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Smart Cities: Definitions, Dimensions,

Performance, and Initiatives

Article in Journal of Urban Technology · February 2015

DOI: 10.1080/10630732.2014.942092

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 Journal of Urban Technology, 2015
Vol. 22, No. 1, 3–21, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10630732.2014.942092

Smart Cities: Definitions, Dimensions, Performance, and

Initiatives

Vito Albino, Umberto Berardi and Rosa Maria Dangelico

ABSTRACT As the term “smart city” gains wider and wider currency, there is still con-
fusion about what a smart city is, especially since several similar terms are often used
interchangeably. This paper aims to clarify the meaning of the word “smart” in the
context of cities through an approach based on an in-depth literature review of relevant
studies as well as official documents of international institutions. It also identifies the
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main dimensions and elements characterizing a smart city. The different metrics of
urban smartness are reviewed to show the need for a shared definition of what constitutes
a smart city, what are its features, and how it performs in comparison to traditional cities.
Furthermore, performance measures and initiatives in a few smart cities are identified.

KEYWORDS smart city; indicators; sustainability; urban development

Introduction
In the last two decades, the concept of “smart city” has become more and more
popular in scientific literature and international policies. To understand this
concept it is important to recognize why cities are considered key elements for
the future. Cities play a prime role in social and economic aspects worldwide,
and have a huge impact on the environment (Mori and Christodoulou, 2012).
According to the United Nations Population Fund, 2008 marked the year when
more than 50 percent of all people, 3.3 billion, lived in urban areas, a figure
expected to rise to 70 percent by 2050 (UN, 2008). In Europe, 75 percent of the
population already lives in urban areas and the number is expected to reach 80
percent by 2020. The importance of urban areas as a global phenomenon is con-
firmed by the diffusion of megacities of more than 20 million people in Asia,
Latin America, and Africa (UN, 2008). As a result, nowadays most resources are
consumed in cities worldwide, contributing to their economic importance, but
also to their poor environmental performance. Cities consume between 60
percent and 80 percent of energy worldwide and are responsible for large
shares of GHG emissions (UN, 2008). However, the lower the urban density, the
more energy is consumed for electricity and transportation, as proved by the
fact that CO2 emissions per capita drop with the increase of urban areas density
(Hammer et al., 2011).

Corresponding Address: Umberto Berardi, Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science,

Ryerson Universtiy, 325 Church Street, Toronto, Canada. Email: [email protected]

# 2015 The Society of Urban Technology

 4 Journal of Urban Technology

The metabolism of cities generally consists of the input of goods and the
output of waste with consistent negative externalities, which amplify social and
economic problems. Cities rely on too many external resources and, as a matter
of fact, they are (and probably will always be) consumers of resources. Promoting
sustainability has been interpreted through the promotion of natural capital
stocks. Other, more recent, interpretations of urban sustainability have promoted
a more anthropocentric approach, according to which cities should respond to
people’s needs through sustainable solutions for social and economic aspects
(Turcu, 2013; Berardi, 2013a; 2013b).
The current scenario requires cities to find ways to manage new challenges.
Cities worldwide have started to look for solutions which enable transportation
linkages, mixed land uses, and high-quality urban services with long-term posi-
tive effects on the economy. For instance, high-quality and more efficient public
transport that responds to economic needs and connects labor with employment
is considered a key element for city growth. Many of the new approaches related
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to urban services have been based on harnessing technologies, including ICT,

helping to create what some call “smart cities.”
The concept of the smart city is far from being limited to the application of
technologies to cities. In fact, the use of the term is proliferating in many sectors
with no agreed upon definitions. This has led to confusion among urban policy
makers, hoping to institute policies that will make their cities “smart.”
This paper seeks to advance state-of-the-art knowledge on what a smart city
is, what its key dimensions are, and how its performance can be evaluated. It is
based on a review of the literature, including peer reviewed papers published
after 2008. In particular, it is structured as follows. First, the main definitions of
“smart city” are reviewed, highlighting the different meanings given to this
concept and the several perspectives through which it has been studied; next, it
analyzes the key dimensions of a smart city; then it focuses on the measures of per-
formance of a smart city, reports on the experiences of so called, smart cities;
finally closing with a discussion of the main findings of the study.

Definitions of Smart Cities

Many definitions of smart cities exist. A range of conceptual variants is often
obtained by replacing “smart” with alternative adjectives, for example, “intelli-
gent” or “digital”. The label “smart city” is a fuzzy concept and is used in ways
that are not always consistent. There is neither a single template of framing a
smart city, nor a one-size-fits-all definition of it (O’Grady and O’Hare, 2012).
The term was first used in the 1990s. At that time, the focus was on the signifi-
cance of new ICT with regard to modern infrastructures within cities. The Califor-
nia Institute for Smart Communities was among the first to focus on how
communities could become smart and how a city could be designed to implement
information technologies (Alawadhi et al., 2012). Some years later, the Center of
Governance at the University of Ottawa started criticizing the idea of smart
cities as being too technically oriented. In this reading, the smart city should
have a strong governance-oriented approach which emphasizes the role of
social capital and relations in urban development. However, the “smart city”
label diffused in the first years of the new century as an “urban labelling”
phenomenon. A few years ago, researchers started asking real smart cities to
 Smart Cities: Definitions, Dimensions, Performance, and Initiatives 5

