London practices bottom-up with a networked-driven collaboration between organizations. Also, London Changed the mayor which altered the ‘smart’ strategy in London by prioritizing social inequality projects.
. Current Smart Metropolitan Transitions
London underwent transition from multi-stakeholder approach to Citizen Sensing
Current Smart City-Regional Transitions
The city practices a strategic-smart city portfolio that is well developed: London is Open, Replicate, Smart City Operations Centre, London Brain, Green Capital, Open Data, Playable Cities... Citizen Sensing
Smart Policy Formulations
London Is Open Replicate—H2020-EU Steep-7FP-EU Sensored technologies Sharing data
The tables above describe the influences of approaches used by smart cities to make effects on the quality of life, urbanization, and governance. The tables show the areas of improvement that the three countries pay more attention. The central idea of the smart city is transforming cities to “smart city” status using the approaches designed to counter urban planning challenges. Following rapid growth in the world’s urban population, cities face challenges to adjusting to the changes, more specific to urban planning. The challenges arise from economic, environmental and social areas with the aim of improving the quality of life.
As a result, some cities have sought to “smart city” approach. Each city designs an individual strategy to becoming smart, according to the challenge each city faces. For instance, Angelidou (2016) noted that all the cities aspiring to become smart should make intensive use of an integrated and a forward-looking strategic plan (Angelidou, 2016 p. 18). Besides, authors add that the plan should bear a vision and a methodology based strategy that makes use of the current technology to increase the urban quality of life functionalities.
The formulation of approaches and policies for city transformation follows the problem of urban growth. However, the idea of objectively measuring the smart city initiatives relates to how specific a city defines their strategies on transitioning to smart cities.
The interests of smart cities in London, Barcelona among other top smart cities started in 2010, and since then, research relating to smart cities discusses a wider range of concepts related to transitioning to smart cities (Pettit et al, 2017). However, the technology and research community has invested little efforts to on the approaches to smart cities. For instance, the “European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities” supported by the European Commission works on projects related to upscaling and duplication of smart city strategies during the development and planning phases applied in smart city transformations. Research has not yet proved a known approach. Hence, there is a need for a comprehensive and holistic system that explains the components of a smart city and acts as a guideline to design strategy (Angelidou, 2017). Also, it should be noted that such a system is not an approach to going smart. However, cities should define its contextual frameworks.
The results of the study are aimed towards evaluation and comparison of different approaches applied by top smartest cities against a benchmark of a less advanced city. As a result, this research performs a critical assessment of approaches used by smart cities, namely, London and Barcelona against a less advanced city known as Bangalore in India.
Common Movements and Characteristics in London and Barcelona
The idea of dimensions of smart cities has been discussed severally, however, the discussion is ongoing due to the underlying multitudes of definitions and solutions in smart cities. In regard, no city can claim to have achieved smartness at full due to the dynamic changes in technology, and societies which forces cities to redefine and update to the most recent technology and how the new technology is used for the common good. Smart cities constitute ideas that harness technology as a tool to draft plans which are adapted to the needs, constraints and needs of their current status. There are 120 smart city projects as estimated by Lee and Gong Hancock (2012) (Lee & Hancock, 2012 pp. 26-27). The primary characteristics of smart cities is the fundamental role of technology as the means of organizing, collecting and making significant information to an increasing number of people, who make use of the information to improve human life, functions and save resources. A city becomes equipped with sensors, real-time data streams and Internet of Things (IoT) as the technology becomes more affordable to a city. With the help of advanced analytics, the functions and audit of a city can be improved to identify the trend, predict the incidents to adjust the provision of services to the public and dependence (Pettit et al, 2017). Through technology, public authorities and the government can make documented and improved decisions to tackle problems from a broadened scope and make the populaces access high-end services and products efficiently within the scope of economies of scale, quality of life, management of utilities and general governance.
