Why a smart city can be so much more than just the sum of its parts ?
A "Smart City" development process starts from a "Smart Neighbourhood".
Community engagement is essential for building smart cities.
We need to create inclusive environments where all citizens can be themselves, where they are valued for their differences and everyone's talents are fully used to improve the city.
A successful smart city development action plan must include first of all the extreme urban areas of a city.
Urban performance currently depends not only on the city’s endowment of hard infrastructure (‘physicalcapital’), but also, and increasingly so, on the availability and quality of knowledge communication and social infrastructure (‘human and social capital’).
The proliferation of "Smart Cities" initiatives around the world is part of the strategic response by Governments to the challenges and opportunities of increasing high tech oriented urbanization.
Hybrid Socio Technical System of Systems
(Urban Layer Wafer Effect)
Smart City initiatives are focused on Information and Communication Technologies and Knowledge Infrastructures for economic regeneration, social cohesion, better city administration and infrastructure management.
However, experiences from earlier Smart City initiatives have revealed several technical, management and governance challenges arising from the inherent nature of a Smart City as a complex "Socio-technical System of Systems".
While many planned Smart Cities programs are still "work in progress", no rigorous developed framework methodology based on careful and sharp analysis of existing initiatives is yet available to guide decision makers, stake holders, policymakers, practitioners, and other Smart City managers.
In response to this need, our team is able to offer a "Smart City Initiative Design (SCID) Framework" based on the best results of the major Smart Cities programs from Europe and around the world.
Key factors to consider:
Edge High Tech Solutions
Smart city projects depend extremely on technology.
However, implementing digital infrastructure is challenging, because of the lack of knowledge about ICT systems, digital architectures and compatible software, the cybersecurity and privacy policy problems where systems may get hacked or infected by viruses etc., the high cost of installing, operating and maintaining ICT systems and the cost of training and hiring ICT specialists.
Lack of collaboration
Smart city projects require collaboration among private organizations, public institutions, NGOs, citizens, etc. which increase the complexity of these projects. The main challenges are poor communication and coordination among these participants, the leadership style, lack of policies for open data and big data that enables sharing across departments and organizations, lack of support from both local government and city administration, the time taken by organizations involved in the project to make decisions and breaking down silos that hinder the success of the project.
Managerial and organizational challenges
One of the challenges of smart city projects is their size and scope where two types of projects can be defined; Greenfield projects (new projects) which are huge, long-term, and usually starts from zero and Brownfield projects (existing projects) which are smaller sized projects, short-term and fast implemented are usually built on existed infrastructure and are preferred by investors for generating fast revenues.
Another challenge is leadership style and manager’s technical and social skills. Similarly, the lack of understanding solutions that leads to poor decisions. Also, the absence of educated and qualified teams who can work in these complex and high-tech projects, resistance to change and inadequate training are also one the smart city projects challenges.
Moreover, the diversity of the project’s relevant stakeholders creates conflicts about who will govern and finance or who will capture the created value. Finally, having multiple goals that do not align with the project vision can be challenging, also, miscommunication of the project’s objectives to the local community.
Social Impact
Smart city projects need to engage citizens and create a common understanding of the key objectives, opportunities, and challenges among all smart city project participants. The main challenges lie in how to motivate, involve and engage citizens in smart city projects, measure and express the value created by the smart city project for citizens, the digital divide in the city and change the behaviour and thinking of citizens to what’s called “smart thinking”.
