Global Trends of Smart Cities: A Comparative Analysis of Geography, City Size, Governance, and Urban Planning

Global Trends of Smart Cities

A Comparative Analysis of Geography, City Size, Governance, and Urban Planning

Tooran Alizadeh

Associate Professor of Urbanism and Telecommunication Planning, School of Architecture, Design and Planning, The University of Sydney, Australia

Table of Contents

Cover image

Title page

Copyright

List of figures

List of tables

Acknowledgment

Chapter 1. Global trends of smart cities

Introduction

Understanding the global trends of smart cities

Understanding IBM's Smarter Cities Challenge

The learnings: turning the table—what do cities want?

Chapter 2. Does geography matter in smart cities?

Understanding the geographical trends in smart cities

Understanding the geographical trends in the Smarter Cities Challenge

The learnings: does geography matter in smart cities?

Chapter 3. Does size matter in smart cities?

Understanding the city size trends in smart cities

Understanding the city size trends in the Smarter Cities Challenge

What do cities of different size want?

The learnings: does size matter in smart cities?

Chapter 4. Does government matter in smart cities?

Understanding the democracy trends in smart cities

Understanding the democracy trends in the Smarter Cities Challenge

The learnings: does democracy matter in smart cities?

Chapter 5. Does planning matter in smart cities?

Understanding the planning trends in smart cities

Understanding the planning trends in the Smarter Cities Challenge

What do cities with strategic plans want?

The learnings: does planning matter in what cities want?

Chapter 6. An integrated analysis of smart cities

Introduction

Understanding the integrated trends in smart cities

Understanding the integrated trends in the Smarter Cities Challenge

The learnings: an integrated assessment

Index

Copyright

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List of figures

Figure 1.1 Pinned tweet by @SmartCityChallange.7

Figure 1.2 Geographic distribution and population figures of all participating cities in the Smarter Cities Challenge.12

Figure 2.1 Smart city dimensions prioritized by the Global North cities as part of the Smarter Cities Challenge.31

Figure 2.2 Smart city dimensions prioritized by the Global South cities as part of the Smarter Cities Challenge.40

Figure 4.1 Distribution of government types in the Democracy Index 2018.95

Figure 5.1 Word cloud analysis of planning document versus IBM report in Tucson.131

Figure 5.2 Word cloud analysis of planning document versus IBM report in Detroit.132

Figure 5.3 Word cloud analysis of planning document versus IBM report in Surat.133

Figure 5.4 Word cloud analysis of planning document versus IBM report in Amsterdam.148

Figure 5.5 Word cloud analysis of planning document versus IBM report in Stavanger.150

Figure 5.6 Word cloud analysis of planning document versus IBM report in Gold Coast.153

Figure 5.7 Word cloud analysis of planning document versus IBM report in Cape Town.155

List of tables

Table 1.1 An overview of the participating cities in the Smarter Cities Challenge 2010–17.13

Table 1.2 Participating cities and their country of origin in the Smarter Cities Challenge.15

Table 1.3 A summary of the smart dimensions prioritized across the participating cities in the Smarter Cities Challenge.19

Table 2.1 Distribution of income across the Global North vs. the Global South participating cities in the Smarter Cities Challenge.29

Table 2.2 Global North cities prioritizing more than one smart dimension in the Smarter Cities Challenge.32

Table 2.3 Smart dimensions prioritized across the Global North cities of different income range in the Smarter Cities Challenge.34

Table 2.4 Global South cities prioritizing more than one smart dimension in the Smarter Cities Challenge.41

Table 2.5 Smart dimensions prioritized across the Global South cities of different income range in the Smarter Cities Challenge.43

Table 2.6 Smart dimensions prioritized across the participating cities with $20,000–30,000 GDP (PPP) per capita.51

Table 3.1 Distribution of income and city size in the Smarter Cities Challenge.62

Table 3.2 Distribution of income and city size across the Global South vs. the North participating cities in the Smarter Cities Challenge.64

Table 3.3 Smart dimensions prioritized across the participating cities of different size in the Smarter Cities Challenge.66