Besides, smart cities are characterized by the advancement of human and social capital by dissemination of knowledge and information, digital inclusion, improved participation and establishment of new forms of innovation. Also, smart cities offer contributed by all people, who give a wider scope of the challenges facing a city; a strategy that is believed to increase the quality of life in a city due to sampling. Smart cities attract creative innovations, industries, and cultures. For instance, in 2011, Ratti and Townsend established that collective intelligence is more powerful from the fact that smart program advocate for engagement of citizens and stakeholders who assess the viability of solutions to a city (Ratti & Townsend, 2011).
Purposely, smart projects are initiatives of the business sector in attempts to realizing agility for entrepreneurship, the creation of new business and investments. In regard, the smart cities are branded by the close importance of the business-driven urban development plans, projects, and strategies which aim at developing businesses which are eco-friendly and exhibit the highest professionalism of investment and entrepreneurship. As noted by Tranos and Gertner (2012), the EU’s current policy framework, the RIS3 plans advocate for smart specialization call (Tranos & Gertner, 2012 pp.175-190). As a result, entrepreneurs explore opportunities in all sectors and experiment new methods to identify the most encouraging areas for regional development. Smart city movements and European policies are most focused on the advancing and diversifying the business environments in smart cities.
Lastly, networking among and within smart cities is improved by critical thinking for the reasons of image building, best practices dissemination, the establishment of economies of scale and produce base diversification. Recent research focuses on economy and culture as the two areas enhanced by policies on smart city plans to offer more innovative and high-quality life and increase the public endorsement. The creation of smart cities is geared towards establishing alliances, collaboration networks to provide information and distribution of resources while enhancing diversity and unique characters of the main idea (Schaffers et al, 2011). Most of the smart cities possess this idea in place. Communication and marketing techniques penetrate future plans to develop urban development, specifically by making smart cities as their priority. Government an international authorities attempt to communicate their smart city policies to the public by concept-sharing methods, visions, goals, missions by publishing yearly reports with data and statistics on the performance. In the European contexts, for instance, trans-national and trans-regional collaborations in the smart cities’ projects are enhanced through networking as the primary thought for online digital media.
Barcelona
Smart Technologies and Applications. The central role of technology in providing digital services and applications is for sensor networking and broadband. The technology emphasizes on the connectivity as a method to better urban services, public participation, mobility, and sustainability. The digital services and applications are developed for transport, energy efficiency, in utilities and buildings, government services and citizen participation and urban resilience. The smart city strategies in Barcelona were evidenced during the Smart City Expo World Congress of 2016, when the first Deputy Mayor, Gerardo Pisarello, and the Technology and Digital Innovation Commissioner of Barcelona, Francesca Bria presented the Barcelona’s 2017-2020 vision (Schaffers et al, 2011). As they explained, the vision emphasized on four aspects; Barcelona as a Common City, as a Circular City, as a Democratic City and as a Creative City (Kuyper, 2016 pp. 15-17). The vision shows that the smart city strategy pushed for the technological drive and focused more on the democratic principles that were an all-inclusive plan for all citizens, hence, improving the citizen empowerment, economic and social, while dealing with the tourism-related issues (Kuyper, 2016 pp. 15-17). The vision developers aimed at taking the advantage of open data and public innovation as their public motive.
In addition, the Barcelona’s Digital City Plan makes the city produce digital channels as the priority for delivering public services by 2020 (Lorimer, 2018). The city uses the approach for going Smart by using a service approach through the Open and Agile Digitalization Program which focus on enhancing the capabilities in the public sector in a bid to gain and monitor control of digital services. The Smart Barcelona City started by focusing on developing parking sensors in transport and environment that were aimed at automated irrigation among other functionalities. The city invested in sensors such that the latest reports show that citizens can learn how to control data and information from digital devices and technologies. This specific plan is attained by creating public digital organization.
This infrastructure is a City Data Commons through a DECODE partnership with London’s Nesta (Lorimer, 2018). This partnership is based on free open software, open formats, and open standards.
