The unprecedented speed in urbanization along with the current economic crisis and the ageing infrastructure of cities has stretched cities to the limit which are suffering to provide basic urban services. Cities of today with high density of population will have several challenges not experienced so far and will need to be organized in a strategic way to enable a sustainable economic growth and guarantee a certain prosperity. Scholars have outlined the growing demand for a more sustainable, efficient and liveable model in urban development. The concept of smart cities has emerged due to increasing interest in researches on the innovative socio-technical and socio-economic aspects of urban development, the physical-digital infrastructure to improve the quality of urban services and the mitigation of the effects of environmental change. The literature on the smart city is fairly new and some publications have theorized and described the usage of this concept. The article considers topics such as physical-digital integration, Internet of Things, closed-system approaches, open-systems approach and barriers in city data management.

Chapter Contents:

• 3.1 The physical-digital integration of smart cities
• 3.1.1 The Internet of Things
• 3.1.2 The city data
• 3.2 The two categories of smart cities' applications
• 3.2.1 Closed-system approaches
• 3.2.2 Open-systems approach
• 3.3 Sources of barriers in city data management

Inspec keywords: smart cities; Big Data; socio-economic effects; sustainable development

Other keywords: socio-technical aspects; physical-digital infrastructure; closed-system approaches; Internet of Things; urban development; physical-digital integration; smart cities; socio-economic aspects; city data management; environmental change; open-systems approach

Subjects: Economic, social and political aspects of computing; Engineering computing; Data handling techniques; Business and administrative computing