The economic and social impacts of smart cities: multi-stakeholder pre-study results

Abstract

Smart cities are getting increasingly popular and being seen as one answer to several challenges. The smart city framework is seen as a popular answer to numerous challenges. There is no common definition of a smart city and the theoretical understanding is framed in multiple ways in practice. To better understand the phenomenon of smart cities it is important to see how it is viewed in practice by different stakeholders. Objectives This paper contributes to collecting and analyzing the stakeholders' visions to develop the definition of smart cities and classify their social and economic effects as a basis for further advanced study in this direction. Prior work The previous findings have determined the double-sided effects of smart cities in social and economic domains that could be balanced through different tools. In terms of the fundamental importance of ensuring citizen-oriented and sustainable utilization of smart city as a tool purporting to improve quality of life, it is needed to critically assess how stakeholders perceive these impacts and what tools could be applied to prevent negative outcomes. Methodology The paper applies a literature review, in-depth interviews with the smart city experts and survey answers analysis involving the city stakeholders including local and regional authorities and the real citizens to determine the personalized visions of smart city definition and impacts as well as open source analysis. Results Based on the data collected, the classification of the social and economic impacts of smart cities is proposed as well as study-based definition of smart city is provided. It is argued that considering social and economic impacts of smart cities needs further attention in terms of the multi-stakeholder perspective and continuation of the work started in this paper. In doing so, the paper does not only contribute to the theoretical comprehension of smart city but provides the basis for further strategy development to maximize social and economic positives of its application while minimizing the negatives.