Bench-Marking, Sustainability and Governance Aspects of Smart Cities

Abstract

Abstract
Smart cities highlight important aspects of sustainability, such as the need for responsible resource management, energy efficiency, and citizen engagement. Smart cities are highly complex and interdependent, since they are built from large, interconnected systems. Studying them would therefore require an approach that works well in complexity. By studying the smart city concept through a Strategic Sustainable Development (SSD) approach, one is able to examine it from a systems perspective, and evaluate whether sustainability can be reached in a strategic manner. The SSD approach can be applied through a framework, referred to as the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD). The smart city concept is a powerful approach for moving cities towards sustainability in an increasingly urbanized world. Through the application of an SSD approach, current sustainability limitations of the smart city concept can be mitigated, leading cities to develop towards sustainability in a more efficient and effective manner. Benchmarking has the purpose to compare smart cities with each other based on various constructs and factors. The benchmarks look sometimes at completely different aspects which hampers comparison. This makes it hard or even impossible to compare the benchmarking outcomes with each other. In one benchmark, a city might be doing well, whereas the same city might be performing lower in another benchmark. In recent years, there have been many approaches to benchmark smart cities. Existing standards mainly focus on urban sustainability and resilience, which demonstrate that smart city efforts are, or will be placed mainly on these directions. In the governance of urban areas, city managers are faced with the challenge of balancing three overriding concerns: achieving a high quality of life for all citizens, maintaining economic competitiveness and protecting the natural environment (GlobeScan & MRC McLean Hazel, 2007). More and more, ICT is becoming a vital tool in the governance balancing act as buildings, transport networks and utilities systems (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2010). There seems to be a great potential for the application of ICT in the governance of the change that urban areas will have to undergo in the decades to come. In order to deliver on their promises, such technologies will have to be employed not only to increase the intelligence of socioeconomic systems but also to establish incentive structures promoting the creation of sustainable public value. The real smart city – in fact – will have to learn how to reconcile individual and collective needs, in other words to channel individual aspirations towards the creation of value for society at large through the attainment of economic, social and environmental objectives. In this paper, we will discuss some of the important dimensions of sustainability, benchmarking of laid down standards and governance aspects of the Smart cities.

Keywords: benchmarking, governance, smart cities, sustainability