stand up and to show the many aspects that are hidden behind a self-declaratory
attribution of the label of “smart city” (Hollands, 2008).
Nam and Pardo (2011) investigated possible meanings of the term “smart” in
the smart city context. In particular, in the marketing language, “smartness” is a
more user-friendly term than the more elitist term “intelligent,” which is gener-
ally limited to having a quick mind and being responsive to feedback. Other
interpretations suggest that “smart” contains the term “intelligent,” because the
smartness is realized only when an intelligent system adapts itself to the users’
needs.
Harrison et al. (2010), in an IBM corporate document, stated that the term
“smart city” denotes an “instrumented, interconnected and intelligent city.”
“Instrumented” refers to the capability of capturing and integrating live real-
world data through the use of sensors, meters, appliances, personal devices,
and other similar sensors. “Interconnected” means the integration of these data
into a computing platform that allows the communication of such information
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among the various city services. “Intelligent” refers to the inclusion of complex
analytics, modelling, optimization, and visualization services to make better oper-
ational decisions (Harrison et al., 2010).
In the urban planning field, the term “smart city” is often treated as an ideo-
logical dimension according to which being smarter entails strategic directions.
Governments and public agencies at all levels are embracing the notion of smart-
ness to distinguish their policies and programs for targeting sustainable develop-
ment, economic growth, better quality of life for their citizens, and creating
happiness (Ballas, 2013).
Table 1 reports some of the different definitions and meanings given to the
concept of “smart city.” However, the table clarifies that the smart city concept
is no longer limited to the diffusion of ICT, but it looks at people and community
needs. Batty et al. (2012) clarified this aspect stressing that the diffusion of ICT in
cities has to improve the way every subsystem operates, with the goal of enhan-
cing the quality of life.
Nam and Pardo (2011) discussed the difference between the concept of the
smart city and other related terms, such as digital, intelligent or ubiquitous city,
along with the three categories of technology, people, and community. From the
technology perspective, a smart city is a city with a great presence of ICT
applied to critical infrastructure components and services (Washburn et al.,
2010). ICT permeate into intelligent-acting products and services, artificial intelli-
gence, and thinking machines (Klein and Kaefer, 2008). Smart homes and smart
buildings are examples of systems equipped with a multitude of mobile terminals
and embedded devices as well as connected sensors and actuators (Ghaffarian
Hoseini et al., 2013). Hancke et al. (2013) provide an overview of the state of the
art sensors used for monitoring physical infrastructure in a smart city and
discuss a large number of pertained applications. For example, advanced
energy sensing enables more accurate metering needed for the development of
urban smart energy grids, whereas mobility sensors improve traffic control
schemes. Worldwide research is currently focusing on the wireless sensor
network node technology, system miniaturization, intelligent wireless technology,
communication and heterogeneous network, network planning and deployment,
comprehensive perception and information processing, code resolution service,
searching, tracking, and information distribution to make a smart city the exten-
sion of a smart space to the entire city scale (Liu and Peng, 2013).
 6 Journal of Urban Technology

Table 1: Definitions of a smart city

Definition Source

Smart city as a high-tech intensive and advanced city that connects people, Bakıcı et al. (2012)
information and city elements using new technologies in order to create a
sustainable, greener city, competitive and innovative commerce, and an
increased life quality.
Being a smart city means using all available technology and resources in an Barrionuevo et al.
intelligent and coordinated manner to develop urban centers that are at (2012)
once integrated, habitable, and sustainable.
A city is smart when investments in human and social capital and traditional Caragliu et al. (2011)
(transport) and modern (ICT) communication infrastructure fuel
sustainable economic growth and a high quality of life, with a wise
management of natural resources, through participatory governance.
Smart cities will take advantage of communications and sensor capabilities Chen (2010)
sewn into the cities’ infrastructures to optimize electrical, transportation,
and other logistical operations supporting daily life, thereby improving
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the quality of life for everyone.

Two main streams of research ideas: 1) smart cities should do everything Cretu (2012)
related to governance and economy using new thinking paradigms and 2)
smart cities are all about networks of sensors, smart devices, real-time
data, and ICT integration in every aspect of human life.
Smart community – a community which makes a conscious decision to Eger (2009)
aggressively deploy technology as a catalyst to solving its social and
business needs – will undoubtedly focus on building its high-speed
broadband infrastructures, but the real opportunity is in rebuilding and
renewing a sense of place, and in the process a sense of civic pride. [ . . . ]
Smart communities are not, at their core, exercises in the deployment and
use of technology, but in the promotion of economic development, job
growth, and an increased quality of life. In other words, technological
propagation of smart communities isn’t an end in itself, but only a means
to reinventing cities for a new economy and society with clear and
compelling community benefit.
A smart city is based on intelligent exchanges of information that flow Gartner (2011)
between its many different subsystems. This flow of information is
analyzed and translated into citizen and commercial services. The city will
act on this information flow to make its wider ecosystem more resource-
efficient and sustainable. The information exchange is based on a smart
governance operating framework designed to make cities sustainable.
A city well performing in a forward-looking way in economy, people, Giffinger et al. (2007)
governance, mobility, environment, and living, built on the smart
combination of endowments and activities of self-decisive, independent
and aware citizens. Smart city generally refers to the search and
identification of intelligent solutions which allow modern cities to enhance
the quality of the services provided to citizens.
A smart city, according to ICLEI, is a city that is prepared to provide Guan (2012)
conditions for a healthy and happy community under the challenging
conditions that global, environmental, economic and social trends may
bring.
A city that monitors and integrates conditions of all of its critical Hall (2000)
infrastructures, including roads, bridges, tunnels, rails, subways, airports,
seaports, communications, water, power, even major buildings, can better
optimize its resources, plan its preventive maintenance activities, and
monitor security aspects while maximizing services to its citizens.
A city connecting the physical infrastructure, the IT infrastructure, the social Harrison et al. (2010)
infrastructure, and the business infrastructure to leverage the collective
intelligence of the city.

