Urban planners’ roles, perceptions, needs, and concerns in smart city planning: a survey of U.S. planners

ABSTRACT

In this article, we present insights from planners on their concepts of smart cities and their roles, perceptions, needs, and concerns related to the initiation and/or implementation of smart city projects. Our analysis is based on a survey of professional planners (n = 1,417) throughout the United States to study the tools, efforts, and concerns related to smart city planning. We also explore the role of smart city strategies and technologies in influencing planning processes and the function of cities, planning organizations, and local governments in this process. While most planners consider smart city planning as ‘proactive,’ ‘timely,’ and ‘needed,’ they identify several major issues, including a lack of agreement on what constitutes a smart city; a lack of demand from policymakers and citizens, resulting in little political will to implement smart city technologies; and a gap in understanding of the related issues concerning ethics, equity, and privacy.

KEYWORDS:

• Planning ethics
• equity
• digital divide

Acknowledgements

Our sincere thanks to Carissa Slotterback who collaborated with Nader Afzalan and APA to conduct the planners’ survey analyzed in this article. We humbly acknowledge APA for distributing the survey and all the AICP planners who responded. We thank Rowan University students Taryn Brickner, Devon Nealer, Hunter Swanson, and Christopher Tirri for providing research assistance and professional planners Jason Hachadorian and Kyle Hearing for providing technical assistance at various stages of the project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).