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IJPSM
29,2
ICT and sustainability in smart
cities management
Francesco Bifulco, Marco Tregua, Cristina Caterina Amitrano and
132 Anna D'Auria
Department of Economics, Management, Institutions,
Received 7 July 2015 University of Naples – Federico II, Naples, Italy
Revised 30 October 2015
14 December 2015
Accepted 15 December 2015 Abstract
Purpose – Contemporary debate is increasingly focused on ICT and sustainability, especially in
relation to the modern configuration of urban and metropolitan areas in the so-called smartization
process. The purpose of this paper is to observe the connections between smart city features as
conceptualized in the framework proposed by Giffinger et al. (2007) and new technologies as tools, and
sustainability as the goal.
Design/methodology/approach – The connections are identified through a content analysis
performed using NVivo on official reports issued by organizations, known as industry players within
smart city projects, listed in the Navigant Research Report 2013.
Findings – The results frame ICT and sustainability as “across-the-board elements” because they
connect with all of the services provided to communities in a smart city and play a key role in smart
city planning. Specifically, sustainability and ICT can be seen as tools to enable the smartization
process.
Research limitations/implications – An all-in-one perspective emerges by embedding
sustainability and ICT in smart interventions; further research could be conduct through direct
interviews to city managers and industry players in order to understand their attitude towards the
development of smart city projects.
Practical implications – Potential approaches emerging from this research are useful to city
managers or large corporations partnering with local agencies in order to increase the opportunities for
the long-term success of smart projects.
Originality/value – The results of this paper delineate a new research path looking at the
development of new models that integrate drivers, ICT, and sustainability in an all-in-one perspective
and new indicators for the evaluation of the interventions.
Keywords ICT, Sustainability, Community services, Smart city management, Smartization
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
Many cities, due to rapid population growth, face two conflicting issues. On the one
hand, problems include the overexploitation of resources, an inadequate number of
services, and an increase in pollution. On the other hand, sustainable goals must be
achieved to overcome these criticalities.
The integration of new aspects brought to take into account different and innovative
factors in governance and management of the urban areas, and this process turned the
focus on more complex conceptualizations such as the “smart city” (Schaffers et al., 2011)
in which human and social capital and traditional and modern communication
infrastructures are combined to carry on the sustainable economic growth and a higher
International Journal of Public
quality of life through a proper management of available resources (Caragliu et al., 2011).
Sector Management
Vol. 29 No. 2, 2016
pp. 132-147 This work has been supported by the project OR.C.HE.S.T.R.A. (Organizational of Cultural
© Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0951-3558
Heritage for Smart Tourism and Real-time Accessibility) in the Italian National Operative
DOI 10.1108/IJPSM-07-2015-0132 Program 2007-2013.
The challenges in smart cities have fuelled the search for better quality services and have ICT and
led cities to begin the process of smartization, a path towards the integration of sustainability
technology in every aspect of the urban environment to offer a better quality of life to its
stakeholders.
Since the twenty-first century, an increasing number of smart city projects
have emerged using a variety of methods, dimensions, and typologies to address
cities’ specific policies, objectives, funding, and scopes for their planned projects 133
(Amitrano et al., 2014).
In recent years, the conceptualization of a smart city has generated a large number
of studies from scholars, central or local institutions, and industry players involved in
smart projects (Nam and Pardo, 2011). The connected streams of research aimed at
creating models for smart city projects has led to the identification of pivotal elements,
usually known as “characteristics” (Giffinger et al., 2007) or “drivers” (Meijer and
Rodríguez-Bolívar, 2015). The latter term indicates the propelling role of the above-cited
elements in the development and improvement of urban and metropolitan areas.
The value of these features is strictly related to the decisions of local governments
and city managers because they can guide the urban context through the smartization
process (Previtali and Bof, 2009). However, the related framework remains complex and
diversified, as like as differences emerge when comparing features of local contexts
influencing smart projects (Neirotti et al., 2014). More recently, attention has focused on
both sustainability as the goal for smartization and on ICT (information and
communications technology – or technologies) as a relevant tool or as the key to
addressing smart processes (Meijer and Rodríguez-Bolívar, 2015), especially given the
findings contained in official reports released by organizations and local agencies.
To identify the results that have already been achieved through smart projects and,
in particular, to investigate how to attain a smart city, this paper analyses two
connections: the first between ICT and individual smart city drivers and the second
between sustainability and individual smart city drivers. The results lead the authors
to consider ICT and sustainability as across-the-board elements for smart city projects
due to the central role they play in performing smart activities.

