Sustainable Urban Regions: Opportunities and Challenges for Planning Smart Cities

This article discusses the attributes of a smart city and the connection between open data technology and sustainable urban planning. It explores the opportunities and challenges for implementing smart cities and highlights the benefits of open data in driving tourism and the economy. The article also addresses the challenges of lack of community engagement and unstructured approaches to open data.

Running head: SUSTAINABLE URBAN REGIONS
SUSTAINABLE URBAN REGIONS
Name of Student
Name of University
Author’s Note

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Discussion..................................................................................................................................2
Attributes of a smart city........................................................................................................2
Connection between one technology and the smart city........................................................3
Opportunities and challenges for planning sustainable cities through the technology..........5
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9
References................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
Smart city can be termed as a particular designation that is provided to a certain city
which tends to incorporate information as well as communication technologies (Ahlgren,
Hidell and Ngai 2016). This is done in order to enhance performance along with the overall
quality of numerous services like transportation, energy, and many more for the purpose of
reducing the overall consumption of resources, wastage of resources and the total cost that is
incurred in the entire process. The main objective of a smart city is enhancing the overall
quality of the life that is led by citizens with the help of using numerous technologies (Ojo,
Curry and Zeleti 2015). The technology that has been chosen include open data and the city
chosen is New York City.
Discussion
Attributes of a smart city
The culture of smart cities is being established with the help of a combination of
necessities of the society and human aspiration had established a culture of smart cities. Thus
had created numerous projects for smart city in numerous countries (Sun, Song and Jara
2016). There are numerous attributes that aim in describing a smart city, these attributes are
as follows
1. Information, communication and technology: this had enabled numerous public
services (Meijer and Bolívar 2016). The usage of technology platforms that are
integrated in nature and can be accessed easily across numerous devices that are
distinct play a vital role in providing access, speed, transparency, participation and
many more in numerous public services.
2. Public services that are efficient: the usage of meters that are smart in nature along
with energy conservation, renewable energy, effluent recycling, water harvesting as

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well as appropriated waste disposal of solid wastes contribute to be a hallmark for the
entire city (Pereira, Macadar and Luciano 2017).
3. Financial sustainability: the independence in terms of finance would be possible along
with elaborate as well as extensive tapping of numerous sources of revenue like taxes,
ad payments and many more.
4. Enough social capital: cities that are small could not be devoid of exact level of
infrastructure such as hospitals, schools public spaces, recreational grounds, sporting
along with entertainment and retail venues.
5. Safety and security: this particular attribute of security and safety gets a high level of
consciousness (Biswas and Muthukkumarasamy 2016). Numerous networks used by
cameras, bright public places, intensive surveillance and pay rolling, access to identity
verification and many more are all on the list of expectations.
6. Green environment: minimization of carbon footprint as well as maintaining eco
friendliness have been important (Hashem, Chang and Anuar 2016). Open spaces
such as parks, usage of energy sources that are renewable in nature, conservation as
well as recycling have been very mandatory.
7. Reduced pollution criteria: estimate of the actual size of the population is very vital
for the purpose of planning smart city services like needs of energy sources as well as
traffic among the citizens.
Connection between one technology and the smart city
The technologies that are involved within the implementation of smart city include
smart energy, smart transportation, smart data, smart infrastructure, smart mobility, smart IoT
devices and some more. The technology that has been selected for this particular assignment
is open data. In this particular assignment, various case studies and the findings mentioned in
them have been represented. First case study discusses regarding what is being done with the

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open data of government, this represents a specific explanatory analysis of the public uses of
New York City open data. In the year of 2012, New York City Council had passed a certain
legislation for making the government data open as well as available to the citizens. As per
Khatoun and Zeadally (2016), this has been introduced as an initial step for the purpose of
implementing smart city technologies within the city. With the process of approving this
specific legislation. The City council had attempted in making the local government more
accountable, transparent as well as streamlines in its operational activities (Letaifa 2015). It
had also attempted in creating numerous opportunities in the aspects of economy and hence
encourage the citizens in identifying the processes using which the government as well as
local communities could be improved.
The main purpose of this particular case study is to explore the ways citizens tend to
utilize the government data. At that time around 1300 datasets that had covered numerous
areas like education, health, public safety, transportation, business as well as housing have
been available on the portal of open data that had been created by the city. According to
Albino, Berardi and Dangelico (2015), the study had represented a certain plethora of
numerous maps, tools, visualization, analysis and applications that had been made by the
public with the usage of open data belonging to New York City. Open data had inspired huge
range of productivity of creative reuses, besides this the questions keep on concerning the
way by which the data is used by individuals having technical skills (Almirall, Wareham and
Ratti 2016). The open data portal of New York City provides analytics of its sown site, this
shows the number of datasets that have been available along with numerous more figures.
One more case study presents data regarding the value of the open data, it provides
the case study with the use of New York Healthcare open data, and implementation of smart
city also contributes in making the technologies used by the healthcare systems smart as well.
According to Janssen, Matheus and Zuiderwijk (2015), the dataset owned by the healthcare

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institutes present in New York include data regarding the discharges in the hospital which
means data regarding when a certain patient would be discharged from the institute besides
providing demographics, procedure of admission, cost data based on the severity of the
disease (Song, Srinivasan and Sookoor 2017). The data is chosen to around as minimum as 1
gigabyte in size, this proves to be small when compared to numerous files that professionals
tend to work with. It further provides in obtained results of numerous surveys such as the
number of days patients require to stay for a certain disease, the rate of patients who had been
cured completely, the number of patients who were registered for major diseases and many
more. These data is obtained without carrying out any sort of analysis in a manual manner.
The data is obtained automatically (Ahmed, Yaqoob and Gani 2016). These case studies
represent data regarding the fact that New York City has not only concentrated in the
betterment of individuals by introducing its own open data portal but also provided
opportunities to numerous industries like healthcare industries.
Opportunities and challenges for planning sustainable cities through the
technology
The introduction of open data would provide numerous opportunities as well as
challenges to the plan of sustainable cities. The opportunities are as follows
The open data would allow the users to access, share as well as use it without paying
any cost for it, in order to connect as well as interact with people around them. As per
Cardullo and Kitchin (2019), various applications that are included in the technology of open
data include real time tables of buses, data relevant to social housing, initiatives of care,
public contracts and playgroups. This would further encourage numerous organizations to
share the data that is sensitive in nature and has the chances to increase intelligent capabilities
of the city (Silva, Khan and Han 2018). This would be required to cater for around 70 % of

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the entire city population that live in eh environment that is urban in nature by the year of
2050.
Besides providing people to access data, open data would also help in increasing
transparency of the government. In this case, numerous administrations that are public in
nature as well as partners in depositing the open data in numerous open data formats that are
mostly common in nature (Abella, Ortiz-De-Urbina-Criado and De-Pablos-Heredero 2017).
Some of the common open data formats are gml, CSV, ZIP, JASON and some more, these
are used such that the data could be used again whenever required by the citizens as well as
developers for numerous purposes.
Open data would not only help the city in the process of implementing smart city, it
would further help in driving tourism as well as the economy associates with the industry of
tourism. It would help in increasing the number of jobs that are available for citizens (Curry,
Dustdar and Sheng 2016). Open data would help the city in making the people’s life easier
for the purpose of accessing numerous services that are provided by organizations within the
city. This would provide the tourists with real time information on the skiing in winter and
many amore activities.
The main benefit that would be provided by the technology of open data in the smart
cities include the role of a particular enabler. It tends to place vital data to people that are
facing issues including citizens and professionals who have knowledge on these areas.
Projects based on open data has a great ability of providing solutions that are citizen centric
(Cheng, Longo and Cirillo 2015). They further provide optimization of services provided by
smart city on the basis of the necessities as well as preferences of citizens along with the
alignment of the technology of open data with the geographical differing policies as well as
customer. The major contribution of open data on the implementation of smart cities include

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the fact that it is cost free along with usage rights that are unlimited in nature. This further
minimizes the major barriers in achieving progress (Capdevila and Zarlenga 2015). This
might result in new creativity that are brought about with the usage of big data analytics, it
provides more level of transparency as well as integrity of the sectors that are public in
nature. This would also increase the possibility to track money flow of the citizens. It
includes marketing insights, illumination of historical as well as present trends. These trends
would be allowed to correlate along with data on political, social as well as environmental
climates (Cardullo and Kitchin 2019). This technology would further provide the opportunity
to recognize as well as respond to the numerous real time changes, they are also allowed to
predict the changes.
The utilization of open data in the smart cities for making sustainable environment
would provide with eth opportunity to estimate the impacts of numerous categories of
changes with the help of simulating as well as modelling, also provides the ability of testing
the predictions along with providing a high level of precision on the overall amount of
information that is available. One more opportunity includes helping in the maximization of
productivity with the help of streamlining of numerous methods as well as services (Janssen,
Matheus and Zuiderwijk 2015). This would be carried out with the help of enabling the
relaxed documentation of various practices that are ineffective, improper or inefficient in
nature. It further contributes in reducing the impact on environment with the help of
simplification of the identification of numerous resources that are being used, this is done
with the help of aiding into the obedience of present ventures, infrastructure as well as
services with the regulations of environment. The technology would provide numerous
solutions that are tailored in nature and hence allow numerous similar problems for being
addressed across numerous frameworks that are legal in nature as well as demographics that
are different.

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The opportunities that would be provided by the technology would result in saving the
economy of the city besides providing the potential of generating new as well as increased
overall revenue. In case of individuals, open data could be utilized for the purpose of making
financial decisions that are more informed in nature, this feeds the applications that enable
numerous solutions that are smart in nature to the issues that are commonly faced by citizens
across numerous people all over dissimilar demographics.
Challenges
There are numerous challenges that could be faced by the city in the process of
implementing smart city, the challenges are as follows
Lack of engagement of community, developer or incentives for reusing, sometimes
governments see the communication of numerous individuals who are developers as well as
entrepreneurs on their data as a major portion of their strategy of open data. If the
government does not communicate with these audiences is considered as an opportunity that
has been missed, whereas numerous examples represent a different story.
Unstructured approach: a particular structured approach to the concept of openness is
limited to numerous companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook. These
organizations have standard rules on the utilization of data (Almirall, Wareham and Ratti
2016). Besides being a trend that is growing continuously, most of the utilization has been
limited to the journals that provide free access as well as open licensing on numerous
academic publications.
Besides the advantages of open data technology, not all the organizations tend to
share data. Some of the, present that fact that data that has been collected under numerous
conditions along with dissimilar assessment tools must never be combined. Some of the
organization have expressed the concern regarding the fact that data would be misinterpreted,

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in case the data gets analysed without any sort of input of numerous researchers that had been
responsible for the collection of data (Ahmed, Yaqoob and Gani 2016). Some other
organizations worry regarding the fact that the disadvantage that is competitive in nature and
is provided by the production of data in an open environment before it has been published. In
a particular culture that is academic in nature and which involves in awarding the individual
who had reported with the data at first, sharing data can prove to be an unfair attempt (Silva,
Khan and Han 2018). Lastly the concerns of privacy can prove to be very complex in nature,
resulting in barriers in the sharing of information for the scientists as well as researchers.
These concerns are minimized which results in these concerns.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it could be stated that smart city could be referred to a
certain city that makes use of ICT in order to meet its objectives as well as the necessities of
numerous citizens. A vital necessity in the process of initiating smart city is to involve the
community in the entire process, such as before implementing the technologies within the
city, the citizens must be made aware regarding the changes that would be brought about after
the changes, they must also be asked regarding any sort of suggestions that could be used for
making the implementation even more successful. The implementation of smart city
technologies usually includes of numerous activities, these activities include application of
huge range of electronic as well as digital technologies within the city, and this is application
would be helpful in uplifting life along with environments of working in a specific region.

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