Sustainable Smart Cities and Smart Villages, 2nd Volume

Topic Information

Dear Colleagues,

Smart cities remain one of the most vibrant of inter- and multidisciplinary fields of research and debate today. Research in this field is driven by the realization that advances in sophisticated information and communication technology (ICT), on one hand, create the opportunity to alleviate several challenges that progressive urbanization creates, and on the other hand, may substantially contribute to wellbeing of cities’ residents. Certainly, critical voices exist, and these should be noted. Smart villages remain a niche concept, the related debate is still nascent, and the research agenda still open. Similarly, as in the case of the smart cities research, the smart villages debate is driven by the question of how and in which ways ICT can improve wellbeing in rural areas. Even if substantial differences between both strands of research exist, the broadly conceived imperative of sustainability is common in both debates. By bringing together these two debates, the objective of this Topic is twofold, i.e., to encourage research on smart cities and smart villages, respectively, and, while doing so, to reflect on the possibility of building bridges between the two debates. The Editors of this Topic encourage submissions addressing, but not limited to, the following topics and issues:

• Smart cities/villages research: new concepts, new approaches, new developments;
• Smart cities/villages services and applications: supply and demand, issues, developments;
• Smart cities/villages: governance, public management, value co-creation, community development;
• Smart cities/villages: regulatory frameworks and the delivery of the best quality of services and applications;
• Smart cities: democracy, governance, representation, participation;
• Smart villages: issues of governability, growth, and development;
• Smart cities/villages: leisure, tourism, art, culture, and cultural heritage;
• Smart cities/villages: public policy perspective;
• Smart cities/villages and migration: issues, challenges, opportunities;
• Smart cities/villages: infrastructure development, utility, built environment and land use;
• Smart cities/villages: mobility, accessibility, quality of life, performance, wellbeing;
• Smart cities/villages: societal concerns, including embracing disabilities, diversity, age related needs and challenges, as well as promoting equality in opportunity, and inclusion;
• Smart cities/villages: enhancing performance through virtual-reality- and machine-learning-based approaches and solutions;
• Smart cities/villages: energy sustainability, including energy communities, prosumers, other;
• Smart cities/villages: policies, policymaking, data-driven decision making;
• Smart cities/villages: specificity and applicability to the Global South and Global North contexts.

Dr. Anna Visvizi
Dr. Wadee Alhalabi
Dr. Mara Grimaldi
Dr. Orlando Troisi
Topic Editors

Keywords

Participating Journals

Journal Name	Impact Factor	CiteScore	Launched Year	First Decision (median)	APC
Energies energies	3.2	5.5	2008	16.1 Days	CHF 2600
Remote Sensing remotesensing	5.0	7.9	2009	23 Days	CHF 2700
Smart Cities smartcities	6.4	8.5	2018	20.2 Days	CHF 2000
Sustainability sustainability	3.9	5.8	2009	18.8 Days	CHF 2400
Urban Science urbansci	2.0	4.5	2017	23.7 Days	CHF 1600

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Published Papers (7 papers)

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All Energies Remote Sensing Smart Cities Sustainability Urban Science

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29 pages, 13343 KiB  

Open AccessArticle

Nonlinear and Synergistic Effects of Built Environment Indicators on Street Vitality: A Case Study of Humid and Hot Urban Cities

by Jilong Li, Shiping Lin, Niuniu Kong, Yilin Ke, Jie Zeng and Jiacheng Chen

Sustainability 2024, 16(5), 1731; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16051731 - 20 Feb 2024

Viewed by 549

Abstract

Street vitality has become an important indicator for evaluating the attractiveness and potential for the sustainable development of urban neighborhoods. However, research on this topic may overestimate or underestimate the effects of different influencing factors, as most studies overlook the prevalent nonlinear and [...] Read more.

Street vitality has become an important indicator for evaluating the attractiveness and potential for the sustainable development of urban neighborhoods. However, research on this topic may overestimate or underestimate the effects of different influencing factors, as most studies overlook the prevalent nonlinear and synergistic effects. This study takes the central urban districts of humid–hot cities in developing countries as an example, utilizing readily available big data sources such as Baidu Heat Map data, Baidu Map data, Baidu Building data, urban road network data, and Amap’s Point of Interest (POI) data to construct a Gradient-Boosting Decision Tree (GBDT) model. This model reveals the nonlinear and synergistic effects of different built environment factors on street vitality. The study finds that (1) construction intensity plays a crucial role in the early stages of urban street development (with a contribution value of 0.71), and as the city matures, the role of diversity gradually becomes apparent (with the contribution value increasing from 0.03 to 0.08); (2) the built environment factors have nonlinear impacts on street vitality; for example, POI density has different thresholds in the three cities (300, 200, and 500); (3) there are significant synergistic effects between different dimensions and indicators of the built environment, such as when the POI density is high and integration exceeds 1.5, a positive synergistic effect is notable, whereas a negative synergistic effect occurs when POI is low. This article further discusses the practical implications of the research findings, providing nuanced and targeted policy suggestions for humid–hot cities at different stages of development. Full article