2. Literature review
2.1 The conceptualization of smart cities
Currently, urban and metropolitan contexts are increasingly influenced by
globalization processes (Berry, 2008) and new technologies (Demirkan, et al., 2011).
ICTs are now heavily involved in the governance and management of cities, where they
are used as tools and as resources to improve quality of life, achieve sustainable
development, and create a more open and innovative urban context through the
participation of several actors (Anthopoulos and Tougountzoglou, 2012).
Accordingly, a popular topic in this field is the smart city, which is a new
configuration of the urban and metropolitan contexts based on a set of linked features
to improve citizens’ quality of life, as the urban development policies are often
addressed by urban managers dealing with the smart city discourse (Vanolo, 2014).
The smart city began its evolution in the 1970s, when urban contexts adopted a
digital configuration (Ishida and Isbister, 2000) that focused on technologies and
non-material structures embedded in the physical space of the city. More recently, the
integration of new aspects of everyday life turned the focus to more complex
innovations, supported by broadband networks and collective intelligence determining
the development of the city (Elmquist et al., 2009; Schaffers et al., 2011).
IJPSM Indeed, over time, scholars, central and local institutions, and large corporations
29,2 driven by globalization have offered numerous contributions and have proposed
several definitions (i.e. digital, intelligent, ubiquitous, wired, hybrid, information,
creative, learning, humane, knowledge, and smart) aimed at describing the renewed
configurations adopted within the local contexts (Nam and Pardo, 2011). As introduced
above, the most commonly used labels are “digital city” and “smart city”, and while
134 scholars do not agree on the definitions of these two labels (Shen et al., 2011; Tregua
et al., 2015), projects led by supranational institutions share the perspective that a
sustainable city represents the evolution of the smart city concept. Anyway, smart
interventions in cities have even been criticized, due to issues like poor or fragmented
inclusiveness (Walravens, 2011) and splintering urbanism (Vanolo, 2014), and more
generally the usage of “smart” just as a label (Hollands, 2008).
Newly developed technology for city (Feldman and Audretsch, 1999) retains an
important role in both conceptualizations; indeed, when reviewing the literature, it is
clear that in the digital city, ICT represents the infrastructures that shape the city, and
in the smart city, ICT is regarded as a set of tools for the governance and management
of urban and metropolitan areas to improve services through innovative technologies
(Anttiroiko et al., 2013; Lee et al., 2013).
The various aspects characterizing the smart city conceptualization can be
summarized through two of the most relevant definitions:
(1) “we believe a city to be smart when investments in human and social capital
and traditional (transport) and modern (ICT) communication infrastructures
fuel sustainable economic growth and a high quality of life, with a wise
management of natural resources, through participatory governance”
(Caragliu et al., 2011, p. 50); and
(2) “the more recent interest in smart cities can be attributed to the strong
concern for sustainability, and to the rise of new Internet technologies, such as
mobile devices (e.g. smart phones), the semantic web, cloud computing, and
the Internet of Things (IoT) promoting real world user interfaces” (Schaffers
et al., 2011, p. 434).
The inclusion of these different elements in smart cities is based on a model known as the
“triple helix” (Etzkowitz, 2003), which involves different and complementary features
such as knowledge, entrepreneurship, and institutions. The evolutionary offspring of the
“triple helix”, namely, the “quadruple helix” and the “quintuple helix” (Carayannis and
Campbell, 2010), are based on the inclusion of civil society and natural environment. For
this purpose, civil society is defined as the community of users who have an essential role
in governance and management – not including the local administrator – and who
become operators and users or, better, cre-actors (Tregua et al., 2015), while the natural
environment is seen as the context framing these interventions and even as something to
be safeguarded when performing smart interventions.