Table 3.4 Cities of different size prioritizing more than one smart dimension in the Smarter Cities Challenge.67

Table 3.5 Smart dimensions prioritized across the Global North cities of different size in the Smarter Cities Challenge.70

Table 3.6 Smart dimensions prioritized across the Global South cities of different size in the Smarter Cities Challenge.78

Table 4.1 Distribution of income and democracy levels in the Global South versus the Global North.97

Table 4.2 Smart dimensions prioritized across the participating cities of different democracy levels in the Smarter Cities Challenge.99

Table 4.3 Cities of different democracy levels prioritizing more than one dimension in the Smarter Cities Challenge.100

Table 4.4 Smart dimensions prioritized across the Global North cities of different democracy level in the Smarter Cities Challenge.103

Table 4.5 Smart dimensions prioritized across the Global South cities of different democracy level in the Smarter Cities Challenge.110

Table 4.6 Smart dimensions prioritized across the participating cities with flawed democracies in the Smarter Cities Challenge.118

Table 5.1 Summary accounts of the strategic planning documents for the participating cities in the Smarter Cities Challenge.130

Table 5.2 Democracy trends across the participating cities with different levels of alignment between smart city approaches and strategic planning.134

Table 5.3 City size trends across the participating cities with different levels of alignment between smart city approaches and strategic planning.135

Table 5.4 Income trends across the participating cities with different levels of alignment between smart city approaches and strategic planning.135

Table 5.5 Smart dimensions prioritized across the cities with available strategic planning documents versus all participating cities in the Smarter Cities Challenge.137

Table 5.6 Smart dimensions prioritized across the participating cities with different levels of alignment between smart city approaches and strategic planning.139

Table 5.7 Cities with different levels of alignment prioritizing more than one smart dimension in the Smarter Cities Challenge.140

Acknowledgment

Every book has a personal story worth sharing which includes a series of enabling events and inspiring, supportive individuals without whom there would be no book. The story behind this book started in windy Chicago and the annual conference of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) in 2015. This was the last American conference that I attended before the US Congress passed H.R. 158 (in December 2015), which prohibited me from using the visa waiver program to travel to the United States, because of my place of birth and regardless of my Australian citizenship. Later in January 2017, President Trump signed an executive order—now widely known as the Muslim ban—which banned refugee intake, immigration, and visa entry to the United States for the natives of a few majority Muslim countries, including my country of birth—Iran.

Anyway, I found that last US-based conference quite inspiring. There were a few papers reporting case study research focused on the Smarter Cities Challenge—an IBM global initiative at the core of this book—in several cities mainly around the United States, at times with contradictory results. Although I do not remember all authors who presented those interesting case study papers, I clearly remember the session was chaired by Prof. Rob Kitchin who showed a high level of enthusiasm for the work being presented. Rob's enthusiasm inspired me to look deeper into the initiative that by then had engaged with more than 100 cities around the world. My first thought—after hearing about the diverse and at times contradictory approaches and outcomes across the case study investigations—was that someone needs to build an index of all participating cities to run comparative analysis and figure out the global trends (this felt like wishful thinking at the time). However, the thought of building an index of over 100 cities scattered all around the world was daunting as I could imagine the difficulties involved with collecting reliable data and the level of data cleaning required.

For the next part of this book's story, I owe gratitude to a seeding fund that became available via the Urban Research Program (now called Cities Research Institute) at Griffith University (where I was based in 2016). The funding was only available through a competitive process, and the person in charge was A/Prof. Eddo Coiacetto who was leading the urban planning research group at the time. A lot has changed since then. As I write, Eddo (now a dear friend) is fighting Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. It was during one of our recent phone chats—when I mostly ramble about academia to distract Eddo from the cancer treatment—that I realized I wouldn't be writing the current book if Eddo had not seen the potential in my proposal for that modest seeding fund. Thank you, Eddo.

