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ABSTRACT
The smart city, which emphasizes more effective urban management using information and communication technologies (ICT), now has greater implications. This paper first reviews the evolving features of the smart city focusing on its extension from an ICT-based urban solution to the domains of governance, sustainability, and decent urbanisation. Expectations and concerns about advanced ICT as an urban solution have formed a body of literature of civic governance with a focus on the citizen, which now incorporates a discussion of the democratic management of data. What made the smart city dominant in urban discourse is its merging with another leading discourse – that of the ‘sustainable city’ – in the early 2010s, which had the most popularity in the field since the 1990s. The boundary of the smart city extended further, representing the desire of emerging cities to provide core urban infrastructures with an expectation of economic growth in the mid-2010s. This paper then focuses on the implications of this widened sphere of the smart city. It aims to uncover how the concept of ‘smart city’ has evolved over time, leading to the conclusion of how the traditional values of urban studies are growing in the new sphere of the smart city and why it is currently important to consider the context-based local smart city and to develop affordable smart cities in future smart city practice and research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
2 More than 5 billion people are expected to live in urban areas by 2030, and this figure will reach 6.5 billion by 2050 (United Nations, Citation2018)
3 We coined the term “decent urbanisation” to indicate the process of urbanisation with an adequate level of infrastructure, including water, road, sewerage, electricity and housing, in contrast with “pseudo urbanisation”.
4 Cisco’s ‘Smart and Connected Communities Institute’ and ‘Connected Urban Development Initiative’ in 2010, Siemens’ ‘Smart Urbanism’ in 2011, and Microsoft’s ‘City Next initiative’ in 2013, for instance.
5 For more information, see WeGO homepage, http://we-gov.org/
6 See OECD. 2012. Compact City Policies: A Comparative Assessment. It relates green city, compact city, and sustainability together.
7 According to IESE (2018), Amsterdam is ranked 10th and Copenhagen 13th.
8 United Nations. Citation2018. World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision (key facts). United Nations
9 For more information, visit the website of Munich City Hall of https://www.muenchen.de/rathaus/wirtschaft_en/munich-business-location/economic-data.html Retrieved 20 Apr. 2022.
11 For the case of the smart city in greenfield development, the guideline fixes the proportion of affordable housing to at least 15% of total housing (MoUD, 2015:9)
14 Ministry of Urban Development Nepal, Department of Urban Development & Building Construction, New Town Project Coordination Office (NTPCO) (2020). Final Report on Preparation of Strategic Master Plan for Developing Nijgadh as Green Smart City. Final Report on Preparation of Master Plan for Developing Defined Area of Gorkha, Lamjung and Tanahu Districts with Palungtar as Center as a Smart City.
17 For more information, see Howard’s Garden cities of to-morrow (2013), which was originally published in 1898 as To-Morrow: A peaceful path to reform.
18 If the public developer and landowners fail to reach an agreement over the purchasing price which is normally based on the current land use of agriculture, the public developer could use expropriation method.
19 The sales price of multi-family houses except for large size of more than 85m2 from this development are set to be lower than or equal to development cost which is lower than market price.
20 The proportion of developed land for social housing is set to be at least 30% of the total number of stocks of multi-family houses.
21 Local government taking over the new town in its administrative boundary can benefit from increased tax revenue, public infrastructure of roads and parks, and increased communal facilities.