2.2 The development and primary features of smart city models

The approach towards smart cities has evolved through a focus on one or more
elements favouring the smartization process. However, only the integration of all of the
domains of intervention based on the contribution of ICT can help cities to achieve
long-lasting and sustainable economic growth and a better quality of life for urban
stakeholders (Anthopoulos and Tougountzoglou, 2012).
 This process of integrating different smart initiatives in urban and metropolitan ICT and
contexts has been achieved through the efforts of different stakeholders (Tregua et al., sustainability
2015) playing a role in the analysis of the prerequisites for creating cities with an improved
quality of life (Giffinger et al., 2007). These stakeholders include industry players, central
or national agencies (i.e. the European Union), and scholars. Their efforts to study smart
cities have led to the creation of models which collect the dimensions of urban life to be
enhanced and developed through the implementation of smart city projects. 135
These features have been grouped into clusters and are called drivers because of
their propelling role in the development of smart cities. These sets of smart elements
have undergone various changes over recent years, and this path can be seen in a
selection of studies ordered from the oldest to the most recent (Table I), showing a
greater number of studies performed in the last five years.
This table shows an early attempt by the Centre of Regional Science at the Vienna
University of Technology, to create a smart city model, which, as of today, remains the
most cited and most frequently used (Schaffers et al., 2011). The approach at the
foundation of the model considers a smart city to be “a city well performing in a forward
looking way in these six characteristics” (Giffinger et al., 2007), namely: Smart Economy,
Smart People, Smart Governance, Smart Mobility, Smart Environment, and Smart Living.
The Smart Economy groups all features related to economic competitiveness, such
as entrepreneurship, innovation, productivity, and flexibility of the labour market, as
well as the international expansion of the local economy. The development of a smart
city is closely linked to the creation of an urban context that stimulates new industrial
activities (Bronstein, 2009).
Another driver is Smart People, which has been defined through the quality of social
interactions in cities, openness towards different cultures, the development of human
capital, the education of people, and the role of ICT in the improvement of participation
and the reduction of the digital divide (Giffinger et al., 2007). Smart Governance
concerns citizens’ participation in urban decision-making processes (Kolsaker and Lee-
Kelley, 2008), the co-creation of new services for an improved quality of life (Bélissent,
2010), and the implementation of different instruments for collaboration, service
integration, and data exchange (Maltby, 2013).
Smart Mobility focuses both on sustainable and intermodal transport systems
offering safe and secure conditions through the use of ICT (Bifulco et al., 2014), and on
local, national, and international accessibility.
The Smart Environment has been studied in connection with pollution reduction,
natural resource management, and the protection and conservation of natural habitats
through the efficient use of resources as well as the re-use or substitution of natural
resources to reach sustainability goals (Tanguay et al., 2010).

Study developer (year) Drivers

Centre of Regional Science, Economy, people, governance, mobility, environment, living

Vienna UT (Giffinger et al., 2007)
Bélissent (2010) Transportation, healthcare, education, public safety and security,
building management, city administration, waste management
Smart Cities Council (2013) Buildings, energy, telecommunication, payments, transport,
human services, water, public safety Table I.
EU-European Parliament (2014) Governance, economy, mobility, environment, people, living Smart cities drivers
IJPSM Finally, Smart Living has been identified with quality of life, namely, housing, culture,
29,2 health, tourism, and a specific interest in the search for high levels of
social cohesion.
This smart city model was updated by the European Parliament in “Mapping Smart
Cities in the EU” and the comparison between the two studies shows that the EU
highlights ICT as a feature within all of the six previous identified characteristics
136 rather than as a particular element acting as a Smart Mobility driver. ICT is considered
to be a fundamental feature with specific qualities: it is an across-the-board driver,
specifically, “a key enabler for cities to address these challenges in a ‘smart’ manner”.