(Continued)
 Smart Cities: Definitions, Dimensions, Performance, and Initiatives 7

Table 1: Continued
Definition Source

(Smart) cities as territories with high capacity for learning and innovation, Komninos (2011)
which is built-in the creativity of their population, their institutions of
knowledge creation, and their digital infrastructure for communication
and knowledge management.
Smart cities are the result of knowledge-intensive and creative strategies Kourtit and Nijkamp
aiming at enhancing the socio-economic, ecological, logistic and (2012)
competitive performance of cities. Such smart cities are based on a
promising mix of human capital (e.g. skilled labor force), infrastructural
capital (e.g. high-tech communication facilities), social capital (e.g. intense
and open network linkages) and entrepreneurial capital (e.g. creative and
risk-taking business activities).
Smart cities have high productivity as they have a relatively high share of Kourtit et al. (2012)
highly educated people, knowledge-intensive jobs, output-oriented
planning systems, creative activities and sustainability-oriented
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initiatives.
Smart city [refers to] a local entity - a district, city, region or small country IDA (2012)
-which takes a holistic approach to employ[ing] information technologies
with real-time analysis that encourages sustainable economic
development.
A community of average technology size, interconnected and sustainable, Lazaroiu and Roscia
comfortable, attractive and secure. (2012)
The application of information and communications technology (ICT) with Lombardi et al. (2012)
their effects on human capital/education, social and relational capital, and
environmental issues is often indicated by the notion of smart city.
A smart city infuses information into its physical infrastructure to improve Nam and Pardo (2011)
conveniences, facilitate mobility, add efficiencies, conserve energy,
improve the quality of air and water, identify problems and fix them
quickly, recover rapidly from disasters, collect data to make better
decisions, deploy resources effectively, and share data to enable
collaboration across entities and domains.
Creative or smart city experiments [ . . . ] aimed at nurturing a creative Thite (2011)
economy through investment in quality of life which in turn attracts
knowledge workers to live and work in smart cities. The nexus of
competitive advantage has [ . . . ] shifted to those regions that can generate,
retain, and attract the best talent.
Smart cities of the future will need sustainable urban development policies Thuzar (2011)
where all residents, including the poor, can live well and the attraction of
the towns and cities is preserved. [ . . . ] Smart cities are cities that have a
high quality of life; those that pursue sustainable economic development
through investments in human and social capital, and traditional and
modern communications infrastructure (transport and information
communication technology); and manage natural resources through
participatory policies. Smart cities should also be sustainable, converging
economic, social, and environmental goals.
A smart city is understood as a certain intellectual ability that addresses Zygiaris (2013)
several innovative socio-technical and socio-economic aspects of growth.
These aspects lead to smart city conceptions as “green” referring to urban
infrastructure for environment protection and reduction of CO2 emission,
“interconnected” related to revolution of broadband economy,
“intelligent” declaring the capacity to produce added value information
from the processing of city’s real-time data from sensors and activators,
whereas the terms “innovating”, “knowledge” cities interchangeably refer
to the city’s ability to raise innovation based on knowledgeable and
creative human capital.

(Continued)
 8 Journal of Urban Technology

Table 1: Continued
Definition Source

The use of Smart Computing technologies to make the critical infrastructure Washburn et al. (2010)
components and services of a city—which include city administration,
education, healthcare, public safety, real estate, transportation, and
utilities—more intelligent, interconnected, and efficient.
Smart Cities initiatives try to improve urban performance by using data, Marsal-Llacuna et al.
information and information technologies (IT) to provide more efficient (2014)
services to citizens, to monitor and optimize existing infrastructure, to
increase collaboration among different economic actors, and to encourage
innovative business models in both the private and public sectors.

For corporations such as IBM, Cisco Systems, and Siemens AG, the techno-
logical component is the key component to their conceptions of smart cities.
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Their approach has recently been critiqued by authors such as Adam Greenfield
who argues in Against the Smart City (2013) that corporate-designed cities such
as Songdo (Korea), Masdar City (UAE), or PlanIT Valley (Portugal) eschew
actual knowledge about how cities function and represent “empty” spaces that
disregard the value of complexity, unplanned scenarios, and the mixed uses of
urban spaces. There are authors, however, who have shown that technology
could be used in cities to empower citizens by adapting those technologies to
their needs rather than adapting their lives to technological exigencies (Cugurullo,
2013, Kitchin, 2014, Vanolo, 2014).
There are terms analogous to “smart cities” that add to the cacophony of
terms relating to this phenomenon. As already stated, possible confusion
related to the technology perspective of a smart city comes from the top-down
and company-driven actions taken for creating a smart city. However, it also
comes from the confusion with other similar terms, such as digital, intelligent,
virtual, or ubiquitous city. These terms refer to more specific and less inclusive
levels of a city, so that the concepts of smart cities often include them (Caragliu
et al., 2011; Deakin and Al Waer, 2011; Townsend, 2013). For example a digital
city refers to “a connected community that combines broadband communications
infrastructure to meet the needs of governments, citizens, and businesses”
(Ishida, 2002). The final goal of a digital city is to create an environment for infor-
mation sharing, collaboration, interoperability, and seamless experiences anywhere
in the city.
The notion of the “intelligent city” emerges at the crossing of the knowledge
society with the digital city (Yovanof and Hazapis, 2009). According to Komninos
et al. (2013), intelligent cities make conscious efforts to use information technology
to transform life and work. The label intelligent implies the ability to support
learning, technological development, and innovation in cities; in this sense,
every digital city is not necessarily intelligent, but every intelligent city has
digital components, although the “people” component is still not included in an
intelligent city, as it is in a smart city (Woods, 2013). In a “virtual city,” the city
becomes a hybrid concept that consists of a reality, with its physical entities and
real inhabitants, and a parallel virtual city of counterparts, a cyberspace. A
“ubiquitous city” is an extension of the digital city concept in terms of wide acces-
sibility. It makes the ubiquitous computing available to the urban elements every-
where (Greenfield, 2006; Townsend, 2013). Its characteristic is the creation of an
 Smart Cities: Definitions, Dimensions, Performance, and Initiatives 9

