Why technology is not an end in itself, and how cities can be “smart enough,” using technology to promote democracy and equity. Smart cities, where technology is used to solve every problem, are hailed as futuristic urban utopias. We are promised that apps, algorithms, and artificial intelligence will relieve congestion, restore democracy, prevent crime, and improve public services. In The Smart Enough City, Ben Green warns against seeing the city only through the lens of technology; taking an exclusively technical view of urban life will lead to cities that appear smart but under the surface are rife with injustice and inequality. He proposes instead that cities strive to be “smart enough”: to embrace technology as a powerful tool when used in conjunction with other forms of social change—but not to value technology as an end in itself. In a technology-centric smart city, self-driving cars have the run of downtown and force out pedestrians, civic engagement is limited to requesting services through an app, police use algorithms to justify and perpetuate racist practices, and governments and private companies surveil public space to control behavior. Green describes smart city efforts gone wrong but also smart enough alternatives, attainable with the help of technology but not reducible to technology: a livable city, a democratic city, a just city, a responsible city, and an innovative city. By recognizing the complexity of urban life rather than merely seeing the city as something to optimize, these Smart Enough Cities successfully incorporate technology into a holistic vision of justice and equity.

Key concepts, definitions, examples, and historical contexts for understanding smart cities, along with discussions of both drawbacks and benefits of this approach to urban problems. Over the past ten years, urban planners, technology companies, and governments have promoted smart cities with a somewhat utopian vision of urban life made knowable and manageable through data collection and analysis. Emerging smart cities have become both crucibles and showrooms for the practical application of the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and the integration of big data into everyday life. Are smart cities optimized, sustainable, digitally networked solutions to urban problems? Or are they neoliberal, corporate-controlled, undemocratic non-places? This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers a concise introduction to smart cities, presenting key concepts, definitions, examples, and historical contexts, along with discussions of both the drawbacks and the benefits of this approach to urban life. After reviewing current terminology and justifications employed by technology designers, journalists, and researchers, the book describes three models for smart city development—smart-from-the-start cities, retrofitted cities, and social cities—and offers examples of each. It covers technologies and methods, including sensors, public wi-fi, big data, and smartphone apps, and discusses how developers conceive of interactions among the built environment, technological and urban infrastructures, citizens, and citizen engagement. Throughout, the author—who has studied smart cities around the world—argues that smart city developers should work more closely with local communities, recognizing their preexisting relationship to urban place and realizing the limits of technological fixes. Smartness is a means to an end: improving the quality of urban life.

The book discusses the concept of the smart city, and is based on a multi-service and multi-sectoral approach to urban planning, including various urban functions and the human capital of cities. The work is divided into three parts. The first is an introductory section which covers definitions, policies and tools used at European level for the development and classification of a smart city. The second presents a selection of examples of Western and Eastern communities, which experienced technologies and strategies that have made them smart. The third describes in detail the main three possible approaches (economical, technological and social) to the smart city concept which are the focus ambits of the holistic concept of smart city. The work provides a good overview of the concept of smart city, and also offers a critical analysis of the various approaches to smart cities, in order to provide tools to develop solutions that address the smart development of cities with an approach as multi-sectoral as possible. Its accessible language and several examples make the book easy to read and appealing to public administrators, students, planners and researchers.

Analytics can make government work better—this book shows you how A Practical Guide to Analytics for Governments provides demonstrations of real-world analytics applications for legislators, policy-makers, and support staff at the federal, state, and local levels. Big data and analytics are transforming industries across the board, and government can reap many of those same benefits by applying analytics to processes and programs already in place. From healthcare delivery and child well-being, to crime and program fraud, analytics can—in fact, already does—transform the way government works. This book shows you how analytics can be implemented in your own milieu: What is the downstream impact of new legislation? How can we make programs more efficient? Is it possible to predict policy outcomes without analytics? How do I get started building analytics into my government organization? The answers are all here, with accessible explanations and useful advice from an expert in the field. Analytics allows you to mine your data to create a holistic picture of your constituents; this model helps you tailor programs, fine-tune legislation, and serve the populace more effectively. This book walks you through analytics as applied to government, and shows you how to reap Big data's benefits at whatever level necessary. Learn how analytics is already transforming government service delivery Delve into the digital healthcare revolution Use analytics to improve education, juvenile justice, and other child-focused areas Apply analytics to transportation, criminal justice, fraud, and much more Legislators and policy makers have plenty of great ideas—but how do they put those ideas into play? Analytics can play a crucial role in getting the job done well. A Practical Guide to Analytics for Governments provides advice, perspective, and real-world guidance for public servants everywhere.

As populations have continued to grow and expand, many people have made their homes in cities around the globe. With this increase in city living, it is becoming vital to create intelligent urban environments that efficiently support this growth and simultaneously provide friendly and progressive environments to both businesses and citizens alike. Smart Cities and Smart Spaces: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is an innovative reference source that discusses social, economic, and environmental issues surrounding the evolution of smart cities. Highlighting a range of topics such as smart destinations, urban planning, and intelligent communities, this multi-volume book is designed for engineers, architects, facility managers, policymakers, academicians, and researchers interested in expanding their knowledge on the emerging trends and topics involving smart cities.

This book focuses on how to maintain environmental sustainability as one of its main principles, and it addresses how smart cities serve to diminish wastes and maintain natural resources by having clean green energy that is operated by new smart technology designs. Living in a smart city is not something of the future anymore, it is here, and it is being implemented all over the world. A smart city uses different types of electronic Internet of things (IoT) sensors to collect data and then use these data to manage assets and resources efficiently. The smart city concept integrates information and communication technology (ICT), and various physical devices connected to the IoT network to optimize the efficiency of city operations and services and achieve sustainable solutions to allow us to grow with proper management of our resources. Smart sustainable structures and infrastructures face the need of urban areas due to the growth of populations while in the same time save our environment. To achieve this, we need to revisit the conventional methods in design and construction and the conventional materials which are used now to optimize the design and provide smart solutions. In the past few years, the consumption of resources has been massive, and the waste produced from that consumption has been inconceivable. This is causing environmental degradation, which produces many environmental challenges, such as global climate change, excessive fossil fuel dependency and the growing demand for energy. As well as, discussing the challenges facing the civil engineering design and construction of smart cities components and presenting concepts and insight from experts and researchers from different civil engineering disciplines., this book explains how to construct buildings and special structures and how to manage and monitor energy.

Smart City Emergence: Cases from around the World analyzes how smart cities are currently being conceptualized and implemented, examining the theoretical underpinnings and technologies that connect theory with tangible practice achievements. Using numerous cities from different regions around the globe, the book compares how smart cities of different sizes are evolving in different countries and continents. In addition, it examines the challenges cities face as they adopt the smart city concept, separating fact from fiction, with insights from scholars, government officials and vendors currently involved in smart city implementation.