2.3 The role of ICT and sustainability in smart cities

The increasing number of smart city initiatives can be linked to the diffusion and
integration of new technologies, in particular, ICTs and data management
functionalities, expanded from elementary data acquisition to data processing and
interpretation. These advances have been widely exploited due to the diffusion of
mobile devices, which allow people to participate in (Kirwan, 2015) and contribute to
their urban and metropolitan environments.
The important role played by people, the so-called human component (Nam and
Pardo, 2011), within the smartization process has led to a different conceptualization of
technologies as intelligent instruments aimed at the creation of cities with an improved
quality of life (Bulu, 2014) and at the improvement of human participation through
services co-creation (Kirwan, 2015). The participation should be further enabled to
avoid social marginality (Vanolo, 2014; Huston et al., 2015).
The technological elements required to deploy smart initiatives include the
implementation of the necessary hardware (sensors, wireless equipment, etc.) and
software (artificial intelligence, expert systems, etc.) to create a “physical-digital
environment of smart cities” (Schaffers et al., 2011, p. 435; Li et al., 2015). Scholars have
focused their attention on the relationship between technology and urban life, and some
recent studies (Lombardi et al., 2012) analyse the requirements of a new holistic system
for integrated data acquisition, querying, and mining that can be realized through the
development of common open platforms and ubiquitous ICT infrastructures.
Specifically, a smart city must deploy smart computing technologies, combining the
use of software systems, server infrastructures, network infrastructures, and client
devices to connect different urban services and stakeholders (Åkesson et al., 2008).
Some of the most developed ICT applications in smart cities are GPS technologies to
enhance transportation and traffic flow; database technologies for health, energy
efficiency, and education; pattern recognition software to improve security systems;
and mobile technologies to engage people in services co-creation or social activities
(Bulu, 2014). The role of ICT is related to the development of smart initiatives within
all smart city drivers, but it has also a clear relationship with the challenge of
sustainable development in urban environments (Lombardi et al., 2012; Meijer and
Rodríguez-Bolívar, 2015) for all citizens, looking for a participation as wide as possible
(Vanolo, 2014; Luque-Ayala and Marvin, 2015). Strictly related to ICT, sustainability
has been widely analysed among international agencies, scholars, and associations,
and its application in the smart context (Lombardi and Vanolo, 2015) has led to
different definitions in relation to the focus on a specific dimension (economic, social,
and environmental) in the deployment of smart projects.
In fact, the concept of sustainability is widely recognized as “development that
meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations
to meet their own needs” (World Commission on Environment and Development ICT and
(WCED), 1987). This first attempt to define the context of sustainable development has sustainability
been expanded to take into account the economic and social dynamics of modern
economies, leading to a broader meaning with the so-called “triple bottom line” (Rogers
and Ryan, 2001). The prevalent definition of sustainability has been used to underline
the relevance of the preservation of natural resources, social equity, and economic
development in search of a systemic vision with elements that contribute to achieving 137
common goals.
The application of sustainability within territories has been proposed by different
scholars such as Beatley (2000), who considered the concept of smart growth in urban
neighbourhood, Schilling and Logan (2008) who emphasized sustainable strategies in
cities to create new urban scenarios, especially regarding local communities, and
Talen (2011), who argued the replace of unsustainable contexts with sustainable ones.
Other operative implications of sustainability in urban contexts have been proposed
by Yigitcanlar and Lönnqvist (2013), who focused on the role played by knowledge in
city design and on strategies concerning all three different dimensions of sustainability
for a sustainable urban development; Hollands (2015) highlighted the role of
sustainability in smart cities and the opportunity offered by new technologies to
achieve sustainable goals.
Furthermore, another field of study has focused on more complex issues, namely,
sustainability models, first conceived by scholars such as Hartwick (1977) and Solow
(1986), who considered sustainability to be an investment with clearly observable direct
impacts in relation to the achievement of a goal. Consequently, scholars have focused
on sustainability within the domain of economics and finance to analyse the existing
evaluation tools and to create new ones. Increasing attention has been paid to
identifying financing opportunities for smart initiatives and to selecting the most
suitable initiatives to create smart city projects that are sustainable in the long term.
One of the main contributions to the analysis of financial solutions was provided by
Komninos (2013), who delineated the instruments used to support the implementation
of an enabling platform for the development of innovative city services for urban
stakeholders. Specifically, the identified solutions are public development funding,
reselling, data monetization, free core services and payments for additional features,
advertising, sponsorship, leasing, and crowdfunding (Komninos, 2013).
Finally, there has been increasing interest in sustainability in smart cities from a
quantitative perspective; namely, attention has focused on the development of
measures and indicators. One important attempt was made by Tanguay et al. (2010),
who first provided an overview of sustainability and the definition of the “triple bottom
line”, after which they explored a wide range of indicators aimed at examining the risks
related to data accessibility, and the absence of standards before analyzing and
presenting suitable indicators to apply in smart cities. The approach to sustainability
was even considered as a limit when referred just “to classic dimensions” (Tanguay
et al., 2010, p. 410), since a city requires a perspective as wider as possible to the
multiple challenges arising (Hollands, 2015).

