Understanding Smart Cities: An Integrative Framework
Abstract
Making a city "smart" is emerging as a strategy to mitigate the problems generated by the urban population growth and rapid urbanization. Yet little academic research has sparingly discussed the phenomenon. To close the gap in the literature about smart cities and in response to the increasing use of the concept, this paper proposes a framework to understand the concept of smart cities. Based on the exploration of a wide and extensive array of literature from various disciplinary areas we identify eight critical factors of smart city initiatives: management and organization, technology, governance, policy context, people and communities, economy, built infrastructure, and natural environment. These factors form the basis of an integrative framework that can be used to examine how local governments are envisioning smart city initiatives. The framework suggests directions and agendas for smart city research and outlines practical implications for government professionals.
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There is still obscure and inconsistent understanding of the meaning of the smart city concept.
“Moreover, despite the wide use of the concept and its operationalisation today, there is still obscure and inconsistent understanding of its meaning (e.g., [2,5,8,16,20,25,36,93,119,137]).”
From On the sustainability of smart and smarter cities in the era of big data: an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary literature review (2019) · cites this paper as [36]
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- Authors
- Chourabi, H., Nam, T., Walker, S., Gil-Garcia, J. R., Mellouli, S., Nahon, K., Pardo, T. A., & Scholl, H. J.
- Affiliations
- Université Laval (CA)
- State University of New York (US)
- University of Washington (US)
- Venue
- 2012 45th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
- Publisher
- IEEE
- Published
- 2012-01
- Pages
- 2289-2297
- ISSN
- 1530-1605 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2010772936
- Semantic Scholar
- 9938dcae39a7bd2dfddf4d54b15b0d8e8e77d53f
- Cited by
- 2,599
- References
- 58
- Citations by year
- 2026: 60 · 2025: 118 · 2024: 155 · 2023: 205 · 2022: 213 · 2021: 275 · 2020: 294 · 2019: 293 · 2018: 279 · 2017: 209 · 2016: 205 · 2015: 153 · 2014: 96 · 2013: 38 · 2012: 5
- FWCI
- 166.68
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) (publishedVersion)
- Scholars Archive - University at Albany (University at Albany, State University of New York) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
- Natural Resources Canada
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Media Technology › Smart Cities and Technologies
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Management of Technology and Innovation › Innovative Approaches in Technology and Social Development
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › E-Government and Public Services
- Keywords
- smart cities, smart city initiatives, integrative framework, urbanization, local government, governance, urban policy, physical infrastructure, natural environment, community participation, urban economy
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