An Application of Smart City to Achieve Sustainable Development: A Case Study in Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Abstract

Understanding associations between sustainable development and the smart city is essential to achieve sustainable smart cities. Dubai has emerged as an example in the Middle East for adopting smart technologies to enhance urban living, with initiatives ranging from digital governance to intelligent transportation systems. However, the associations between sustainable development and smart city implementation in Dubai is limited. This study aims to investigate the application of the smart city in Dubai, assessing the smart city implementation in terms of sustainable development by applying the system archetypes to assess the implementation of the smart city in Dubai in terms of sustainable development issues. After the identification of the system archetypes, it is found that the implementation of smart city initiatives such as e-government and clean transportation are in line with sustainable development issues such as low-carbon emissions and less air pollution. Moreover, this study shows that the structure of the Limits to Growth archetypes has dominated the smart city development in Dubai. This means that the development of Dubai has had critical issues such as persistent traffic congestion and a polluted atmosphere. The findings stress that the smart city application in Dubai is a good exemplar that the smart city can be a sustainable smart city altogether. The second point is although the smart city enables us to achieve a sustainable smart city, the implementation of the smart city should be monitored regularly, especially if reinforcing loops dominate balancing loops as seen in the case of traffic congestion. This study contributes to enhancing the decision-making process of policymakers, industry stakeholders, government authorities and business managers regarding the implementation of smart initiatives as well as for city planners to achieve a sustainable smart city in other regions.