3. Purpose and methodology

3.1 Purpose
An investigation of the literature shows the relevance of smart city characteristics, also
known as drivers. Specifically, our research will focus on the role of ICT and
sustainability in smart cities, particularly in relation to these drivers; the expected
IJPSM results will contribute to enhance the recent research streams on smart cities and to
29,2 follow the investigations on ICT firms supporting smartization (Hollands, 2015).
Indeed, ICT and sustainability cannot be considered using the characteristics
detailed above because these characteristics have across-the-board aims. New
technological development is pivotal in cities’ growth, primarily because ICTs connect
different stakeholders and offer better services (through informatization and
138 digitalization). New technologies are connected to each driver with the aim of
generating urban growth through sustainable development.
Therefore, the goal of this paper is to investigate how ICT and sustainability interact
with smart city drivers when considering the following question:
RQ1. What are the links between ICT and smart city drivers?
There are different approaches to sustainability in smart cities both in the literature
and in projects launched around Europe. Sustainability can be seen as strictly related to
non-compromising development, as a set of different tools (or different perspectives) or
as a goal in smart city projects. The second RQ is as follows:
RQ2. What are the links between sustainability and smart city drivers? Is
sustainability primarily considered in economic, social or environmental
terms?

3.2 Methodology and data analysis

The characteristics of our research questions lead us to apply a qualitative methodology,
due to the novelty of the topics (Lee, 1999), leading to an exploratory nature of our
approach. We chose to perform a content analysis using NVivo (Krippendorff, 2012) on
official reports released by industry players supporting smart city projects, namely,
highly detailed dossiers, from 10 to 30 pages long, on how innovative activities are
carried out in cities that aim to become smart, in order to examine how the features under
investigation are considered in projects launched around Europe.
The choice of NVivo was based on methodological suggestions by scholars
(Krippendorff, 2012) in a inductive approach (Bazeley and Jackson, 2013) because it
provides the chance to explore connections among elements (Tesch, 1990); moreover
the software gives the opportunity to perform different levels of analysis and to present
them in statistical indices and graphs, which are useful when considering the relevance
of the results. Specifically, this software allows one to observe, analyse, and classify the
information contained in the selected documents and to state linkages among pieces of
information and among the issues shaping them. This perspective is useful in
management studies (Patton, 2005) and it leads to some advantages when investigating
the strategic approach to interconnected issues (Morris, 1994).
The collection of documents includes a selection from 15 industry players based on a
list of organizations performing smart city projects by Navigant Research (2013), a firm
that offers market research and consulting services through in-depth analyses on
global technology markets and especially on smart cities. The reliability of the analysis
is safeguarded thanks to the parallel contributions of each author, as suggested by
Krippendorff (2012).
Specifically, official reports were selected by performing a Google search (Oh et al.,
2005; Morris et al., 2005) and collecting the first three documents reported by each
player. This process resulted in a data set comprising 45 documents. The relevance of
the documents was based on the information they contained about ideas, strategies,
and the performance of smartization processes; their content had been validated by ICT and
both industry players and local agencies involved in the projects. sustainability
To answer to the first research question, a content analysis was performed on the
industry players’ official reports using the NVivo word frequency query based on ICT.
As regards the second research question, the investigation aimed to deepen the
meanings assigned to sustainability as it relates to smart city drivers, in line with the
findings of the literature review. 139
To achieve this goal, a second level of similarity among words, namely, “stemmed
words”, was chosen. This analysis uses the primary word – known as the stem or root –
and its corresponding similar words (i.e. plurals, pronouns, etc.) in a process
comparable to lemmatization.
The results were found in the so-called “near content”, namely, in a fixed range of
closeness (five words) around the focal term of the semantic area used in the first query.
To answer RQ1 and RQ2, the most frequent words, as identified in the word
frequency query, were employed to create semantic areas to be implemented in a
cluster analysis. This approach combined evidence from the empirical analysis with
that emerging from theory based on the analysis performed on official reports from
large corporations involved in smart city projects.
Each semantic area was considered to be a “node” for the cluster analysis: in NVivo, a
“node” is a unit of analysis that groups data. All authors took part to the analysis of
“nodes” to give more reliability to the research process. Through cluster analysis, it is
possible to infer relationships among nodes, even when using different indices to
measure the similarity, dissimilarity and distance of the data sets. Finally, Jaccard’s
proximity index was selected – as the most suitable among the three indices proposed –
to measure the probability and verify links when performing a content analysis through
NVivo (Gök and Hacioglu, 2010; D’Enza and Palumbo, 2013) and when comparing the
proximity of the data (Bazeley and Jackson, 2013) without the use of redundancy.

