Smart and Connected Cities and Communities

Description

Cities and communities worldwide are undergoing major changes due to the increasing use of constantly evolving smart technologies. Challenges related to climate emergency, pandemic or refugee crises visibly increased the pace of ICT implementation in our living environments. The growing popularity of technologies such as artificial intelligence, sensing technologies, metaverse, chatbots, open data, big data, blockchain, and so on, have opened new avenues for smart governance in the urban and communities’ contexts, which requires continuous research in this area. Consequently, various stakeholders need to adjust to these new circumstances and embrace technological advancements to stay relevant in evolving local regimes. This shift towards digitalization, now a top priority for many cities and smaller local governments, holds the promise of enhancing citizens well-being and increase service efficiency, but also presents significant challenges at the complex intersection of technology and society.

A smart and connected community can be described as one that seamlessly integrates advanced technologies with the natural and built environments, including infrastructure, to enhance the social, economic, and environmental welfare of residents, workers, and visitors. Building on the idea of community informatics, smart communities are seen as facilitating citizen empowerment and enabling both individual and collective pursuits of well-being. As many point out, the technological development should not be a goal, but a tool to achieve better conditions for everybody, with citizens’ needs and preferences as driving values. The minitrack aim is to understand how new technologies can shape the wellbeing of urban citizens and governance processes within our cities to ensure they develop according to principles of democracy, equality, and social justice.

Although the literature is rich in references to smart cities and communities, the concept remains multidimensional and goes beyond the mere use of technology and infrastructure. Therefore, the ICT solutions should not be the only aspect taken into account when analyzing digital developments in our communities. Increased number of studies indicate that emerging technologies have a huge influence on social life, catalyzing new needs of citizens and transforming the way they are addressed, influencing people’s ability to exercise their “right to the city/community” and affecting social as well as environmental sustainability. City administration and community management, information integration, data quality, privacy and security, institutional arrangements, and citizen participation are therefore some of the issues that need greater attention to plan human-centered smart solutions and monitor social consequences of their implementation. Digital divide must be addressed as well, recognizing the existing mechanisms and affordances that result in an unequal access to smart city benefits.

This mini track aims at exploring current developments in the field of smart development, paying particular attention to the social challenges faced during implementation of new technological solutions as well as to the community impact of these initiatives. Through this minitrack contributions we also strive to understand how new technologies can shape the decision-making processes, livability of local communities, and the well-being of its residents.

As a result, this mini track includes several areas of focus. Some of the topics we are particularly interested include:

• Impact of smart technologies on citizens and local communities
• Digital transformation as an opportunity or threat to the democratic processes
• Citizens’ rights to the smart city/community
• Typologies of smart cities and communities – different models of being smart
• Cases, rankings, comparisons, and critical success factors for smart cities, communities and regions
• Theory and practice of smart citizenship – technological competences vs. user experience
• Emerging technologies in smart cities and communities – artificial intelligence, big data, open data, sensing technologies, social media and networks, digital twins, metaverse, chatbots, etc.
• Expected and unexpected outcomes of implementing smart policies in cities and communities
• Elements, prerequisites, and principles of smart governance as the foundation to creating smart urban and regional spaces
• Smart cities and smart government – focal areas, current practices, cases, and potential pitfalls
• Impact of smart governance models on urban resilience and quality of life
• Management of smart cities and communities – theory and practice
• Smart partnerships (triple/quadruple/quintuple helix, public-private partnerships, and citizen participation)
• The role of digital technologies in the context of community livability, social sustainability and cohesion
• Developments in the field of smart services
• Urban-rural gaps in smart communities
• Building knowledge societies for smart cities and communities
• Smart cities and communities and their contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Minitrack Leaders

Gabriela Viale Pereira is Associate Professor for Information Systems and Co-Head of the Center for e-Governance at the Department for E-Governance and Administration at University for Continuing Education Krems and Research Fellow at CTG UAlbany. She holds a Post-Doctoral Degree from the Center for Research on Public Administration and Government at Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV), Brazil and a Doctoral Degree in Administration from the School of Business at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. She was Project Coordinator of the Erasmus+ Strengthening Governance Capacity for Smart Sustainable Cities (CAP4CITY) project and it is currently coordinating the Smart Cities and Digital Twins in Lower Austria project (SCiNDiTLA). Gabriela’s activities include research in electronic government and ICT-related Governance projects involving smart governance, smart cities, open data, data analytics and government 3.0. Gabriela has authored and co-authored more than 40 peer-reviewed publications on Information Systems and digital government. In addition, she has been working with a variety of organizations such as United Nations, ITU, and Council of Europe and she is a Board Officer of the Digital Government Society (2024/2025) and IFIP WG 8.5 in ICT & Public Administration (2024-2026).

Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar is full Professor at the University of Granada. His areas of research are mainly related to information and technology in government and, among other, they include electronic and open government, e-governance, public sector innovation, smart cities, and public policy evaluation. He has authored a total of 117 articles in national and international journals, of which more than 70 are published in journals indexed in SSCI/JCR, ABDC Journal Ratings and Journal Quality List. He is a member of the Editorial Board of 12 international journals (3 of them JCR in Q1 of Information and Library Science) and is part of the team of external evaluators of more than 60 journals, of which 47 are indexed in SSCI/JCR, and of 6 international congresses. He has been also the author of 56 book chapters, 49 of them published in prestigious international publishers such as Kluwer Academic Publishers, Springer, Routledge, Palgrave, Taylor and Francis and IGI Global, and is author of full-length books published by the Ministry of Economy and Finance in Spain. In addition, he is Editor in Chief of Sustainability (section sustainable management), IJPADA and series Editor of Public Administration and Information Technology (PAIT) book series in Springer. Finally, he has been collaborating with United Nations and he has co-chaired different tracks in international conferences such as ICEGOV, IFIP EGOV Cedem e-Part, HICSS and other conferences during last years.

Anna Domaradzka is a sociologist, an Associate Professor and Director at the Robert Zajonc Institute for Social Studies, University of Warsaw. She leads a Civil City Lab, that carries out research for the co-creation of better, democratic, and wisely governed cities. The team investigates the consequences of digitalization and smart innovations in the context of urban life, with particular interest in how technology can influence the implementation of the principles of democracy, equality, and social justice expressed by the ‘right to the city’ concept. Anna Domaradzka specializes in intersectional and international comparative research in the areas of urban sociology, civil society and social movements, digital sociology and gender studies. She is engaged in several international projects concerning urban governance and planning, including Right to the smart city: the impact of new technologies on quality of life, social relations and urban policy (PI, Polish National Science Centre), EuPOLIS: Integrated NBS-based Urban Planning Methodology for Enhancing the Health and Well-being of Citizens (PI, H2020), and HEART: HEAlthier Cities through Blue-Green Regenerative Technologies (PI, H2020). She’s a member of the International Society for Third Sector Research (ISTR) Board of Directors, and Research Committee on Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change (RC48) of International Sociological Association (ISA)