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The significant part of the world’s wealth is in the form of urban land and buildings, commercial property and residential property and infrastructure capital. The real estate, and now the world’s population, is mostly concentrated in an urban area, as a town, large town, city, large city, metropolis, conurbation, megalopolis (unified super-city), or ecumenopolis (the urban world).
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Over the last several years we have seen how the concept of Intelligent or Smart Cities has been fast moving from the academic world of conferences and workshops to the strategic planning of national governments and primary commercial projects of global IT corporations, multinational infrastructure providers and system integrators. Unlike the traditional legacy city, a smart city, new or retrofitted, is anticipated as a prime city of well being, prosperity and productivity. It is characterized as an innovative urban settlement with Intelligent Information and Communications Technology Infrastructure inbuilt in the Environment, Transport, Utilities and Energy Networks, Buildings, Social Infrastructure, Government, and Services.
>… cities are engines of innovation, economic growth, and technological progress, and the way for the legacy cities to reveal the better or smarter part is becoming greener, more intelligent, more efficient, more liveable, more attractive, more social, more digital, or just better: http://www.scientificamerican.com/cities/.
The distinction of any city is its capacity to aggregate people, skills, talents, resources, capital, businesses, government, and infrastructure, physical and social, supported with complex systems for land use, transportation, utilities, sanitation, housing, and public services.
>As the smart city projects spread across the world, Nikkei Business Publications has conducted a research on the sunrise market and projected the market size of 3,1 trillion Euro for the next twenty years. Meantime, according to the Cisco’s estimations, the emerging market of smart/ intelligent cities is projected over $ 1 trillion in the next decade.
>Now, what is not a real smart sustainable city looks as follows.
It is not a conventional city/metropolis/urban center
It is not a digital city or wireless city
It is not an ecological city or green city or ecologically healthy city or quality urban system
It is not an intelligent city or knowledge city or social intelligence city or creative city
It is not a network-based smart + connected community
It is not a city only with a smart community
It is not a city only with a smart environment
It is not a city only with a smart economy
It is not a city only with a smart transportation
It is not a city only with smart utilities and energy systems
It is not a city only with smart education
It is not a city only with a smart public safety
It is not a city only with smart buildings
It is not a city only smart healthcare
It is not a city only with smart public administration
It is not a city only with business parks
It is not a city only with innovation clusters
A smart city is not public administration/authorities that deliver innovation services and infrastructure, based on information and communication technologies
Still, a smart city is not a city with a smart economy; smart mobility; a smart environment; smart people; smart living; and, finally, smart governance
It is not also a city with smart transportation, utilities, healthcare, education, public safety, or building systems management.
If the government is striving to advance ecological infrastructure, smart utilities, smart transport, smart buildings, smart economy, smart government, smart environment, smart lifestyle, or smart communities, in the fragmented ways, without an integrated, holistic regional/urban planning, it’s hardly about a real smart city. Thus, what is not a real smart city, it is not the trinity city; and what is not the trinity city, it is not a real smart city. Then new energy cities, like Masdar, economic cities, like King Abdullah Economic City, or ICT cities, like Songdo or GIFT city, are hardly truly smart cities. For the real sustainable community strongly implies an extensive full sustainability modeling, digital, environmental, and social planning in the first place, what the Smart Group is promoting.