The seeding fund bought me research assistance that was crucial in building the first index of 110 cities that participated in the Smarter Cities Challenge in 2010–14. The findings resulted in an article An investigation of IBM's Smarter Cites Challenge: What do participating cities want? published in Cities in March 2017. I have to admit, Elsevier and its highly professional editors saw the potentials of my article before I did (the article in question is now performing at the top 2% of publications in my field of study according to Scopus citation benchmarking data). As of mid-2017, a series of polite and persistent emails from different Elsevier editors were asking me to expand the article to a book. By then, however, I had moved to the University of Sydney with full load of teaching and new governance responsibilities which meant I could not commit to a book project.

Things changed in 2018, as I was successful in securing a highly competitive Research Accelerator (SOAR) Fellowship at the University of Sydney, which put me on an intensive research profile in 2019–20. Inspired by the persistence of the Elsevier editors, I had included a book on the global trends of smart cities in my SOAR Fellowship proposal. SOAR Fellowship gave me the space to complete my research on the Smarter Cities Challenge, build an updated index of all 135 participating cities in 2010–17, expand the work by including case study narrations of 17 smart cities worldwide, and write this book. For that, I am extremely grateful to the University of Sydney and especially to Prof. Robyn Dowling (then Associate Dean Research, and now Dean and Head of Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning) who saw the value in my research and supported my SOAR Fellowship application.

Throughout the last 2   years, while writing this book, I have been lucky enough to work with an amazingly professional and efficient team from Elsevier (I won't name anyone as I do not want to leave anyone out). My research assistant Omar Elkharouf (funded by the SOAR Fellowship) has been conducive in the write-up of the book not just because of his help with the literature review and his patience with the numerous rounds of data cleaning and analysis but also because of his excitement about the case study stories embedded in the book and our lengthy conversations about how the North–South divide contributes to everything and anything in urban studies. I owe a debt of gratitude to Prof. Simon Marvin (on a fractional appointment at the University of Sydney and Sheffield University) who gently pushed me toward timely completion of the book and kindly offered to review the early drafts of the book. His constructive feedback and generous encouragement were instrumental in helping me to sharpen up the arguments and finalize the book.

Last but not least, I have the most supportive partner in life, my husband Dr. Reza Farid, who believes in me, pushes me, has high expectations of me, and is there for me in all high and low moments in my professional and personal life. One of the lowest points throughout the write-up of this book was in mid-2019 when the Smarter Cities Challenge website (a major source of data for the book) was taken down without any notice. For a moment, I thought that I had lost the most valuable pool of data without any chance of redemption. Reza—having a Ph.D. in computer science and software engineering—practically saved the book project by writing what he describes as a couple of simple scripts (not so simple to me!) to retrieve all the required data from the web—despite the website being down. For this obvious contribution to the book and for his unconditional support throughout our life together, I am eternally grateful.

Chapter 1: Global trends of smart cities

Abstract

This chapter opens an introductory discussion by offering a literature-based overview of the global trends of smart cities worldwide. It points out the role that the digital corporations played and continue to play in the popularity and fast growth of smart cities. It provides a detailed description of how the IBM's Smarter Cities Challenge came about as a global enabler of smart cities. Nevertheless, this chapter turns the table by focusing on 135 cities participating in the Challenge. This chapter sets the scene for the rest of this book by providing an index of all participating cities. In doing so, it points out this book's limitation as it is, by no means, an all-inclusive narration of the whole story of smart cities. This chapter concludes by promising that the journey throughout this book will enhance our understanding of the state of smart city development worldwide.

Keywords

Global; IBM; Multidimensional; Smart cities; Smarter Cities Challenge

Introduction

Amid speedy growth of smart city practices worldwide, there is a dearth of resources for cities around the world to benchmark themselves against the global trends. Indeed, the latest smart city books cover a range of case studies and show the diversity of practices, but rarely include meaningful comparative frameworks and integrated analysis. As a result, it is left to the readers to figure out the diversity patterns or the criteria which may begin to explain why or how the diverse smart city practices around the world come about. This book aims to shed light on this gap in the literature: A combination of real-world case study narrations and overall descriptive statistical analysis—focused on city geographies (the North–South divide), city sizes, governance (the levels of democracy), and local planning contexts—will provide the much needed integrated analysis of the global trends of smart cities. The core question at the heart of this book is:

What is the global state of smart city development and how is this shaped by the urban context?

