Residents’ Quality Of Life In The Context Of Smart Cities

Kivonat, rövid leírás

The smart city (SC) concept emerged as a new trend to answer challenging issues related to urban development. It has been suggested that the focus of SCs is switching from infrastructure supply-oriented approaches to improving citizens’ quality of life and sustainability. Transformation of a city system into a smart system is meant to improve the quality of life (QoL) for its people and their way of living, its environment, economy, transportation, and governance. It has been argued that innovation for the sake of innovation is not smart, but rather that a SC is intertwined with and responsive to its community. A SC should be an urban area with accessible and secure ICT infrastructures, reliable and efficient physical infrastructures, productive and innovative economy, equal and inclusive society, sustainable and resilient environment, and participatory and transparent governance. Research confirms that the basis of smart cities is the combination of human capital, social capital, information, and communications technology infrastructure in order to generate economic development and improve the wellbeing and quality of life. However, previous studies have often not focused specifically on quality of life and citizen-centric issues. It has been stated that smart cities did not always reach their objectives because they did not take into consideration the needs of citizens. One systematic review of SCs showed that research on humans was the least important (8.1%). Our study, therefore, focuses on defining and measuring the most important elements of quality of life for residents in a smart city. This Thesis presents its originality including both theoretical and practical values as following: • Our Systematic Literature Review demonstrates the central importance of quality of life to smart cities. This research synthesized a valid measurement instrument based on six established domains of SC. • The research examines critical domains of smart living, including housing, health, safety, education, environment, social cohesion, leisure, culture, and tourism, alongside their corresponding indicators. Through methodological review of previous studies, this research provides a foundational framework for smart city questionnaire design. • Smart Living emerged as the most valued domain, followed by Smart People and Smart Mobility, while Smart Economy and Smart Governance ranked lowest. Although governance is central to strategic smart city management, it often remains invisible to residents. The main domains of smart living and their relevant indicators include housing, health, safety, education, environment, social cohesion, leisure, culture and tourism. • The domains of quality of life (QoL) most closely related to tourism, namely transport, leisure, culture, atmosphere and the positive benefits of tourism, were given higher ratings than any others. In the districts where the impacts of tourism were considered to be more negative, residents nevertheless expressed appreciation for the leisure and cultural amenities available in their local area. • Residents living in districts that are located in the so-called ‘party quarter’ discussed earlier (e.g. VI and VII) and in the heavily visited districts of V (where the Parliament building is located), I (the Castle area), and the increasingly popular District VIII (e.g. where the Hungarian National Museum is located) often rated the impacts of tourism as more negative. This is especially true of District VII (see Figure 3). On the other hand, these areas showed the highest ratings for cultural facilities and attractions. • Citizens exhibit heightened positive attitudes and increased support for smart city initiatives when they perceive direct benefits to their lifestyle, local economic growth, infrastructure enhancement. The lowest-ranked issues in this research—economy, health, education, and housing—generally extend beyond the scope of city governance control. • Our findings provide practical recommendations for urban planners and policy makers about that most important quality of life issues, the most preferred smart services, and gaps in residents’ needs and interests. The vision of Budapest becoming a smarter city is supported by the majority of residents (including elderly residents, but they are hesitant about using smart services). Residents appreciate utilitarian and functional smart services (e.g. e-ticketing or mobility apps).