4. Results and discussion

NVivo performed different types of analysis, as stated in the above paragraph on the
methodology. The sources from all organizations related to smart city development
were first used to focus on the word frequency and to there by understand the most
relevant topics. These results were then used to create the nodes and to analyse the
relationships among them, as represented in the following figure (Figure 1); each node

y y
om om
on on
ec ec
su t
sta nt en
ina
nme nm
bil iro o
ity v IC
T vir
en en

govern le govern
peop
le ance peop ance

Figure 1.
Nodes clustered by
y

livi
livi

word similarity
y
ilit

lit
ob

n
ng

ob

g
m

m
IJPSM from the analysis is useful to represent one of the six drivers, the ICT, or the
29,2 sustainability. The focus of the two research questions led us to perform a cluster
analysis to depict the relationships emerging between the semantic areas based on the
concept of sustainability and the semantic areas describing the drivers of the
smartization process.
The results relate to the role of sustainability and ICT in terms of the drivers arising
140 from the literature; the links that emerge from these are used to express the relationships
among the created nodes if their likelihood is equal to or higher than 0.75 based on
Jaccard’s index. The results show a strong level of cohesion in how organizations
approach smart cities, so the focus was on those relationships with a result of 0.75 and
above. These results are represented in the following figure (Figure 2), which depicts the
relationships between the six smart city drivers and ICT and sustainability.
The links indicated by a continuous line are of a likelihood equal to or higher than
0.75 on Jaccard’s proximity index (ranging from 0 to 1), while those depicted by a dotted
line have a likelihood level lower than 0.75.
Regarding the links between ICT and the six drivers (Table II), the software analysis
offered the highest levels of likelihood for relationships between ICT and people, ICT and
living, and ICT and the environment, which are all over 0.75 on Jaccard’s index.

economy y economy
lit
en

en
2
bi

T 0.7 0.7
vir

na

vir
IC 0.70
on

ai

on
st

0.79
me

su

me
nt

nt
0.6 0.9
9 3
0.75

Figure 2.
0.87

ce
ce

Relationships

rnan
rnan

0.
peop

between drivers and

peop

54
0.73

ICT and

gove
0.

gove
0.69

le
83
le

sustainability
classified using
Jaccard’s proximity
index mo g mo g
bilit bilit
y livin y livin

