Sustainable–Smart–Resilient–Low Carbon–Eco–Knowledge Cities; Making sense of a multitude of concepts promoting sustainable urbanization

Over the last couple of decades, metropolitan areas around the world have been engaged in a multitude of initiatives aimed at upgrading urban infrastructure and services, with a view to creating better environmental, social and economic conditions and enhancing cities' attractiveness and competitiveness. Reflecting these developments, many new categories of 'cities' have entered the policy discourse: 'sustainable cities'; 'green cities'; 'digital cities'; 'smart cities'; intelligent cities'; 'information cities'; 'knowledge cities'; 'resilient cities'; 'eco-cities'; 'low carbon cities'; 'liveable cities'; and even combinations, such as 'low carbon eco-cities' and 'ubiquitous eco-cities’. In practice, these terms often appear to be used interchangeably by policy makers, planners and developers. However, the question arises whether these categories nevertheless each embody distinct conceptual perspectives, which would have implications for how they are understood theoretically and applied in policy. In response, this article investigates, through a comprehensive bibliometric analysis, how the twelve most frequent city categories are conceptualised individually and in relation to one another in the academic literature. We hypothesize that, notwithstanding some degree of overlap and cross-fertilization, in their essence the observed categories each harbour particular conceptual perspectives that render them distinctive. This is borne out by the findings, which demonstrate robustly for the first time the conceptual differences and interrelationships among twelve dominant city categories. The 'sustainable city' is the most frequently occurring category and, in a map of keyword co-occurrences, by far the largest and most interconnected node, linked closely to the 'eco-city' and 'green city' concepts. Recently, the more narrow concepts of 'low carbon city' and 'smart city' have been on the rise, judging by their frequency of occurrence in academic journals; the latter in particular appears to have become an increasingly dominant category of urban modernization policy. On their part, ‘resilient city’ and ‘knowledge city’ represent distinct concepts, albeit with comparatively low frequency. Overall, the findings point to the need for rigor and nuance in the use of these terms, not least if one wishes to comprehend their implications for urban development and regeneration policy and practice

Critical Success Factors of Implementing Building Information Modelling and Sustainability Practices in Construction Projects: A Delphi Survey

The research study aims to explore and assess the critical success factors (CSFs) that can amplify the integration of building information modeling (BIM) and sustainability practices in construction projects. Delphi survey technique was employed to solicit the perceptions of experts on the 30 identified CSFs by means of a two-round Delphi survey. The expert panel responses were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistical tools. The key drivers identified in the study are related to people-centric, and data and technology-centric interventions in the built environment. Crucial deductions were formed on the basis of a comparative analysis of the expert groups. The study's findings have provided valuable lessons for local authorities, policymakers, and project stakeholders to strengthen the drive for achieving full adoption of green BIM initiatives. The study has also provided effective recommendations for increasing the uptake of BIM and sustainability practices in the construction industry, and has contributed to the existing body of knowledge about smart urbanization and hands-on practice in the built environment

Urban Regeneration and Sustainable Communities: The Role of Networks, Innovation, and Creativity in Building Successful Partnerships

The following examination goes against the currenttrend in policy on urban regeneration partnerships byrelaxing the assumption that they represent virtuouscircles of mutually reinforcing actions that are good in their own right. It does this by offering a critique of the market-led urban regeneration initiatives and suggesting that they be replaced by a plan-led alternative. This would entail strategic actions being based on a sufficiently “place-based” knowledge of what communities need to be sustainable.Urban regeneration now uses partnerships, with cities, regional development agencies, and businesses seeking to leverage resources from the private sector and channel money, capital, and professional expertise into the development of villages and neighborhoods as part ofthe search for sustainable communities.By focusing on the social capital of collaborative platforms and consensus building, it has become possible to recognize the critical role networks, innovation, and creative partnerships play in representing places that are not only sites of ecological integrity, equity, and democratic renewal, but that are also locations where socially inclusive decision making can institutionalize the civic values required for the regeneration of urban villages and neighborhoods as self-sustaining communities

The IntelCities community of practice.

Sets out the integrated community model of electronically enhanced governance services developed by IntelCities to represent its e-Learning platform, knowledge management system and digital library

The IntelCities community of practice.

Sets out the integrated community model of electronically enhanced governance services developed by IntelCities to represent its e-Learning platform, knowledge management system and digital library

The IntelCities elearning platform, knowledge management system and digital library for semantically-rich e-governance services.

The paper examines the architecture and services of the e-learning platform and describes how the knowledge management system designed for IntelCities is supported by the IP’s digital library. It suggests the e-Learning platform, knowledge management system and digital library developed under the IP provides the intelligence cities need to integrate them as a platform of semantically-rich e-Governance services. That is to say, an integrated platform of semantically rich e-Governance services with the intelligence which cities need to meet the expectations citizens have about the quality of such electronically enhanced products. The paper begins by outlining the integrated model of electronically enhanced governance (eGov) services adopted to represent the front-end, middleware and back-office functions of the IntelCities’ e-Learning, knowledge management (KM) and digital library. Having done this, the paper shall report on the search for an intelligent solution to the IP’s learning needs, knowledge transfer and capacity building requirements. It shall then go on to discuss the information technology (IT) underlying the solution adopted by the IP to integrate the electronically enhanced eGov services hosted on the eCity platform with the legacy systems operated by the public administrations involved in the project. From here the discussion shall then go on to examine how the e-Learning platform, KM system and digital library developed by the IP as back-office functions have been integrated into the IntelCities middleware and delivered as frontend services to citizens