Objectives
- • To broaden readers' understanding of the process fields of smart city development that can profit from enhanced information and communication technologies
- • To explore in which respects cyber–physical systems (CPSs) may help in improving the coordinated control, regulation, and monitoring of different smart city processes, supporting sustainability objectives
- • To introduce geographical perspectives into the debate on technology-driven smart city development, highlighting place-specific dynamics as well as upper-scale national and global influences on localized economic processes
- • To point out risks and caveats that influence the societal acceptance of technology-driven smart city development and need to be regarded in related policies.
1.1 Introduction
The “smart city” notion has become synonymous with visions of future urban development, which is marked by the widespread digitization of services [1–4]. A major objective of smart cities is to achieve triple sustainability in social, economic, and environmental issues [5]. Modern information and communication technologies (ICTs), the Internet, and the continuous expansion of data supply broaden the options for improving urban citizens' working and living conditions [6–8]. This chapter explores how cyber–physical systems (CPSs) in particular may enhance smart cities. In the field of manufacturing, CPS now represents innovative options for integrating ICT and networking systems into infrastructure, so as to more efficiently control and coordinate complex physical production processes and machine interactions [9, 10]. ICT devices that are embedded into products or components are able to monitor and direct physical processes in a self-regulating manner – directly communicating with each other via the Internet. CPS also has a vast potential beyond the industrial field. Within a smart city context, these systems could significantly augment urban services and supply infrastructure. Moreover, new CPS-driven manufacturing may emerge according to the trends of “urban production” [11].
Together with the requirements and potential implications of smart cities [1, 5], policy demands associated with this visionary goal are also eagerly explored [2, 12–15]. This chapter intends to broaden the conceptual and analytical views, as is required for effective policy making, by employing the perspectives of economic geography to CPS-supported smart city development. In principle, economic geographers focus on place-specific dynamics and systemic interactions between technology trends, economic challenges, social needs, and planning requirements [16]. Localized processes are seen as being embedded in wider, often global, economic, political, and societal settings [17, 18]. Accordingly, viable CPS technologies, along with socioeconomic and cultural settings at the regional level and other spatial scales (as discussed in [2]), are required if a smart city is to reach its full potential. In this context, the chapter explores the following key issues:
- • In which ways can CPS help create a technologically enhanced smart city within the context of working and living in a manner that responds to environmental, economic, and societal challenges?
- • Looking at the various fields in which CPS may support smart city development, how is the effective implementation of technologies influenced by economic conditions on a regional, national, and global scale and also by social attitudes?
- • How can city–regional planning approaches meet these factors in order to arrive at economically and socially acceptable, hence viable, smart city policies?
The chapter's structure reflects this agenda. After defining the system setting (Section 1.2), the author identifies various process fields of working and living in a smart city that can profit from CPS-related applications and impulses (Section 1.3). Then it is discussed how economic conditions influence effective CPS implementation in place-specific ways (Section 1.4). Additionally, social challenges of CPS-based smart city development that relate to aspects of acceptability, qualification, and adaptation are highlighted. The conclusions (Section 1.5) derive insights for policies, suggesting how economic and social well-being can be best promoted when implementing the CPS-enhanced smart city of tomorrow.
1.2 Setting the Scene: Demarcating the Smart City and Cyber–Physical Systems
The range of human activities that are affected by digitization increases every day, which amplifies the scope of ICT applications in urban development. Certain system limits need to be determined before we can concisely assess potential CPS applications in smart cities. This refers both to a proper understanding of the smart city notion and the CPS technology field. Only after the arena and its boundaries have been decided upon, it is possible to succinctly identify the relevant technology options.
A smart city can be defined in various ways (Albino et al. [1]: 6ff, compiled a list of over 20 different definitions). Despite differing perspectives held by public or private actors, there are common denominators [3–5, 8]. A smart city is first and foremost characterized by the strategic, systematic, and coordinated implementation of modern ICT applications in a range of urban functional fields (as elaborated below). This idea of a “digital city” involves both software and hardware components, such as sensors, meters, and other technical devices. Furthermore, the generation targeted and the use of inhabitants' knowledge, learning capacities, creativity, and human capital for innovations, in line with analytical and modeling skills, qualify smart cities as “intelligent cities” [19, 20]. The notion thus transcends a technological focus and explicitly bears an anthropocentric note: smart cities aim to comprehensively fulfill people's needs in terms of economic and social sustainability, happiness, and well-being [1, 5]. The connotation “green city” highlights the ecological objectives of reduced resource consumption, constrained pollution, and high process efficiencies [21]. Shared ideology and community governance strategies are important to stakeholders, especially regarding how the outcomes manifest themselves in public and politically promoted attitudes regarding improvements to the urban quality of life. We need to keep these manifold smart city qualities in mind when assessing the prospects of CPS implementation later on.
CPS technologies build on antecedent embedded systems, that is, computer-driven devices like medical, military, or scientific instruments, cars, and toys. Accordingly, CPSs use software and ICT networks in order to control, monitor, and coordinate complex physical processes, though this is mainly applicable to modern manufacturing [9, 10]. CPS can efficiently organize production within companies and also, through communication between components and machines, coordinate the value chain between different firms. Advancing from conventional computer-integrated manufacturing, CPS incorporates elements of self-awareness and self-regulation, wireless inter-machine adjustment, and complex data processing, thus integrating information from various stages and organizations within a production system. The Internet of Things forms a crucial CPS component, as objects can now carry digital information themselves and directly communicate with other objects, such as processing machines, via the Internet [22]. The expected results are a substantially modified division of labor in manufacturing and related services, consequently a transformed production landscape [23].
Existing literature discussing smart city qualities selectively refers to CPS components [7, 24, 25]. Big data sets, that is, large amounts of data on citizens' purchasing habits, mobility, and other behaviors, call for adequate information processing technologies and the expedient use of said technology [6, 8, 26]. Intelligent products or services like thinking machines, sensor-monitored smart homes, and self-regulating infrastructure are expected to significantly shape the face of smart cities [1–3, 27] and reach far beyond simple ICT applications. It seems that due to the more ...