As part of the above question, this book points out the role that the digital corporations played and continue to play in the popularity and fast growth of smart cities. In particular, it provides a detailed description of how the IBM's Smarter Cities Challenge unfolded as a global enabler of smart cities. This book focuses on the 135 cities that participated in the Challenge in 2010–17. It, however, acknowledges that the IBM's Smarter Cities Challenge offers a particular set of smart initiatives; is not representative of all smart cities around the world; and yet its global presence across five contents and its involvement with 135 cities of all size and socio-economic status provide a solid foundation to conduct comparative research on smart cities (focus of the analysis is not on IBM, rather on cities' approach to becoming smart). The results depict the diversity patterns of smart city practices around the globe.

This chapter opens an introductory discussion by offering a literature-based overview of the global trends of smart cities worldwide. It includes a short history of how smart cities started as an elite concept for a few branded cities and soon developed to be global phenomena involving cities of all sizes and all characteristics. This chapter provides a detailed description of how the IBM's Smarter Cities Challenge unfolded as a global enabler of smart cities and refers to the critical scholarship which questions the origin and intentions of IBM's involvement (McNeill, 2015; Paroutis et al., 2014; Wiig, 2015). Nevertheless, this chapter turns the table and focuses on the 135 cities that have participated in the Challenge since its introduction in 2010. It then sets the scene for the rest of this book by providing an index of all participating cities in the Smarter Cities Challenge. In doing so, this chapter raises questions about the multidimensional integration, if any, across the urban dimensions in which digital technologies are shaping contemporary cities. While offering an overview of the index of the participating cities, this chapter gives an indication of the upcoming discussions in this book. It briefly notes how each upcoming chapter will examine the participating cities' approach in becoming smart and raises questions about what matters in the diversity of smart city development worldwide.

Understanding the global trends of smart cities

Few urban development models are as popular as the smart city. A trend that originally started in a few branded cities—such as New York and Barcelona—has now reached out to cities of all size and socio-economic status across the five contents (Joss et al., 2019). Urban scholars, technology designers, city planners, governments, and, of course, city dwellers may find it difficult to avoid the term and, no less important, to elude the consequences of its realization. Investment in smart cities, worldwide, is on a steep upward trajectory. Projections for the worldwide market value of the smart city sector differ depending on the source, but the average hovers around $1 trillion in 2020, with projections around the market size reaching $50 trillion by 2050 (Future Cities Catapult, 2017).

Research focused on smart cities has been increasing, both in terms of scope and diversity—coming from a broad disciplinary background and focusing on different dimensions of smart city planning, implementation, and assessment (Neirotti et al., 2014; Tomor et al., 2019; Visvizi and Lytras, 2018). Despite the extensive discussions, no prevalent or universally acknowledged definition of smart cities exists (Angelidou, 2014; Lara et al., 2016; Praharaj and Han, 2019). Indeed, in smart city research terms smart, smarter, intelligent, digital, ubiquitous, and knowledge based are used interchangeably throughout the literature (Camero and Alba, 2019; Cocchia, 2014; De Jong et al., 2015; Pardo et al., 2012).

For the purpose of this book, the working definition of smart city is the following: smart cities are all urban settlements that capitalize on digital technologies to enhance livability, workability, and sustainability. Such a broad definition is part of a growing smart cities' narrative with the long-term goal of sustainable urban development (Alizadeh, 2017a; Chourabi et al., 2012; Deakin, 2013).

The fast growth of smart city research makes it quite difficult to offer a comprehensive summary of the trends discussed. Indeed, recent literature reviews only focus on specific dimensions such as smart governance (Pereira et al., 2018; Ruhlandt, 2018; Tomor et al., 2019). There are three key points from the existing smart cities research which this book builds upon:

– There is a clear consensus around multidimensional nature of smart cities in the literature (Alizadeh and Sipe, 2016;Deakin, 2013;Luque et al., 2014). It is argued that smart city efforts need to be broad ranging and comprehensive to overcome the simplistic gadget-focused enthusiasm for the implications of digital technologies in cities. Some of the smart dimensions identified in the multivariable definitions of smart cities include natural resources and energy, transport and mobility, buildings, living, government, economy, and people (Allwinkle and Cruickshank, 2011;Gil-Garcia et al., 2016;Leydesdorff and Deakin, 2011;Neirotti et al., 2014).

