Our built environment is characterized by large, ever‐expanding and highly complex cities. The spatial extent of the interconnected systems that serve these cities leads to higher vulnerability to disruption. On the other hand, climate change and political instability have noticeably increased the frequency of natural and human‐induced hazards. Recalling that risk is the product of vulnerability and hazard, it is evident that large cities are experiencing unprecedented levels of risk. While major investments and numerous research, development and implementation efforts have been dedicated to address natural and human‐induced risk to large cities, there is still a lack of system‐of‐systems level considerations and a comprehensive, interdependent vision for creating cities that respond effectively to severe disruptions. On this note, the authors envision the city of the future, its features and its operational modes. The requirements of creating such smart and sustainable, hence optimally resilient, cities dictate research‐to‐implementation consequences. A high‐level view of these requirements and their implications on research and development is provided.

Since 2008, the development of China's smarter cities has experienced four phases: Exploration and practice phase, normative adjustment phase, strategic breakthrough phase and all‐round development phase. A number of innovative practices such as the city brain and ‘unified online government service’ have provided the world with Chinese solutions for smart city construction. This study explains the concept and connotation of innovative smarter cities, summarizes the development status of China's innovative smarter cities, analyses and judges the seven development trends in the construction of innovative smarter cities, analyses the shortcomings and deficiencies, and puts forward policy suggestions to promote the development. It has an important reference value for comprehensively understanding the development concept and overall development status of China's innovative smarter cities and clarifying the next development direction.

A dynamic digital twin is a feasible solution that can be employed to build real‐time connectivity between virtual and physical objects. Industries like manufacturing, aerospace and healthcare utilise dynamic digital twins for simulation, monitoring and control purposes, but recently, this nascent technology has also attracted the interest of urban designers. Due to the novelty of the dynamic digital twin in urban design, this research study addresses the concept of digital twin technology and investigates its applicability in so‐called smart city settings. Drawing on results from research interviews and examples from the Digital Twin project in Helsinki city, the research illustrates that solid data infrastructure forms the foundation for urban digital twins and the development of future smart city applications and services. Furthermore, data‐enriched digital twins evidently accelerate smart city experimentations and strengthen both learning and knowledge‐based decision‐making. Digital twins have also proved that they offer an environment in which smart city practitioners can bridge multi‐stakeholder urban design teams through one digital platform.

Smart city is one of the current trends of city evolvement. Smart city is a systematic project, which needs a holistic approach. As lots of pilot projects have been undertaken by cities, how to assess the ‘smartness’ of a city is of great importance. This study sums China's smart city standardisation and assessment practice, starting from the national policy evolvement, followed by the standardisation system, assessment and its key procedures and concludes with some possible future works regarding smart city standardisation and assessment.