Preface to the Journal of Smart Cities and Society issue 1(2)

1.Introduction

This second issue of our Journal of Smart Cities and Society continues the contributions to this field with various teams across different countries and offer complementary analysis in a number of important areas:

“Smaller is smarter: A case for small to medium-sized smart cities” by S. Nowaczyk, A. Resmini, V. Long, V. Fors, M. Cooney, E. Duarte, S. Pink, E. Aksoy, A. Vinel and M. Dougherty provides a survey on Small and Medium-sized Cities (SMCs) with a focus on its multi-faceted nature (e.g., smart economy, smart people, smart governance, smart mobility, smart environment and smart living) and highlighting the bias towards large and very large cities within the technical literature.

“Learning from the COVID-19 pandemic in governing smart cities” by M. Rodríguez Bolívar, focuses on the potential of smart cities better cope with future pandemics and other disasters, advocating for collaborative governance supported by emerging technologies to increase resiliency in cities.

“Understanding social sustainability for smart cities: The importance of inclusion, equity, and citizen participation as inputs and long-term outcomes” by T. Chen, J. Ramon Gil-Garcia, and M. Gasco-Hernandez, provides a survey on social sustainability in smart cities, with emphasis on inclusion and equity, especially civic engagement as a tool to better understand and respond to all residents’ social, economic, and environmental demands.

Lastly, “Data impressions for a smart city: Exploring new ways to present and engage citizens in environmental data” by J. Pigott, F. Carroll, A. Taylor, J. Hornby, S. Thorne and E. Gardner addresses the problem of’data fatigue’ and introduces the concept of the data impression through data ‘physicalisation’ as a way to engage citizens in their data, an idea inspired by the impressionists innovation in the art world of the late 1800’s and illustrated with a case study to encouraging dialogue, sustainable tourism and positive environmental practices for our smart cities.

The editorial team of this journal expects the contributions included in this issue will provide new tools to address some of the many challenges ahead to realize this societal paradigm shift and inspire and guide other colleagues in this developing community to further innovate in this sector.

We encourage all sectors of society to engage in this technical conversation as our view of this area as a multidisciplinary one which will require the input of various different professions and different levels of involvement within urban environments to produce effective innovation.