environment where any citizen can get any service anywhere and anytime
through any device. The ubiquitous city is different from the virtual city
because, while the virtual city reproduces urban elements by visualizing them
within virtual space, the ubiquitous city is created by the inclusion of computer
chips or sensors in urban elements (Lee et al., 2013).
As stated previously, the component that is missing in previous terms is that
of people. These are the protagonists of a smart city, who shape it through continu-
ous interactions. For this reason, other terms have often been associated with the
concept of the smart city. For example, creativity is recognized as a key driver of
smart city, and thus education, learning, and knowledge have central roles in a
smart city (Thuzar, 2011). The notion of a smart city includes creating a climate
suitable for an emerging creative class (Florida, 2002, 2005). The social infrastruc-
ture, such as intellectual and social capital, is an indispensable endowment to
smart cities as it allows “connecting people and creating relationships” (Alawadhi
et al., 2012). Smart people generate and benefit from the social capital of a city, so
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the smart city concept acquires the meaning of a mix of education/training,

culture/arts, and business/commerce with hybrid social, cultural, and economic
enterprises (Winters, 2011).
Focusing on education, Winters (2011) clarifies that a smart city is a center of
higher education, better-educated individuals, and skilled workforces. Smart
cities act as magnets for creative people and workers, and this allows the creation
of a virtuous circle making them smarter and smarter. Consequently, a smart city
has multiple opportunities to exploit its human potential and promote a creative
life (Partridge, 2004). Glaeser and Berry (2006) showed that the most rapid urban
growth rates have been achieved in cities where a high share of the educated labor
force is available. The buzz concept of being clever, smart, skillful, creative, net-
worked, connected, and competitive becomes a key ingredient of knowledge-
based urban development (Dirks et al., 2010).
The term “knowledge city” has emerged from discussions about smart cities. It
is a city that encourages the nurturing of knowledge (Edvinsson, 2006, Baqir and
Kathawala, 2008, Yigitcanlar et al., 2008). There has been an explosion of literature
about this term in the last several years. The development of a knowledge-based
urban environments has recently been spurred by the advancement of new cloud
technologies used for urban monitoring systems. In fact, as sensors collect terabytes
of information, data need to be aggregated and processed (Hancke et al., 2013).
Mitton et al. (2012) describe the potential of integrating cloud and sensors in
smart cities and present a new architecture that provides the capability of obtaining
any type of data acquired from different sensing infrastructures. In some cases, these
technologies subvert the top-down, corporate vision some offer as a smart city.
Instead, the large-scale diffusion of new sensors in devices such as smartphones
allows individuals to share data collectively and extract information instantly.
Another category used by Nam and Pardo (2011) for clarifying the concept of
the smart city is that of community. This perspective starts from the previous
bottom-up knowledge scheme, and it aims at inspiring the sense of community
among citizens. The importance of this factor emulates the concept of smart com-
munities where members and institutions work in partnership to transform their
environment (Berardi, 2013a, 2013b). This means that the community of a smart
city needs to feel the desire to participate and promote a (smart) growth. The
concept of smart growth was largely used in the 1990s within the framework of
New Urbanism, as a community-driven reaction to worsening trends in traffic
 10 Journal of Urban Technology

congestion, school overcrowding, air pollution, loss of open space, effacement of

valued historic places, and skyrocketing public facility costs (Eger, 2009). These
goals are still among the reasons smart cities are attractive.
Perhaps a reason that there is no general agreement about the term “smart
cities” is that the term has been applied to two different kinds of “domains.” It
has, on the one hand, been applied to “hard” domains such as, buildings,
energy grids, natural resources, water management, waste management, mobility,
and logistics (Neirotti et al, 2014), where ICT can play a decisive role in the func-
tions of the systems. On the other hand, the term has also been applied to “soft
domains” such as, education, culture, policy innovations, social inclusion, and
government, where the application of ICT are not usually decisive.

