Smart Cities and the Dire Need for a Course Correction

Smart city strategies use digital technologies to improve the efficiency and efficacy of city services and enhance the livability of urban areas. Conceptually smart cities are not novel. For decades, cities have employed technology based strategies to identify effective means of improving the quality of life of its inhabitants. The current renewed efforts to create smart cities, therefore, do not come from new long-term goals set by municipalities around the globe. The movement that embraces smart cities today is fueled by the efforts of municipalities trying to understand how to take advantage of the advances in digital technology and the ubiquitous availability of wireless connectivity to achieve previously identified objectives. Urban planning research has clearly identified the challenges cities face today. However, the ongoing academic research efforts in the communications area are largely unrelated to these challenges. Based on this premise, this work first visits the realities that municipalities confront in an urbanizing world. Thereafter, it highlights the current efforts in research and argues how these are not clearly related to the current needs of municipalities around the world. It then visits the current standardization efforts around smart cities. Finally, the article proposes a new interdisciplinary path that interested researchers could take advantage of to effectively help cities from developed or developing nations mitigate the imminent crisis fueled by urbanization.