may create problems of government support, data quality, privacy, and security. Today's computational world allows implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) models for big data analytics to