Dimensions of a Smart City

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Dirks and Keeling (2009) stress the importance of the organic integration of a city’s
various systems (transportation, energy, education, health care, buildings, physical
infrastructure, food, water, and public safety) in creating a smart city. Researchers
who support this integrated view of a smart city often underline that in a dense
environment, like that of cities, no system operates in isolation. Kanter and Litow
(2009) stress this aspect in their Manifesto for Smarter Cities, where they affirm that
infusing intelligence into each subsystem of a city, one by one, is insufficient to
create a smart city, as this should be treated as an organic whole. However, many
researchers, with the intent of clarifying what constitutes a smart city have separated
this concept into many features and dimensions, justifying this decision with the
complexity of managing the smart city concept in a holistic way.
Komninos (2002, 2011) in his attempt to delineate the features of an intelligent
city, indicated that this has four possible dimensions (attention should be paid to the
less inclusive reference to “intelligent” instead of “smart” city). The first dimension
concerns the application of a wide range of electronic and digital technologies
to create a cyber, digital, wired, informational or knowledge-based city; the
second is the use of information technology to transform life and work; the
third is to embed ICT in the city infrastructure; the fourth is to bring ICT and
people together to enhance innovation, learning, and knowledge.
Giffinger et al. (2007) identified four components of a smart city: industry,
education, participation, and technical infrastructure. This list has since been
expanded in a recent project conducted by the Centre of Regional Science at the
Vienna University of Technology which has identified six main components (Gif-
finger and Gudrun, 2010). These components are a smart economy, smart mobility,
a smart environment, smart people, smart living, and smart governance. These
writers rely on the traditional and neoclassical theories of urban growth and
development: regional competitiveness, transport and ICT economics, natural
resources, human and social capital, quality of life, and participation of society
members. Particularly interesting in the previous list of components of a smart
city is the inclusion of the “quality of life.” This component emphasizes the defi-
nition of a smart city as a city that increases the life quality of its citizens (Giffinger
et al., 2007). However, many researchers argue that quality of life may not rep-
resent a separate dimension of a smart city, as all the actions taken in the other
areas should have the objective of raising the quality of life, so that this represents
the basic component (Shapiro, 2006).
 Smart Cities: Definitions, Dimensions, Performance, and Initiatives 11

Table 2: Components of a smart city and related aspects (adapted from Lombardi
et al., 2012)
Components of a smart city Related aspect of urban life

smart economy Industry

smart people education
smart governance e-democracy
smart mobility logistics & infrastructures
smart environment efficiency & sustainability
smart living security & quality

Lombardi et al. (2012) have associated the six components with different
aspects of urban life, as shown in Table 2. The smart economy has been associated
with the presence of industries in the field of ICT or employing ICT in production
processes. Smart mobility refers to the use of ICT in modern transport technol-
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ogies to improve urban traffic. Aspects referring to the preservation of the

natural environment in cities are extensively covered in Giffinger et al. (2007),
and Albino and Dangelico (2012).
According to Nam and Pardo (2011), the key components of a smart city are
the technology, the people (creativity, diversity, and education), and the insti-
tutions (governance and policy). Connections exist between these last two com-
ponents, so that a city is really smart when investments in human and social
capital, together with ICT infrastructures, fuel sustainable growth and enhance
the quality of life. Although the point of view of this paper is to go beyond the
simple identification of a smart city with the dense presence of ICT, these are
surely a key element as they transform life and work. A smart city surely provides
some sort of interoperable and Internet-based government services that enable
ubiquitous connectivity and transform key government processes towards citi-
zens and businesses (Al-Hader et al., 2009). However, smart cities must integrate
technologies, systems, services, and capabilities into an organic network that is
sufficiently multi-sectorial and flexible for future developments, and moreover,
open-access. This means that ICT must be a facilitator for creating a new type of
communicative environment, which requires the comprehensive and balanced
development of creative skills, innovation-oriented institutions, broadband net-
works, and virtual collaborative spaces (Komninos, 2011). Paskaleva (2011) exten-
sively discussed the topics of open innovation, and user engagement, and the risk
that a strong corporate-based approach to creating smart cities may pose risks for
the independence of governments.
Smarter cities start from the human capital side, rather than blindly believing
that ICT can automatically create a smart city (Shapiro, 2006, Holland, 2008).
Approaches towards education and leadership in a smart city should offer
environments for an entrepreneurship accessible to all citizens. The smart govern-
ance instead of being elective, needs ridding of barriers related to language,
culture, education, and disabilities. The smart people factor comprises various
aspects, like affinity to lifelong learning, social and ethnic plurality, flexibility,
creativity, cosmopolitanism, open-mindedness, and participation in public life
(Nam and Pardo, 2011). Also problems associated with urban agglomerations
can be solved by creativity, human capital, and cooperation among relevant stake-
holders (Baron, 2012). Therefore, the label “smart city” should refer to the capacity
of clever people to generate clever solutions to urban problems.
 12 Journal of Urban Technology

Smart governance means various stakeholders are engaged in decision

making and public services. ICT-mediated governance, also called e-governance,
is fundamental in bringing smart city initiatives to citizens, and to keeping the
decision and implementation process transparent. However, the spirit of e-gov-
ernance in a smart city should be citizen-centric and citizen-driven. Table 3

Table 3: Key dimensions of a smart city

Key dimensions of a smart city Source

IT education Mahizhnan (1999)

IT infrastructure
IT economy
quality of life
economy Giffinger et al. (2007)
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mobility
environment
people
governance
technology Eger (2009)
economic development
job growth
increased quality of life
quality of life Thuzar (2011)
sustainable economic development
management of natural resources through participatory policies
convergence of economic, social, and environmental goals
economic socio-political issues of the city Nam and Pardo (2011)
economic-technical-social issues of the environment
interconnection
instrumentation
integration
applications
innovations
economic (GDP, sector strength, international transactions, foreign Barrionuevo et al. (2012)
investment)
human (talent, innovation, creativity, education)
social (traditions, habits, religions, families)
environmental (energy policies, waste and water management,
landscape)
institutional (civic engagement, administrative authority, elections)
human capital (e.g. skilled labor force) Kourtit and Nijkamp
infrastructural capital (e.g. high-tech communication facilities) (2012)
social capital (e.g. intense and open network linkages)
entrepreneurial capital (e.g. creative and risk-taking business activities)
management and organizations Chourabi et al. (2102)
technology
governance
policy context
people and communities
economy
built infrastructure
natural environment
 Smart Cities: Definitions, Dimensions, Performance, and Initiatives 13

outlines the dimensions of “smart city” as advanced by various scholars of the

phenomenon.
The most common characteristics of smart cities emerging from this table are:
. a city’s networked infrastructure that enables political efficiency and social and
cultural development
. an emphasis on business-led urban development and creative activities for the
promotion of urban growth
. social inclusion of various urban residents and social capital in urban develop-
ment
. the natural environment as a strategic component for the future.

