The Anatomy of Smartness of Smart Sustainable Cities: An Inclusive Approach

Being “smart” has become a challenge of increasing importance to many cities and communities. To the best of our knowledge, limited are the studies that advise on the actions to be undertaken to enhance the smartness of a city. Many cities around the World are claiming to be smart and sustainable, recommending such actions would be a promising area of research. There exists no unique definition for smartness so far. It means different things to different groups of people. In this research paper, we attempt to bridge this gap in knowledge and explore the concept of smartness of Smart Sustainable Cities by identifying its attributes through an inclusive approach. The latter captures the solutions to be implemented for a city to be smart and sustainable, referred to, in this research, as objective attributes, and the role of citizens in achieving smartness of cities, referred to as subjective attributes. Capturing the objective and subjective components of smartness leads to a holistic assessment of the performance of SSCs. This paper contributes to knowledge and practice as it constitutes the grounds for the introduction of an SSC assessment model ensuring the integral sustainability of the systems of the city, including the human system.