London, Barcelona, and Bangalore related plans for transformation. For instance, while Barcelona used the Smart City Expo World Congress of 2016, when the first Deputy Mayor, Gerardo Pisarello, and the Technology and Digital Innovation Commissioner of Barcelona, Francesca Bria presented the Barcelona’s 2017-2020 vision. Similarly, London’s government funded a £34.6 billion-project that purposed to create a living document for the long-term and should be updated annually and be aware of the 2018 and 2022 mayoral elections (Lorimer, 2018). Also, the London’s government partnered with Bloomberg Associated since they wanted to build on the best of all other cities. Dr. Anthony Townsend, in 2015, wrote an oft-cited study on smart cities strategies. Each of the approaches included the formation of missions, movements and government projects to transition the cities. Similarly, India’s Prime Minister with his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) formulated the Smart Cities Mission (SCM) whose primary objective was to build smart cities.
Also, the three cities approached the transformation from aspects of change quality of life, improving knowledge, creating awareness, increasing governance, smart social, economic and physical infrastructure covering clean technology, widespread reliance on communication and information technologies public-private partnerships and investment on private sectors, smart governance.
London
In sharp contrast, London’s government funded a £34.6 billion-project that purposed to create a living document for the long-term and should be updated annually and be aware of the 2018 and 2022 mayoral elections. Also, the London’s government partnered with Bloomberg Associated since they wanted to build on the best of all other cities. Dr. Anthony Townsend, in 2015, wrote an oft-cited study on smart cities strategies (Zhang, Bayulken, Skitmore & Huisingh, 2017). The aim was to concentrate on city-wide collaboration, obtain a new deal of data, gather digital skills and capacity, reach the world-class connectivity through an inclusive technology. The Smart London mobilizes the power of data as the fuel to the challenges facing the city, innovation inclusive and open solutions over the next decade and beyond.
In attempts to attaining a Smart London, the government formulated policies in digital master planning as the most effective approaches for smart city plans. Dr. Anthony Townsend wrote an article Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia (Zhang, Bayulken, Skitmore & Huisingh, 2017). The article combined with Digital Master Planning compared several cities and identified their plans. A significant contrast to Barcelona city for example established that London used four approaches to make most effective use of the available sources. Facilitative- the strategy was intensively utilized by London when it required results of the election before the next election with application of scarce resources. This strategy is believed to be the most effective in promoting digital skills used by a public sector by the efforts of tech sector, coordination and reporting previous commitment in technology (Zhang, Bayulken, Skitmore & Huisingh, 2017). Learning helps a city go smart by getting results before the following election with substantial resources to manage partnership between public and private projects. The strategy is also effective because they amplify and coordinate previous initiatives and tech technology by uncovering the available technologies that are already in use. London is always evolving as of the 2017 Devolution Agreement which covered the skills, transport, social care, health, and infrastructure (Zhang, Bayulken, Skitmore & Huisingh, 2017).
Also, London’s approach is different with Barcelona’s and Bangalore. For instance, London has a long-term ambition of taking dominant approach to make long-lasting savings in the GLA Group and boroughs since funding by the central government is expected to remain low (Zhang, Bayulken, Skitmore & Huisingh, 2017). To London, this means a wide collaboration to increase projects that can test the goals of smart cities through digital skills and capacity, new deal of data, inclusive technology and world-class connectivity. Just like Barcelona, London was
Bangalore
In the recent years Bangalore in India has formulated several urban policies. For instance, the infrastructure-focused Mega City Scheme started in Bangalore (Bhattacharya & Rathi, 2015). In addition, the strategic plans for transformation aim at providing governance and digital services to the populaces by increasing the budgets and investing heavily on the urban local bodies (Randhawa & Kumar, 2017). In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held an urban-based growth of the India economy based on the vision of smart cities. This step promoted the incorporation of information and communication technologies in Bangalore specifically to make economic grow faster, quality of life, sustainability, flexibility and governance (Hoelscher, 2016 pp. 28-44).
The Prime Minister with his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) formulated the Smart Cities Mission (SCM) whose primary objective was to build cities with smart, economic, social and physical infrastructure covering clean technology, widespread reliance on communication and information technologies public-private partnerships and investment on private sectors, smart and branded e-governance which started in urban local bodies (ULB) (Hoelscher, 2016 pp. 28-44). The smart cities were built to offer good quality and affording housing, institutional infrastructure, quality education, water supply and sanitation, electric supply, affordable healthcare, sports, security, high speed interconnectivity, efficient and fast mobility and clean air.
