Abstract
City assessment tools can be used as support for decision
making in urban development as they provide assessment
methodologies for cities to show the progress towards
defined targets. In the 21st century, there has been a
shift from sustainability assessment to smart city goals.
We analyze 16 sets of city assessment frameworks (eight
smart city and eight urban sustainability assessment
frameworks) comprising 958 indicators altogether by
dividing the indicators under three impact categories and
12 sectors. The following main observations derive from
the analyses: as expected, there is a much stronger focus
on modern technologies and "smartness" in the smart city
frameworks compared to urban sustainability frameworks.
Another observation is that as urban sustainability
frameworks contain a large number of indicators measuring
environmental sustainability, smart city frameworks lack
environmental indicators while highlighting social and
economic aspects. A general goal of smart cities is to
improve sustainability with help of technologies. Thus,
we recommend the use of a more accurate term "smart
sustainable cities" instead of smart cities. However, the
current large gap between smart city and sustainable city
frameworks suggest that there is a need for developing
smart city frameworks further or re-defining the smart
city concept. We recommend that the assessment of smart
city performance should not only use output indicators
that measure the efficiency of deployment of smart
solutions but also impact indicators that measure the
contribution towards the ultimate goals such as
environmental, economic or social sustainability.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 234-245 |
Journal | Cities |
Volume | 60 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Feb 2017 |
MoE publication type | A1 Journal article-refereed |
Keywords
- assessment framework
- indicator
- performance measurement
- smart city
- sustainable city