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The Concept Of A Smart City Essay

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The concept of a “Smart City” has been fashionable in recent years. Cities have claimed to be smart, based on their use of information and communication technology (ICT) for marketing purposes and to make it attractive to skilled labour. For a city to be smart, it has to be based on something more than ICT (Allwinkle & Cruickshank, 2011). While there are a variety of definitions for a smart city, the key concept of a “Smart City” relates to the use of ICT infrastructure as a means to enable social, environmental, economic and cultural developments (Allwinkle & Cruickshank, 2011).

Ensuring livable conditions within the rapid urban population growth requires an understanding of the “Smart City” concept (Nam, et al., 2012). Several definitions have been put forward. However, there are two widely popular definitions in the urban planning literature suggested by Giffinger and Nam and Pardo.

According to Nam and Pardo (2011), the smart city should be regarded as a combination of three dimension: Technology which is based in the use of ICT infrastructure to improve life within a city; People which is based on education, learning and knowledge, because well educated people strengthen human infrastructure and collective decision making; and Institutions which is based on governance, policy and cooperation between stakeholders.

Scholar Rudolf Giffinger from the Vienna University of Technology identified the operation of at least six dimensions in a smart city. These dimensions

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