Smart World Cities in the 21st Century

Abstract

The “smart city” concept has been increasingly popular both in scientific literature and urban policy. In recent decades, the emergence of new technologies, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI), has facilitated a new wave of smart city development practices across the world (Caragliu et al., 2011; Albino et al., 2015). Nevertheless, it is still not clear what characterizes the smart city other than technologies. In this regard, Agnes Mainka’s Smart World Cities in the 21st Century is an ambitious attempt to explore the impacts of political willingness, infrastructure, and the world city status on the state and development of smart cities. This work intends to develop the underlying theories on cities in the twenty-first century by a global comparison of cities in Europe (e.g., London, Paris, Amsterdam), North America (e.g., New York, San Francisco, Toronto), Asia (e.g., Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore), South America (e.g., São Paulo), and Australia (e.g., Sydney, Melbourne). The book is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 1 provides a very brief introduction of informational world cities. The author cites her previous work and explains why she adopted the term “informational world cities” which combines different types cities and the associated infrastructures. The chapter also provides the basic structure of the book. In Chapter 2, the author provides an overview of urban development in the context of the knowledge society. Following Stock (2011:13), she defines the factors of the information and knowledge society and further proposes the defining factors associated with the smart society: