Smart City Budget Analysis: Electricity, Healthcare, and Transport

This report analyzes the budget allocation of a smart city, highlighting the importance of electricity, healthcare, and transport. The city prioritizes these essential services, with electricity receiving the largest allocation due to its impact on other services. Healthcare, security, water, and waste management also receive significant funding. The report references academic literature on smart cities, including studies on the concept and implementation of smart city initiatives. The allocation of resources in this city is compared to other smart cities, such as Glasgow and Vision City in Rwanda, to show the common focus on utilities, healthcare, and transport infrastructure. This comparison emphasizes the key areas of focus in smart city development, providing insights into effective urban planning and resource management. The report provides a useful framework for understanding how smart cities are planned and funded.

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Image 1: Screenshot of city’s budget
The budget has given allocated significant amounts to essential services including electricity,
water, health care, security, waste management and rail transport. Electricity has received the
largest allocation (23%) among the items of expenditure based on the fact that electricity plays a
central role in the city’s provision of other services. Virtually every service is dependent on
reliable and affordable electricity. Healthcare, security, water, rail transport, waste management
are the other significant beneficiaries in order of their budget allocations. It is important to point
out that transportation has collectively been allocated about 15% of the expenditure budget but
rail transport accounts for a significant portion of this allocation.
The concept of smart cities has caught the attention of academia and is now the subject of
academic inquiry. Johnson (2016) explores various dimensions of a smart city with the primary
objective of bridging the gap in literature relating to the concept of smart cities and the

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implementation of smart cities. Meijer and Manuel (2016) seek to introduce structure into the
debate on smart cities which they note has become fragmented and confusing owing to its rapid
growth.
Transportation, healthcare, water, waste management and electricity are prioritized in most smart
cities around the world. Glasgow for instance allocated 28% to utilities, 21% of its budget to
healthcare, 17% to transport and 12% to waste management. Vision City is the first smart city in
Rwanda. Roads accounted for the biggest portion of Vision City’s budget allocations. Water and
electricity were also prioritized in the budget. In general however, the key areas of focus are
similar to the ones heavily funded in my smart city.

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Reference List
Johnson, M. (2016) Cities systems of innovation and economic development
Innovation. Management, Policy & Practice, 10 (3) pp. 146-155,
Meijer, A. and Manuel, P. (2016) Governing the smart city: A review of the literature on smart
urban governance. International Review of Administrative Sciences. Vol. 82(2) 392–408