– There is a growing consensus in the literature that describes smart cities as urban processes—all the way from conceptualization to realization—through which a range of actors, such as different levels of government, private sector, and community organizations, imagine and enact their own ideas of what it means to become a smart city (Martin et al., 2018). As Bulkeley et al. (2016) argue, studying the actually existing smart city is not only a matter of differentiating the discourses and practices of smart solutions as they emerge in various urban contexts but also of attending to the ways in which smart solutions were formulated, negotiated, implemented, and contested.

– There is a call in the literature for cities to align their smart city thinking and practices with the complex urban policy agenda already operating and the priorities already in place at the government level (Angelidou, 2014;Hodgkinson, 2011;Nam and Pardo, 2011). This is to identify the most appropriate domains of implementing smart city concept in each unique local context and increase the success rate in securing funds required to do so (Alizadeh and Sipe, 2016). More recently, this call in the literature has found a strong geographical pattern in which a growing line of research warns about the North-centric notion of smart city research underestimating the fast rate of uptake in the Global South (Das, 2019;Komninos et al., 2019). Global South is one of a family of terms, including Third World and Periphery that explicitly denote regions outside Europe, North America, and Australia. Indeed, the use of the phrase Global South marks a shift from a central focus on development or cultural difference toward an emphasis on geopolitical relations of power. It references an entire history of colonialism and neoimperialism which has resulted in massive inequalities in living standards, life expectancy, and access to resources (Dados and Connell, 2012). By focusing on the Global South, this new line of research calls out the broader Euro-American centric notion of urban studies and draws on the urban experience of the South to present new conceptual frameworks for understanding cities (Robinson, 2003;Roy, 2011;Scott and Storper, 2015). More specifically, Luque-Ayala and Marvin (2015) call for further smart urbanism research in the South, to link with the existing urban planning and policy and develop contested forms of smart knowledge that emerges from the context.

Building on the above three key points from the smart city literature worldwide, this book has a threefold mission: (1) It will examine the smart dimensions embedded in the IBM's collaboration with cities participating in the Smarter Cities Challenge to understand the diversity and scope of the practice; (2) Acknowledging the full processes of smart cities, this book integrates content analysis of the Smart Cities Challenge documentations (e.g., reports prepared by IBM for each participating city) with a range of tangible case study narrations. In other words, content analysis of the documents represents how smart city was conceptualized (imagined), while the case studies delve into how the imagination was translated into actions (realized); and (3) It will assess if and how the Smart City Challenge recommendations in each city align with and respond to the priorities already included in the strategic planning documents. Moreover, the global presence of the Challenge will provide a unique opportunity to shed light on the North–South divisions on the same platform ran by IBM in collaboration with city governments in different parts of the world.

Nevertheless, from strategic planning perspective, there are major shortcomings in the smart city literature, which have implications for this book and simultaneously amplify the need for it, including but not limited to the following:

− The dominant model of smart urbanism, across the globe, is largely driven by technology companies that seek to establish themselves as urban experts for building smart cities (Alizadeh, 2018). That is, if a city wants to become smart, then it must use the systems, services, and products sold by these companies. This remains true today, as evidenced in recent work that examines the role of IBM and Cisco, the largest smart city proprietors, in constructing smart urbanism through discursive means (Sadowski and Bendor, 2018;Wiig, 2016). The role of the digital corporation in smart city discourse is constantly scrutinized in the literature. There is indeed an established and yet growing body of studies focusing on the hidden agenda of the major corporations (McNeill, 2016;Swabey, 2012;Wiig, 2015). The problem here is the lack of research on why cities enter partnership with the digital corporations