Measures of Performance
Different methods and measurement indices have been developed so far accord-
ing to the several meanings of the concept of smart city reviewed in previous sec-
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tions. Rating systems through synthetic quantitative indicators are receiving

increasing attention among city managers and policy makers to decide where to
focus time and resources, as well as to communicate city performance to citizens,
visitors, and investors (Berardi, 2013a, 2013b). One of the values of these systems is
the capacity to represent a metric of comparison, which overcomes self-proclama-
tions of being a smart city. This section aims to report, through a description of
existing rating systems, the indicators that are currently used to assess smart
city initiatives. Moreover, at the end of this section some notes about the use of
these systems for city rankings is reported.
The University of Vienna developed an assessment metric to rank 70 Euro-
pean medium-sized cities (Giffinger et al., 2007). This metric uses specific indi-
cators for each of the six identified dimensions of a smart city (See Table 3). For
example, smart mobility is divided into local accessibility, international accessibil-
ity, availability of ICT-infrastructure, and sustainable and safe transport systems.
Another assessment system has been developed by the Intelligent Community
Forum, which annually announces cities awarded as Smart 21 Communities.
This metric is based on five factors: broadband connectivity, a knowledgeable
workforce, digital inclusion, innovation, and marketing and advocacy. More
recently, Zygiaris (2013) developed a measurement system, identifying six
layers of a smart city: the city layer, emphasizing that smart city notions must be
grounded into the context of a city; the green city layer, inspired by new urbaniz-
ation theories of urban environmental sustainability; the interconnection layer, cor-
responding to the city-wide diffusion of green economies; the instrumentation layer,
emphasizing that smart cities require real-time system responses made by smart
meters and infrastructure sensors; the open integration layer, highlighting that
smart cities applications should be able to communicate, and share data,
content, services, and information; the application layer, useful for smart cities to
mirror real-time city operations into new levels of intelligently responsive oper-
ation; and the innovation layer, emphasizing that smart cities create a fertile inno-
vation environment for new business opportunities.
A methodology to assess “the smart city index” has recently been proposed
by Lazaroiu and Roscia (2012). The index helped the distribution of European
funds in the 2020 strategic plan. The indicators which contributed to this index
are not homogeneous and require a large amount of information. The problem
of information availability and the difficulty in assigning weights for summing
 14 Journal of Urban Technology

together the considered indicators are among the limits of this method. The
proposed approach uses a fuzzy procedure that allows defining a set of weights
for combining the different indicators according to their relative importance.
A more sophisticated system to measure the smartness of a city has been pro-
posed by Lombardi et al. (2012). These authors used a modified version of the
triple helix model, a reference framework for the analysis of knowledge-based
innovation systems that relates the three main agencies of knowledge creation:
universities, industry, and government (Leydesdorff and Deakin, 2011). The
authors added a new agent of knowledge creation to the previous three, the
civil society, determining a four helices model. For each of the four drivers of inno-
vation, they propose indicators of a smart city according to five clusters (Lombardi
et al., 2012). This framework of analysis is composed of 60 indicators selected after
a literature review which included EU project reports, the Urban Audit dataset,
statistics of the European Commission, the European Green City Index, TISSUE,
Trends and Indicators for Monitoring the EU Thematic Strategy on Sustainable
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Development of Urban Environment, and the smart cities ranking of European

medium-sized cities. Surprisingly, they excluded the smart mobility dimension
(Lombardi et al., 2012). Table 4 reports the complete list of indicators proposed
by Lombardi et al. (2012) and Lazaroiu and Roscia (2012).
Carli et al. (2013) have recently proposed a framework to analyze and
compare measurement systems for smart cities. They suggest dividing the
measurement indicators into two categories: objective and subjective, and to con-

Table 4: List of indicators for smart cities assessment in some rating systems.
No.
Source indicators Indicators of a smart city

Lombardi et al. 60 smart economy: Public expenditure on R&D, Public expenditure

(2012) on education, GDP per head of city population,
Unemployment rate, . . .
smart people: Percentage of population with secondary-level
education, Foreign language skills, Participation in life-long
learning, Individual level of computer skills, Patent
applications per inhabitant, . . .
smart governance: Number of universities and research centers in
the city, e-Government on-line availability, Percentage of
households with Internet access at home, e-Government use
by individuals, . . .
smart environment: ambitiousness of CO2 emission reduction
strategy, Efficient use of electricity, Efficient use of water, Area
in green space, Greenhouse gas emission intensity of energy
consumption, Policies to contain urban sprawl, Proportion of
recycled waste, . . .
smart living: Proportion of the area for recreational sports and
leisure use, Number of public libraries, Total book loans and
other media, Museum visits, Theater and cinema attendance
Lazaroiu and 18 Pollution, Innovative spirits, CO2, Transparent governance,
Roscia (2012) Sustainable resource management, Education facilities, Health
conditions, Sustainable, innovative and safe public
transportation, Pedestrian areas, Cycle lanes, Green areas,
Production of solid municipal waste, GWh household, Fuels,
Political strategies and perspectives, Availability of ICT
infrastructure, Flexibility of labor market
 Smart Cities: Definitions, Dimensions, Performance, and Initiatives 15