These goals would be achieved by a planned 100 Smart Cities Mission which was started in August 2014. Under the National Sustainable Habitat and Smart City Mission, the focus of the Mission was primarily on Green Field Development, however, it changed to Brownfield Development since the orientation changed from ‘100 new Smart Cities to rebranding the existing cities smart. This showed a need to build smart cities for sustainability and habitats for the living (Bhattacharya & Rathi, 2015). The National Conclave on Building Smart Cities by the Government of India suggested that three key aspects would be used to build the cities. The aspects included competitive, sustainable and capital rich to attract investors, social environment and human and social reasons respectively.
In turn, the Government of India assigned INR 7060 crore for the mission in the 2014-25 budget. In the following year, the 2015-16 budget provided INR 600 crore for the mission and the expansion of 5000 habitats under the National Urban Rejuvenation Mission (NURM). Also, the government pledged to offer INR 2.73 lakh crore over the next decade to develop the 100 smart cities. The ministry of Urban Development released the Mission statement and Guidelines for the Smart Cities Mission and clarified on some of the aspects of smart cities. Bangalore was one of the cities defined in the Mission. In specific, retrofitting, improvement, pan-city development and green field.
Financing Strategy for Smart Cities
It is expected that branding urban communities comes with considerable hypotheses, which need to be put into consideration and practice for a long time, and thus could change the structure and shape of urban future of Indian smart cities. As per the High Powered Empowered Committee on Urban Infrastructure (HPEC), INR 7 lakh crore is significantly needed for the next two decades to fill most challenging loopholes in urban framework of India. This sums up to INR 35000 crore annually (Zhang, Bayulken, Skitmore & Huisingh, 2017). The requirement for private sectors’ interest in smart cities, including excellent urban areas, hence, is in this manner very significantly important. Without an urban development strategy and an urban setting structure, the dominance of the private sectors at this point of urbanization is undoubtedly a challenge as a result of the following reasons (Zhang, Bayulken, Skitmore & Huisingh, 2017).
Firstly, private sectors such as land engineers, information technology organizations, and thereof, speculation will be impromptu and will be driven mostly by the benefit-thought process. Secondly, foreign capital may target projects with higher rates of return, services may not fall within this domain. In turn, such projects are targeted to assure the return on hazard and will depend on fiscally practical plans of action. The governance, furthermore the budgetary, the institutional condition is as yet not designed for this kind of project. Lastly, without a considerable offer of financing from Government of India and states governments, Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) in poor financial health will be considered as unappealing, without regard to whether there is development potential (Zhang, Bayulken, Skitmore & Huisingh, 2017). This may additionally prompt preference with more supports being given to more developed and wealthier states and wealthier ULBs (Ahluwalia et al, 2011).
Areas of Success and Failure
Notably, the three states have shown different areas of success. The areas of failure have been investigated less sufficiently. Smart city approaches in Bangalore, India for instance, has been identified as a maintainable world-wide resolution to challenges and issues related to urban development and setting (Randhawa & Kumar, 2017). The push for smart cities has improved quality of life and advocates for livable communities. Over the last few decades, Indian cities have undergone rapid urbanization as witnessed in Class I and II tiers (Randhawa & Kumar, 2017). As a result, the governing authorities take the initiative over the time in the shape of programs which primarily focus on the offering rudimentary infrastructure, utilities and other services which initially were not given much consideration in the achieving sustainability as in this approach (Schaffers et al, 2011). The Smart City Mission in Indian cities has transformed the cities other than creating new cities (Mora, Bolici & Deakin, 2017 pp. 3-27).
As a result, the business sector, sports, habitats, and quality of life remain the areas experiencing rapid changes within the cities of India. Bangalore significantly benefited from this mission in that it features in the Tier 1-cities (Randhawa & Kumar, 2017). However, the approaches of smart cities in Bangalore were not fully embraced in most of the towns as it was speculated by the mission. For example, the mission lacks focus in the environmental dimension which is central to the quality of life despite that the mission’s primary goal was to promote quality life with emphasis on physical, economic and social development with application of information technology as a useful asset (Randhawa & Kumar, 2017). In essence, the aims of smart city mission are explicit in one of the providing physical infrastructure and utility services while it neglects sustainability.