(This article belongs to the Topic Sustainable Smart Cities and Smart Villages, 2nd Volume)

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25 pages, 2503 KiB  

Open AccessArticle

The Sustainability Level of an EcoVillage in the Upper Citarum Watershed of West Java Province, Indonesia

by Nur Syamsiyah, Lies Sulistyowati, Trisna Insan Noor and Iwan Setiawan

Sustainability 2023, 15(22), 15951; https://doi.org/10.3390/su152215951 - 15 Nov 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 792

Abstract

The Citarum watershed is the longest in West Java Province. It is used as a source of raw water for drinking water, irrigation water for hundreds of thousands of hectares of rice fields, fisheries, industrial raw water, and hydroelectric power plants. The high [...] Read more.

The Citarum watershed is the longest in West Java Province. It is used as a source of raw water for drinking water, irrigation water for hundreds of thousands of hectares of rice fields, fisheries, industrial raw water, and hydroelectric power plants. The high population and industry growth at the outskirts of the Citarum watershed, which is not accompanied by good waste management, also results in high pollution in the Citarum watershed. Various efforts to handle the issue have been carried out since 1989 until the present; however, this problem still needs to be solved. One of the approaches to overcome environmental pollution that has been conducted is to develop an environmentally-cultured village. This study aims to determine the sustainability level of environmentally-cultured villages in the Upper Citarum watershed viewed from ecological, economic, social, and cultural dimensions using a multidimensional scaling (MDS) approach with the Rapid Appraisal Technique for Ecovillage (RAPVIL) software (version 1.0). The result shows that the multidimensional sustainability of ecovillage development in the Upper Citarum watershed, West Java Province is “fairly sustainable” for the cultural dimension and “poorly sustainable” for the ecological, social, and economic dimensions. This result shows that ecovillage development still requires support from various stakeholders to improve its sustainability status. The cultural dimension has the highest value due to the local cultural values, including a value system, traditions, languages, norms, and customs that have grown in the community. Meanwhile, the social dimension has the lowest sustainability value, influenced by the low level of community participation in ecovillage development. Full article

(This article belongs to the Topic Sustainable Smart Cities and Smart Villages, 2nd Volume)

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22 pages, 2207 KiB  

Open AccessArticle

A Review of Current Evaluation Urban Sustainability Indicator Frameworks and a Proposal for Improvement

by Oriol Gavaldà, Christopher Gibbs and Ursula Eicker

Sustainability 2023, 15(21), 15425; https://doi.org/10.3390/su152115425 - 30 Oct 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 930

Abstract

This paper addresses the link between data, metrics, and the paths from cause to effect in urban sustainability and livability frameworks. The first section thoroughly discusses the different existing frameworks for evaluating sustainability and livability goals for urban communities. In the results section, [...] Read more.

This paper addresses the link between data, metrics, and the paths from cause to effect in urban sustainability and livability frameworks. The first section thoroughly discusses the different existing frameworks for evaluating sustainability and livability goals for urban communities. In the results section, a qualitative and quantitative analysis of a comprehensive list of frameworks that evaluate sustainability and livability in cities is elaborated, with a thorough post-process of the different schemes from an epistemological perspective to analyze the subjectivities implicit in any urban-level sustainability framework. Finally, in the discussion section, two main aspects are tackled. The first is the development of a proposal for a set of indicators that incorporates the best of the different frameworks analyzed. The second aspect deals with the methodology of implementation of these frameworks. Here, the authors point out the weaknesses of current urban-level sustainability frameworks and their main components, and they propose a set of criteria to overcome the different detected gaps. All these steps have helped the authors establish a clear roadmap for developing the platform TOOLS4Cities that can help set a future reference methodology for urban sustainability evaluation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Topic Sustainable Smart Cities and Smart Villages, 2nd Volume)

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19 pages, 2472 KiB  

Open AccessReview

Thirty Years of Village Corruption Research: Accounting and Smart Villages for Village Sustainability as Future Research Direction

by Caesar Marga Putri, Josep Maria Argilés-Bosch and Diego Ravenda

Sustainability 2023, 15(12), 9264; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15129264 - 08 Jun 2023

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2042

Abstract

As the research on national corruption continues to expand, village corruption research has gained attention in the public eye in the last 10 years. A growing number of researchers have called for a more extensive discussion on village corruption. In response, this paper [...] Read more.

