Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to provide an introduction and background to the concept of urban life generally and in relation to evolving understandings of smart cities. A review of the research literature is provided for urban life, smart cities, learning cities, and future cities identifying issues, controversies, and problems. The literature review enables formulation of a conceptual framework for urban life and the ambient in smart cities which is then operationalized for use in responding to the range of issues, controversies, and problems identified in the research literature. Using an exploratory case study approach involving survey and in-depth interviews, a series of research questions are developed for exploration as propositions, chapter-by-chapter in this book. Combining an explanatory correlational design with a case study approach, variables are identified for exploration, pertaining to urban life and smart cities in this chapter and the chapters that follow, informing directions for research and practice.
Top1. Introduction
This chapter explores the urban life concept from multiple perspectives and over time in relation to evolving understandings of smart cities, learning cities, and future cities. While urban life has been explored by Psatha, Deffner, and Psycharis (2011) in terms of “quality of urban life (QOUL)” as “a concept able to monitor the multidimensional nature of cities” it is also explored in addressing “the problems that undermine” QOUL such as “social inequalities, urban crime, poor environment, and traffic con[g]estion.” Smart cities are described by Townsend (2013) as “places where information technology is combined with infrastructure, architecture, everyday objects and even our bodies, to address social, economic, and environmental problems.” Nam and Pardo (2011) note that “a smart city is also a learning city” forming part of the human infrastructure and social capital that make up the human factor component of smart cities, along with creative city, humane city, and knowledge city. Through their work, Nam and Pardo (2011) highlight the need for future research to explore the question: “how do smart technologies change a city?” giving rise to a key ambition of this book. Macionis and Parrillo (2013) provide a global overview of cities and urban life from a sociological perspective, addressing problems encompassing spiraling populations, quality of life (QoL), environment, and shantytowns while also focusing on the future of cities in the context of urban planning and “how current trends give us insight” in terms of growth and development. Schmitt (2019) explores the notion of future cities using “data driven approaches” that are “based on crowdsourcing and sensing” while seeing “the city as the most complex human-made ‘organism’.” Sumara and Alvermann (2022) draw attention to changing notions of literacy practices, important in this chapter for areas such as funding and what Boggs (2022) refers to as “economic relevance” and the efforts by students and others “to make themselves useful in their communities.” As such, this chapter is significant in that it seeks to provide a sense of the city through the continuum of past – present – future, where urban life is the connecting thread and smart cities, learning cities, and future cities are the emerging and evolving concepts giving rise to, and motivating the explorations identified in the following objectives.
Objectives: The key objectives of this chapter are to: a) provide perspectives on urban life while introducing evolving understandings of smart cities; b) explore the concepts of learning cities and future cities in the context of urban life in smart cities; c) develop a conceptual framework for urban life and the ambient in smart cities, learning cities, and future cities; and d) formulate a series of research questions with propositions to be explored in the chapters that follow, based on the example provided in this chapter (e.g., the relationship between funding for smart city projects and factors such as success and livability).
As such, the key research question in this chapter is: How does support for improving urban life emerge in the context of smart cities?
Key Terms in this Chapter
Quality of Urban Life: Quality of urban life refers to the extent that people are able to enjoy and engage with urban life-based factors that are acceptable and being continually improved upon (e.g., air-quality, traffic congestion, noise, and the like).
Ambient Perspective: An ambient perspective refers to views that take into consideration the dynamic awareness capabilities of people and the dynamic aware-enabling capabilities of technologies and the interactive potentials of the two.
Literacies: Literacies refer to the multiple skills required to successfully navigate one or more environments such as the physical and digital or a combination or mixing of the two in the context of contemporary urban spaces.
Livability: Livability refers to the quality of life afforded by a particular environment, taking into consideration a range of factors such as cultural, social, economic, environmental, political, and so on.
Funding Literacies: Funding literacies, in the context of urban life and smart cities, refer to an awareness of what constitutes “economic relevance” ( Boggs, 2022 ), thus generating income from usefulness contributed to communities.
Success: Success refers to the achieving of a desired outcome or the completing of one or more tasks in fulfillment of an objective.
Quality of Life: Quality of life refers to the extent that people are capable of enjoying and engaging with life-based factors such as health, well-being, and the like.