Alignment With Sustainable Development Goals

Fundamental Considerations

The concept of developing a smart city eventually will not form a separate track from the SDGs implementation, neither of course it would become an obstacle to it. It is expected to be much in line of the work planned for SDG implementation in general. In fact, it is no surprise that statistically a high correlation between smart city maturity and progress on the SDGs (ARCADIS, 2018).

In the development of smart solutions and data one can find easily many authoritative tools producing useful information for cities to achieve their sustainability goals. Through these tools and applications one can easily track the progress on how they are progressing towards achieving their goals. They will also be able to cognize their initial status necessary for them to accept a framework that is essential to design an actual and appropriate strategy. Without proper data it will be difficult to initiate an effective action plan to realize the set objectives. It is necessary that the espoused strategies (for SDGs and for smart city) aligned with their situations and capabilities. Addressing specific citizens’ needs, cities can easily find opportunities to get a strong momentum to enlarge the scope of their projects.

It is obvious that Smart innovation is the main driver to achieve the SDGs. This is not true only for Goal #11 (Sustainable Cities) but also for all other goals. Technology is the binding element in these joint strategies, it is the key enabler for energy, water, air, traffic, buildings, and processes to work efficiently and in alignment with foreseen goals. It optimizes use of scarce resources, connects governments with their citizens, and scales quickly to respond to dynamically changing conditions. On the utterly technical side, technology enables both front-end insights, and creates a cycle of continuous enhancement.

Smart technology in projects for cities try to integrate Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into their vision statements one way or another, and sometimes the SDGs themselves are used as a benchmarking tool. This provides a chance to evaluate transformation process of cities into smart ones and evaluate the success of city officials and government who are reusable for the transformation itself.

In general, cities in developing nations have many challenges such as environmental degradation, poverty, and unemployment, yet other sectors such as social media and high mobile broadband penetration provide some unique opportunities for smart city solutions. It is important to note that cities use smart innovation to advance many SDGs depending on their selection and application priorities (Satterthwaite, 1997).

Sustainable and innovative cities are sometimes referred to as Cities 4.0. Most cities are still in the 2.0 stage, gathering data to monitor and control the city. Few are starting the 3.0 category where they offer a citizen-centered service. It is a fact that no city reached the 4.0 category of smart cities, although quite few cities in the world has shortened the gap between them and 4.0 cities. Basic requirements to classify a city as approaching 4.0 is that they should be managing all automated processes and citizens fully, being permanently connected.

Sustainable innovative cities can be described in many ways and different qualities. However, they can be characterized by three factors which are significant and make them different from other ones:

• 1.

  They share the same or similar vision

• 2.

  Profound stakeholder engagement

• 3.

  Strong, execution-focused leadership

Many cities strongly hold the requirement to implement transformation without conceding the quality of life for citizens, and certainly not to jeopardize the social and environmental sustainability of their communities. There are two major requirements that must be met if these cities manage to implement such transformation successfully:

• •

  There should be investment in enabling infrastructure, grassroots innovation programs, tailored service provision, and reduced dependence on scarce resources,

• •

  Adopt innovative delivery models of smart city solutions that advance SDG implementation.

It is very hard to neglect the critical requirement of collaboration. Any effort to implement transformation projects for smart cities would not succeed without genuine partnership and collaboration. It is necessary that city leaders are: