Smart city: integration of information and communication technologies

Abstract

Rapid environmental degradation, substantial complication of municipal facilities and urban interrelations result in increased interest to the problem of steady economic development regarding metropolitan agglomerations, which assumes implementation of three interrelated constituents in the frames of smart city concept: economic, environmental, and social. The research is aimed at determining smart city concept in terms of environmental development and ecosystem sustainability. In order to achieve the goal set in the research, the authors have defined approximate set of theoretical (analysis, synthesis, comparison, generalization) and empirical (survey) methods. Theoretical methods implied studying scientific literature on the state of the research problem; while the main research method was surveying. Students and experts were invited to fill in a semi-formalized questionnaire on a voluntary basis. The main provisions of the problem have been theoretically analyzed in this article, including analysis of smart city concept and its properties. On the basis of expert survey, the main constituents of smart cities have been determined, the actions required for implementation of smart eco-city concept have been defined, and the existing project types of smart eco-cities in the world have been identified. The research results have shown that currently quite a few cities have adopted the "smart city" concept as the main direction of their activities; however, significant obstacles to the implementation of the smart city concept are created by a lack of funds and legislative incentives. The results of the research have confirmed that the implementation of the smart eco-city concept is possible after implementing specific measures and using the existing foreign experience depending on the natural conditions of the territory