As the research on national corruption continues to expand, village corruption research has gained attention in the public eye in the last 10 years. A growing number of researchers have called for a more extensive discussion on village corruption. In response, this paper conducts a comprehensive review of village corruption research to portray the trend and evolvement of village corruption literature over the past 30 years and also to find out the dominant elements of village corruption research for providing future research agendas aimed at addressing village corruption. The study analyzed 158 articles from the Web of Science database. The data were analyzed first using two bibliometric software packages, Histcite 12.3.17 and VOSviewer 1.6.19, and then by content analysis to obtain a more comprehensive result. The findings overlay visualization indicates that the research on village corruption has evolved from African countries to Asia. Studies from the economics and politics fields are the most common research areas on village corruption since 1992, followed by research on management. Research in the accounting and information technology fields remain relatively scarce. The institutions based in the USA have dominated publications, and World Development is the most influential journal. This research provides future research agendas as smart villages on corruption eradication and village sustainability. Full article

(This article belongs to the Topic Sustainable Smart Cities and Smart Villages, 2nd Volume)

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23 pages, 3524 KiB  

Open AccessArticle

Direction for a Transition toward Smart Sustainable Cities based on the Diagnosis of Smart City Plans

by Hee-Sun Choi and Seul-Ki Song

Smart Cities 2023, 6(1), 156-178; https://doi.org/10.3390/smartcities6010009 - 31 Dec 2022

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2958

Abstract

Achieving urban sustainability through smart cities is necessary to manage urban environmental problems that threaten human survival. Smart city policy emphasizes the environmental aspects of urban areas while embracing the social and economic sectors, allowing for the development of practical plans for urban [...] Read more.

Achieving urban sustainability through smart cities is necessary to manage urban environmental problems that threaten human survival. Smart city policy emphasizes the environmental aspects of urban areas while embracing the social and economic sectors, allowing for the development of practical plans for urban sustainability. This study suggests smart sustainable city policy directions that can improve the transition to smart cities. It defines concepts such as smart sustainable cities, developing frameworks, and indicators. In this research, a smart sustainable city facilitated sustainable development by incorporating smart technologies into urban activities and services. In this study, indicators for smart sustainable city evaluation and diagnosis were derived. These were applied to selected case areas, such as Incheon Metropolitan City and Goyang-si, Gyeonggi-do in the Republic of Korea. These indicators play an important role in assisting policymakers in making decisions, simplifying a wide range of complex information and providing integrated perspectives on existing situations. The results of this study suggest transition directions for a smart sustainable city and application strategies for related plans and policies. Full article

(This article belongs to the Topic Sustainable Smart Cities and Smart Villages, 2nd Volume)

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27 pages, 858 KiB  

Open AccessArticle

Associated Information and Communication Technologies Challenges of Smart City Development

by Mohammed Balfaqih and Soltan Abed Alharbi

Sustainability 2022, 14(23), 16240; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142316240 - 05 Dec 2022

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2629

Abstract

Smart cities development relies on information and communication technologies (ICTs) to improve all urban aspects, including governance, economy, mobility, and environment. The development is usually associated with several challenges and negative effects. This study relies on revealing ICTs challenges by firstly conducting a [...] Read more.

Smart cities development relies on information and communication technologies (ICTs) to improve all urban aspects, including governance, economy, mobility, and environment. The development is usually associated with several challenges and negative effects. This study relies on revealing ICTs challenges by firstly conducting a comprehensive literature review to identify the challenges that are most associated with ICTs. Then, a questionnaire survey was distributed among the Saudi population to study their expectations, perceptions, and concerns on the smart city concept and services. The questionnaire also investigated ICTs challenges identified from the literature review, including information security risks, privacy violation, incompatibility, and digital skill gaps. Consequently, semi-structured interviews were conducted to perceive the reasons for the incompatibility between different systems and digital skill gaps between the public. The findings show that the most likely challenges are information security risks and privacy violations, which are due to the increase in vulnerability, potential attacks, and lack of public awareness regarding personal data protection. The incompatibility between different systems and services in smart cities arouses worries among the public due to the expected high cost and difficulty of adaptation and utilization. Moreover, digital skill gaps arises between members of the population that have a low education level or are elderly persons. Full article

(This article belongs to the Topic Sustainable Smart Cities and Smart Villages, 2nd Volume)

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17 pages, 867 KiB  

Open AccessArticle

Can the Smart City Pilot Policy Promote High-Quality Economic Development? A Quasi-Natural Experiment Based on 239 Cities in China

by Shuai Liu, Guoxin Jiang, Le Chang and Lin Wang

Sustainability 2022, 14(23), 16005; https://doi.org/10.3390/su142316005 - 30 Nov 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2228

Abstract

By the end of 2020, more than 900 cities in China had made plans to construct smart cities. Based on the data of 239 cities in China from 2003 to 2019, this study developed difference-in-difference (DID) models to evaluate the promoting effect of [...] Read more.

By the end of 2020, more than 900 cities in China had made plans to construct smart cities. Based on the data of 239 cities in China from 2003 to 2019, this study developed difference-in-difference (DID) models to evaluate the promoting effect of the smart city pilot policy on high-quality economic development. The results show that the smart city pilot policy has significantly promoted high-quality economic development, and this conclusion is still valid after a series of robustness tests. The policy is more conducive to high-quality economic development in the small and medium-sized cities of mid-western regions than in the large cities in eastern regions. The impact mechanism test shows that the pilot policy affects the high-quality economic development of a region by improving the levels of innovative development, coordinated development, green development, open development and shared development. Full article

(This article belongs to the Topic Sustainable Smart Cities and Smart Villages, 2nd Volume)

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