Smart Cities: The Metrics of Future Internet-Based Developments and Renewable Energies of Urban and Regional Innovation

ABSTRACT

This paper closes a gap in the literature on smart cities relating to the metrics of future Internet-based developments. It achieves this by presenting the findings of a case study that overcomes the methodological shortcomings that otherwise exist in the metrics of future Internet-based developments and sets the stage for the renewable energies that play out as an urban and regional innovation. The case study serves to demonstrate how getting beneath the headlines that surround claims made about the metrics of future Internet-based developments provide the measures needed to bottom them out and verify whether the renewable energies, which play out as an urban and regional innovation, are not only clean enough for the growth this generates to sustain an ecological modernization, but also sufficiently inclusive for climate neutral adaptations to be just.

KEYWORDS:

• Smart cities
• metrics
• future Internet-based developments
• renewable energies
• urban and regional innovation
• clean growth
• sustainability
• ecological modernization
• climate neutral adaptation

Notes

1 Informatics is the study of the behavior and structure of any system that generates, stores, processes information and which then presents such information for use. It takes into consideration the interaction between the system and the user, as well as the interfaces, which structure them and the behaviors that result.

2 Energetics relates to the exchange of energy within a given activity, how this operates and works.

3 Metabolic is the study of how material is produced, exchanged and the rate a given set of resources is either consumed, depleted, or exhausted.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark Deakin

Mark Deakin, is a professor of the built environment in the School of Engineering and the Built Environment at Edinburgh Napier University.

Alasdair Reid

Alasdair Reid, is a researcher at the Institute for Sustainable Construction at Edinburgh Napier University.

Luca Mora

Luca Mora, is an associate professor of urban innovation at the Business School of Edinburgh Napier University.