Main node Node (drivers) Jaccard’s coefficient

(a) ICT People 0.871686

Living 0.831807
Environment 0.797004
Economy 0.720386
Mobility 0.692934
Table II. Governance 0.692509
Relationships (b) Sustainability Governance 0.926875
between the six Economy 0.773381
drivers and ICT (a), People 0.750686
and between the six Mobility 0.734021
drivers and Environment 0.704062
sustainability (b) Living 0.54164
The relationship emerging between ICT and people can be better understood by ICT and
focusing on the creation, spread, and usage of mobile and smart phone apps. These sustainability
apps are tools provided to citizens and other stakeholders aimed at encouraging their
participation, improving the availability of information, and, in general, enhancing their
sense of community (Lee and Lee, 2014). ICT is a method to enable resource integration
and service provision in a context with numerous stakeholders who are both the
carriers of resources to be integrated and actors expressing needs to be satisfied. 141
The link between ICT and Living is relationship is directly connected to ICT and
people, as ICT is seen as a method of improving service provision to communities.
“Living” groups a wide range of facilities – cultural services, health, education, housing,
and safety, among others – that are provided to improve the quality of life in urban
contexts, particularly for citizens. The primary challenge for a city is to become
“smarter”. The switch in smart services (Lee and Lee, 2014) started with digitalization
and is ongoing, especially in terms of encouraging service integration. This link mirrors
the step enabling the leveraging of data to achieve better services (Ishida and Isbister,
2000) using ICT methods to collect information emerging from feedback.
The third relationship among those with a likelihood higher than 0.75 is represented
by ICT and the environment. This link is based on the testing and the usage of sensor
networks in the processes planned and deployed to perform waste and water
management. These types of processes also provide electricity in cities and in
residential areas (Bulu, 2014) in a more sustainable way and favour the exchange of
data through ICT. The sensors linked in networks are the outcome of the “convergence
of micro-electro-mechanical systems technology, wireless communications and digital
electronics” (Akyildiz et al., 2002).
Other links are observed, although their likelihood level is lower than 0.75. ICT in
relation to the economy increases income through the sale of apps, leading to a higher
propensity to buy services, especially those related to culture and tourism, and offering
increased economic efficiency for some services (Kramers et al., 2014). ICT is a tool for
mobility because it can facilitate the use of public transport by providing logistical
information, and it can even encourage a switch between different methods of
transportation (Lee et al., 2013). Moreover, apps can be used to link transport services to
transport-related facilities such as parking and rental facilities. Finally, ICT and
governance can be examined together by taking into account the increasing spread of
projects based on leveraging open data from public administration activities (Maltby,
2013). Open data “is data that can be freely used, re-used and redistributed by anyone –
subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share-alike” (Open Knowledge
Foundation, 2012); with the use of technological infrastructures and specific software,
open data can be easily achieved.
The results of the second research question are related to the topic of sustainability
and an overall presentation is contained in the following table (Table II).
The first piece of evidence from the analysis is represented by the linkage between
sustainability and governance, which has the highest level of likelihood (0.93 with a
highest possible value of 1.00). Thus, the topic of sustainability can be taken into
account as a type of guideline directing governing bodies (Neirotti et al., 2014) and as
a series of interventions to be deployed over a given period of time. This conception is
based on the definition of a vision and a strategy oriented towards the smartization
process. Acting sustainably means considering the needs of citizens and other
stakeholders, leading to the creation of value when they use the services and resources
provided (Lee et al., 2013). Hence, the overall goal of smart interventions is to enable a
IJPSM sustainable approach when acting to satisfy stakeholders’ needs and to achieve the
29,2 expected outcomes in the long term.
A second result is the link between sustainability and the economy; Jaccard’s
proximity index for this relationship is equal to 0.78, which is greater than the
benchmark of 0.75. This connection led us to consider the relevance of sustainability to
smart city projects and how it can lead to both economic feasibility and financial
142 sustainability (Shen et al., 2011).
In line with this consideration, financial and economic issues are the most relevant
aims (Neirotti et al., 2014) among those affecting smart project plans; however, this
choice has disadvantages when considering other features of sustainability. Moreover
the expected revenues or the decreases in costs are advantages representing a potential
aim for both public actors and private organizations (Kramers et al., 2014).
The third result that emerged from the cluster analysis is the link between
sustainability and people, which has a 0.75 likelihood level on Jaccard’s proximity
index. This relationship led us to focus on the significance of the social dimension of
sustainability in terms of the potential output for some of the city’s stakeholders,
especially citizens, as seen when debating the relationship between sustainability and
governance. The social perspective on sustainability is relevant because “community”
and “citizens” are some of the most important elements shaping the semantic area built
around “people”, and this perspective can complement the previous approach to
economic issues. Specifically, the smart community is an emerging topic in the smart
cities management literature, and projects present the smart community as an
evolution of the smart city concept. Finally, smart interventions need to be oriented
towards sustainability because their deployment should create benefits for some actors
without decreasing the wellness of others as is clearly stated in the most common
definition of sustainability (Carroll and Buchholtz, 2014).
The results shaping this last section of findings for RQ2 consists of the links with a
likelihood level of lower than 0.75, for example, sustainability and mobility (0.73),
sustainability and the environment (0.70), and sustainability and living (0.54).
The tie between sustainability and mobility has a 0.73 likelihood level on Jaccard’s
proximity index, and the approach to mobility in smart projects is related to
transportations facilities. Sustainability is considered to be one of the most relevant
goals when transport networks are improved to decrease congestion and facilitate
transit connections, particularly for commuters. Sustainability linked to transport
has a positive impact on the environment because the increased usage of public
transportation can result in a lower quantity of CO2 and other toxic emissions.
This latter point is critical in the debate on environmental sustainability, since cities
pinpoint environmental sustainability as one of their primary goals on their agenda.
Conversely, the link between sustainability and living has a lower level of likelihood
because of the heterogeneous way in which the semantic area built around “living” is
shaped by services related to culture, tourism, education, security, and health. Apart
from tourism, the link with sustainability is rarely considered. The role of all facilities is
considered to be an issue that must be taken into account but not necessarily
approached in a sustainable way.