Barcelona, on the other hand, have had more or less related benefits of smart cities. While each city had their approaches based on the quality of life, providing utilities and service to make the town livable, encouraging investment among others, it is apparent that Barcelona was more specific on four main aspects (Mora, Bolici & Deakin, 2017 pp. 3-27). Barcelona’s approaches aimed more solely on the central role of technology, human and social capital development, business sector advancement and networking. For instance, in the central role of technology approach, Barcelona applied sensor networking and broadband with emphases on inter-connectivity as a method for increasing the quality of better urban services (Angelidou, Gountaras &Tarani, 2012 pp. 331-350). In regard, the strategies focused on transport, provision of utilities, and enhancement of energy efficiency, enhancing government services and participation of citizen which would be achieved by urban resilience to challenges, problems and issues.
Also, from the human and social capital advancement-approach, Barcelona’s plan was to include university participation in research and business to formulate the smart cluster. The primary goal of this approach was social cohesion and accessibility through established smart city programs. In addition, Barcelona used the business-sector approach which achieved capital attractiveness as a secondary priority (Angelidou, Gountaras &Tarani, 2012 pp. 331-350). Also, the physical areas for the development of smart cities were equipped with collaborative spaces and high-technology infrastructure. These approaches seemed to make a wider scope of planning. However, it can be stated that the approaches do not cover sustainability aspects. The approaches were based on the enhancement of life, governance, and provision of public utilities with little attention to the sustainability of the towns.
Similarly, London enjoyed the transformation to smart cities, with the most cited provision of physical infrastructure and quality of life being the primary focus of the approaches. It is evident that e-governance offered the most push for smart cities (Mora, Bolici & Deakin, 2017 pp. 3-27). For instance, under the central role of technology approach, London collaborated with other cities to gain knowledge with little investment in the marketing strategies. Under the human and social capital advancement, London made extensive use of learning institutions to develop the digital technology. For example, London schools increased the rates of computer intake (Angelidou, Gountaras &Tarani, 2012 pp. 331-350). The strategy also benefited from the focal point of bottom-up approach where city, people and other businesses are indispensable sources of innovation. Lastly, under the business sector approach, London supports small and medium enterprises to get access to affordable broadband and embrace the digital devices and processes in support of the commercialization of innovation, in the technology sector.
Conclusion
The idea of smart city transformation has been embraced by several countries and applied the technology in capital cities to increase the quality of life, offer physical infrastructure, provide services and utilities and hence, increase the access to information and overall economy of a country. Smart cities are characterized by the promotion of technological infrastructure development. Other dimensions of smart city include the artificial intelligence and crucial dimensions which include solutions to underlying issues and problems. Smart city techniques try to upgrade the cities significantly by offering financial, budgetary and operational motivating forces including government-supported services for organizations, business brooding services, and impetuses, for example, tax exceptions and several financing plans and coordinated efforts within different organizations, the legislature and the education community at large. Some smart city procedures additionally offer exhibit opportunities such as business organizations have an upper hand and potential chance to show their goods and services, all things considered, and business advancement a services such as the stages that define a city’s business practices.
In any case, attracting capital and projects are essential components of smart city techniques. Joint effort and systems administration, alluding to organizations with different urban areas for information and experience trade and inspecting complementarities in qualities and shortcomings, is an essential even normal for smart urban areas, as well. Established large and settled urban areas, for example, the ones concentrated in this paper, are in special position, as they are as of now experienced in global systems services and are individuals from different systems and city organizations together that they can use. Unique considerations need to be paid to advance the computerized mobility of the city, i.e., site, web-based social networking. Such advancement may support efforts towards transforming to smart and drawing in partners in this procedure. Notably, it appears that we are at long last heading towards a genuine scenario of the integrating the physical and institutional measurements of the smart city. Physical infrastructure, planning, and social policies support the idea of smart cities’ transformation.
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