Role of ICT in City Learning for Developing Smart Cities: A Review of the Literature

What is it about?

Cities are continuously challenged by demographic, socio-economic and environmental changes. Cities need to adapt and evolve to respond to scenarios arising within themselves, such as the needs of their citizens, as well as from external or global influences, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Cities have been compared to complex organisations comprised of individuals, groups and institutions that evolve organically like complex organisms that adapt to changes by learning from their continuous interactions and feedback. The sharing of knowledge and experiences between city elements through these interactions is fundamental to cities for evolving as a learning and innovation ecosystem. The learning process of a city could essentially enhance citizen-centric transformations for developing resilient and sustainable smart cities. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has also been one of the major drivers for developing smart cities. In this study, we report the results from a Systematic Literature Review to explore the role of ICT in supporting city learning as innovation ecosystems for developing citizen-centric smart cities. The results show that ICT support in the context of city learning has been considered in Living Labs, Lifelong Learning and Digital Platforms for knowledge sharing and information analytics where collaboration is a key concept.

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