5. Conclusions
This paper contributes to literature on smart cities, namely, on contributions on urban
management, by highlighting a perspective that goes beyond a mere “technology-
centric vision” (Vanolo, 2014), specifically a multifaceted issue, as it has been recently
defined by Hollands (2015); the results and considerations presented above are useful to ICT and
frame ICT and sustainability as “across-the-board elements” because they connect with sustainability
all of the drivers of a smart city (Giffinger et al., 2007) and play a key role in smart city
planning. Specifically, sustainability and ICT can be seen as tools to enable the
smartization process, as partially highlighted by Li et al. (2015) as it concerns ICT, and
by Hollands (2015) when investigating the role of sustainability. The results achieved
in this research give the opportunity to enlarge the existing perspectives as they just 143
focus on the drivers (Giffinger et al., 2007; Nam and Pardo, 2011; Schaffers et al., 2011).
Moreover, a focus on ICT was missing when scholars investigated sustainability in
smart cities (Huston et al., 2015); a similar consideration arose when scholars focused on
ICT without taking into account the relevance of sustainability (Kolsaker and Lee-
Kelley, 2008; Bulu, 2014). By adopting a perspective based both on ICT and
sustainability we joined the research avenue proposed by Vanolo (2014) when stating
“urban visioning is increasingly reduced to a single technology-centric vision of the city
of the future” (p. 897). A focus on communalities emerging from the analysis of different
approaches to smartization is interesting, since in previous studies (Neirotti et al., 2014;
Hollands, 2015) scholars just paid attention to dissimilarities depending on local actors
and factors.
From a practical perspective, city managers can choose to lever on ICT to improve
services and thus quality of life, leading to sustainability goals. The evidence presented
in this paper comes from official reports in connection with different geographical
areas; completed projects such as these are useful for city managers planning smart
interventions or for large corporations partnering with local agencies in cities aimed at
becoming smarter. Anyway, local issues have to be taken into account when planning
interventions, due to the features arising from each specific local context. Furthermore,
as the documents we collected represent ideas, strategies, and the performance of
smartization processes, new insights can be attained in future through investigations
on new performances and further deployment of smart interventions.
Finally, the links emerged in the analysis can be further investigated, as
sustainability management is a common topic in the recent literature about city
managers. To follow this research path, new models that integrate drivers, ICT, and
sustainability in an all-in-one perspective can be proposed and, in line with these
models, new indicators for the evaluation of the interventions can be developed.

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About the authors ICT and
Francesco Bifulco is an Associate Professor in Management at the University Federico II of sustainability
Naples. He led national projects on smart cities and on hi-tech innovations in cultural heritage
activities. He chaired sessions in international conferences, he participated to national and
international conferences, and he published books and papers about innovation. His main areas
of interest are innovation management, service marketing, consumer behaviour, and service
innovation. Francesco Bifulco is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: francesco.
[email protected] 147
Marco Tregua is a Research Fellow in Management at the University Federico II of Naples
and an Adjunct Professor in Business Management at the University “Magna Græcia” of
Catanzaro. He participated to national and international conferences and he published papers on
value creation on international journals. His main areas of interest are service logic, network, and
transport services.
Cristina Caterina Amitrano is a PhD Student in Business Economics at the University
Federico II of Naples. She participated to national and international conferences and published
papers about innovation in smart cities on international journals. Her main areas of interest are
cultural heritage management, service innovation, and smart ecosystems.
Anna D’Auria is a PhD in Tourism Management at the University Federico II of Naples. She
participated to national and international conferences and published papers about territorial
development on international journals. Her main areas of interest are sustainable development,
tourism, and arts management.

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