Humanizing Smart Cities: A Preconception to a Better Life for All

As cities face the challenge of conceiving new and more competitive and sustainable development models, there has been an emergence of introducing technology to cities to enhance the quality of life it provides to the citizens. The “Smart City” was proposed as a new prototype of technology-based urban development. These smart cities witness the emergence of the metaverse and platform societies, machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML/AI), big data, the Internet of Things (IoT) systems, and many other innovative and advanced technologies. However, the idea of the Smart City has developed in such a form that cities have started to encounter the risks of losing social inclusiveness and connection with the human dimension. This research tries to tackle one of the main challenges of urbanism, which is shifting smart city development to be more humanized and people-centered. It also maps the broader approaches and perspectives while reviewing smart cities and addressing their challenges, contributing to the reconceptualization of the Smart City notion. This research also aims to introduce an integrated conceptual framework shifting the experience of smart cities through humanizing the technology to be more human-compatible smart cities. This study tends to help the decision-makers and urban planners build upon the outcome of this research through further exploration of implementation processes toward humanizing future smart cities.

I. Introduction

According to recent reports, around 54% of the world's population lives in cities, and by 2050 that number is expected to rise to 66% [1], [2]. Rapid urbanization is driven by economic incentives, but it also has significant environmental and social consequences, rapid population growth, and an overall net increase in consumption of natural resources [3], [4]. This rapid growth is also affecting the quality of life due to the issues of limited resources, shortage of quality services, air pollution, excessive mobility, and aging public infrastructure [5]. The idea of a “smart city” has risen as one of the potential solutions to these problems. The rapid advancement in technology allowed the smart city concept to develop significantly in the last few years, although it has been around for far more than that; dating back to 1989 [6]. An earlier application of the smart city concept started as e-services provision through digital platforms. It grew over time, building upon the dependence on machine learning (ML) algorithms using artificial intelligence (AI) as a new tool to be used for more informed projections and predictions. It has been used in many domains, including health care, transportation, education, crime detection, and smart building design.