sider both physical infrastructures and context data together with citizens’ satis-
faction and perception of well-being. These authors also focused on the way in
which indicators are measured, and revealed that together with traditional
tools, new indicators for well-being are increasingly assessed through real-time
data sensing, such as social network messages.
Many rankings are currently used to determine the smartness of cities in terms
of comparisons of practices with other cities. The Global Power City Index was
created by the Japanese Institute for Urban Strategies, and it is based on a collection
of observed data, complemented with information on the perception of various sta-
keholders. This index maps out the strengths and weaknesses of cities and ranks
them in a broadly composed comparative analysis, according to their comprehen-
sive socioeconomic potential to attract creative people and excellent companies. As
stated previously, the University of Vienna has ranked 70 middle-sized cities
according to the metrics defined in Giffinger et al. (2007). Meanwhile, in the
Unites States, the Natural Resources Defense Council has developed the Smarter
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Cities Ranking, which is characterized by a strong bias toward environmental-

related criteria (IDA, 2012). Forbes, with the support of the scientist Joel Kotkin,
published a list of the world’s Smartest Cities. This ranking considers a city that
is compact and efficient and provides favorable economic conditions. Considering
that this ranking encourages a city to be an economic hub, an international trade
and global city, it is not surprising that Singapore was considered the smartest
city in this ranking (IDA, 2012). Urban ranking such as the IBM Smart City or the
McKinsey Global Institute rankings periodically compare and classify urban
areas (Arribas-Bel et al., 2013). Previous ranks help show good practices and may
serve as an instrument for enhancing territorial capital and defining urban policies.

Experiences of Smart Cities

At the beginning of 2013, there were approximately 143 ongoing or completed self-
designated smart city projects (Lee at al., 2014). Among these initiatives, North
America had 35 projects; Europe, 47; Asia 50; South America 10; and the Middle
East and Africa 10 (Lee at al., 2014). In Canada, Ottawa’s “Smart Capital”
project involves enhancing business, local government, and community through
the use of Internet resources. Quebec City was a city highly dependent upon its
provincial government because of its weak industry until the early 1990s, when
the city government kicked off a public-private partnership to support a
growing multimedia sector and high-tech entrepreneurship. In the United
States, Riverside, California has been improving traffic flow and replacing aging
water, sewer and electric infrastructure through a tech-based transformation. In
San Diego and San Francisco, ICT have been major factors in allowing these
cities to claim to be a “City of the Future” for the last 15 years (Lee et al., 2014).
The European Union has put in place smart city actions in several cities,
including in Barcelona, Amsterdam, Berlin, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Bath.
In the United Kingdom, almost 15 years ago, Southampton claimed to be the coun-
try’s first smart city after the development of its multi-application smartcard for
public transportation, recreation, and leisure-related transactions. Similarly,
Tallinn has developed a large-scale digital skills training program, extensive
e-government, and an award-winning smart ID card. This city is the center of
economic development for all of Estonia, harnessing ICT by fostering high-tech
 16 Journal of Urban Technology

parks. The European Commission has introduced smart cities in line 5 of the
Seventh Framework Program for Research and Technological Development.
This program provides financial support to facilitate the implementation of a Stra-
tegic Energy Technology plan (SET-Plan) through schemes related to “Smart cities
and communities” (Vanolo, 2014).
According to the statistics of the Chinese Smart Cities Forum, six provinces and
51 cities have included Smart Cities in their government work reports in China; of
these, 36 are under new concentrated construction (Liu and Peng, 2013). Chinese
smart cities are distributed densely over the Pearl and Yangtze River Deltas, Bohai
Rim, and the Midwest area. Moreover, smart cities initiatives spread in all first-tier
cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. The general approach followed in
this city is to introduce some ICT during the construction of new infrastructure,
with some attention to environmental issues but limited attention to social aspects.
Cugurullo (2013) has extensively described the genesis of Masdar City, one of
the most well-known examples of new cities built according to the eco-city para-
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digm. Although this city was planned around the concept of sustainable develop-
ment, it promised to be strongly grounded in economic concerns. Several people
looked at this as an example of a free-economic high-tech market in an area con-
necting Asia and Europe. Economic crises have slowed this initiative, which was
highly criticized for its corporate-pushed approach. Social requests and dreams of
the local populations are hidden behind formal designs of the city, which unfortu-
nately seems unable to overcome the limits of new planned cities.
Several Southeast Asian cities such as Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong are
following a similar approach, promoting economic growth through smart city pro-
grams. Singapore’s IT2000 plan was designed to create an “intelligent island,” with
information technology transforming work, life, and play. More recently, Singapore
has extensively been dedicated to implement its Master Plan iN 2015 and has
already completed the Wireless@SG goal of providing free mobile Internet access
anywhere in the city (IDA, 2012). Taoyuan in Taiwan is supporting its economy
to improve the quality of living through a series of government projects such as
E-Taoyuan and U-Taoyuan for creating e-governance and ubiquitous possibilities.
Another country that is trying extensively to implement smart city projects is
Korea (Yigitcanlar and Lee, 2014). The largest smart city initiative in Korea is
Songdo, a new town built from the ground in the last decade and which plans to
house 75,000 inhabitants with an original estimated cost of $35 billion (already
halved at the time of this writing). The plan includes installing a tele-presence in
every apartment in order to create an urban space in which every resident can trans-
mit information using various devices, whereas a city central brain should manage
the huge amount of information (Shwayri, 2013, Halpern et al., 2013). At present,
there are 13 projects in progress towards the smart city initiatives of New
Songdo. This project suffers all the contradictions indicated in Masdar, and it is
not surprising that some people criticize these examples as real estate initiatives,
where the “smart” label is included as a consequence of the simple adoption of
some modern ICT. Surely, these cities show a strong link to neoliberal urban devel-
opment policies where the construction of a smart city image becomes useful to
attract investments, leading sector professionals, and workers (Vanolo, 2014).
In order to show some multi-sectorial initiatives promoted within strategies
for smart cities, Table 5 reports the different projects promoted by three cities,
two in North America and one in Europe. This table shows the importance of
cross-sectorial implications and social related aspects that some smart city initiat-
 Smart Cities: Definitions, Dimensions, Performance, and Initiatives 17

Table 5: Examples of initiatives promoted in three smart cities (Hatzelhoffer et al.

2012, Lee et al., 2014, and city websites).
Cities (Smart City) Initiatives

Seattle, US Seattle.gov portal with 20+ language support

data.seatle.gov allows open data and open government
Community Technology Planner
Equitable Justice Delivery System
Communities Online
Puget Sound-Off
Smart Grid
Automated Metering Infrastructure
Pacific Northwest Regional Demonstration Project
Fiber to the premise
GigU seeks to accelerate the deployment of ultra-high-speed networks to
leading U.S. universities and their surrounding communities
Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition
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Drainage and Waste Water System

Rain Watch Program
Field Operations Management System
Common Operating Picture
IT Cloud
Electronic Plan Review System
Digital Evidence Management System
Quebec City, CA Zap Quebec providing Wi-Fi internet access
Text messaging service of snow cleaning information
Snow cleaning management project: providing sensors at each snow cleaning
machine
Inter-cities network: connecting with major cities of the province of Quebec
Mobile homepage: developing a mobile version of the city’s website
Infrastructure management system: integrating different information systems
to coordinate activities related to infrastructure management
Open data initiative: making city data open
Online transportation control system
Friedrichshafen, GPS distress signal, in an emergency, people can send a signal by touching their
DE cell phone
Mobile Clinic system enables the interactive remote monitoring of patients with
chronic heart conditions
KatCard E-ticketing project enables the non-cash purchase of tickets
Edunex is a web-based educational platform for schools
Secured EduKey allows secure access to Edunex biometrically
Smart Metering provides customers with information about their electricity and
gas consumption.
Digital picture frame has an integrated wireless module and receives digital
photos via the Deutsche Telekom network
CityInfo allows requesting short info on various topics via the SMS information
service.
Multimedia Stations provide information and services free of charge in the areas
of city
Hearing impaired telephones for deaf people access to a sign language
interpreting service, using special video telephones
SZ News adds a local dimension to the Internet Protocol Television information
services.
Tourism portal www.friedrichshafen.info compiles all important information
required for a stay in Friedrichshafen.
With G/On, employees can access their work stations securely from anywhere in
the world.
dDesk allows applications and data are stored on the cloud on a central server.
T-Mobile emergency number supports the coordination of rescue services in
Friedrichshafen.
 18 Journal of Urban Technology

ives have implemented in practice. For example, in the case of Friedrichshafen,

education and integration are deeply considered in several projects. In order to
avoid ambiguity with the scope of this paper, the fashion high-tech projects
such as Masdar and Songdo are not included in this table. The reader will find
extensive literature about these cases in Cugurullo (2013), Greenfield (2013), Liu
and Peng (2013), Halpern et al. (2013), and Shwayri (2013).

Conclusions
This paper attempts to clarify the meaning of a concept that is getting increasingly
popular—that of the smart city. An in-depth analysis of the literature revealed that
the meaning of a smart city is multi-faceted. Descriptions of smart cities are now
including qualities of people and communities as well as ICTs. Many elements
and dimensions characterizing a smart city emerged from the analysis of the exist-
ing literature.
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Results show how complicated the measurement of a smart city is. Some
attempts to create all-embracing indexes have been reviewed. However, this
paper was not meant to define a new framework for the assessment of the smart-
ness of a city, since the authors believe that such an assessment should be tailored
to a particular city’s vision. A universal fixed system may be difficult to define
with the variety of characteristics of cities worldwide. However, it has been
made clear that the definitions posed by particular cities calling themselves
“smart cities” lack universality.
A smart city assessment must take into account that cities have different
visions and priorities for achieving their objectives, but they must promote an
integrated development of different aspects, both hard and soft. At the same
time, the authors demonstrated the problems of many ranking systems that led
to a loss of information on the complexity of smart cities.
This study showed how cities can be considered “smart” by reviewing defi-
nitions, components, and measures of performance of cities. We hope that this
paper will be useful to policy makers in learning how to identify smart cities, to
plan incentives for their development, and to monitor the “smart” progress of
their cities.

Acknowledgments
This research was written as a part of the project “RES NOVAE - Reti, Edifici,
Strade, Nuovi Obiettivi Virtuosi per l’Ambiente e l’Energia” supported by the
Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research.

Notes on Contributors
Vito Albino, Department of Mechanics, Mathematics and Management, Politec-
nico di Bari, Viale Japigia, 182 - 70126 - Bari, Italy

Umberto Berardi, Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science, Ryerson Uni-

versity, 325 Church Street, Toronto, Canada

Rosa Maria Dangelico, Department of Computer, Control, and Management

Engineering, Sapienza - University of Rome, Via Ariosto, 25 - 00185 - Rome, Italy
 Smart Cities: Definitions, Dimensions, Performance, and Initiatives 19

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