Smart Cities

SMART CITIES
This section of this thesis is devoted to review literature, scholarly articles, and other sources related to smart cities. The literature review a critical assessments of previous works done in relation to the research topic being studies (Labaree, 2009). The outline of this section is as follows: definitions and conceptualization of smart cities, characteristics of smart cities, components of smart cities, indicators for measuring smart cities, funding sources of smart cities, factors of smarts of smart cities. Motivations for the recent spread of smart cities across countries. The concluding section of this chapter focuses on internet penetration and how it influences smart cities.

1.1 Smart cities defined
Ever since the

Globally there seems to be ever increasing concentration of the populations in comparatively few larger cities (Harrison & Donnelly, 2011). Large cities are mostly seen as highly innovative, productive and mostly equipped with social amenities that seems to make life easier for urban inhabitants. These factors collectively act as pull factors that attracts numerous people. The rapid influx of new citizens presents overwhelming challenges to their governments.
Globalization is promoted by policies that opens domestic economies and orient them international. Years preceding the the Second World War, many countries adopted the free-market economic systems, that led to increased production potential and creating new possibility for international investment and trade. Technology has been the principal driver of globalization. Progression in information technology has dramatically altered global economic life. Information technologies has equipped individual economic entities such as businesses, governments, consumers and investors with valuable tools for pursuing economic opportunities around the world. globalization has connected cities worldwide and increase competition for resources, capital and skilled labour. This has led to experimenting new methods of planning, governance, design, finance, construction, urban

Figure xxxx below elaborates on the rapid rate of global urbanization. It is expected that by 2019 more than 50% of world’s population will live in urban area. By year 2050 it is expected increase of urban population by 3,1 billion which means 6 billion in total [12]. Such rapid grow of population is more predominant in developing regions of Latin America, Asia and Africa (Montgomery, 2008). This rising urban population trends poses numerous challenges and risks for cities. Cities have the edgy task of ensuring that urbanization becomes a blessing rather than a curse for all the citizens. This means that cities need to marshal urban infrastructure and services to cater for this unprecedented urban influx to avoid reducing urban living standard. Possible antidote to the urbanization issues is to transform traditional cities to smart cities (Chourabi et al., 2012). The capability of smart cities to determine citizen' needs and wants in the city provides the expectation to adjust to these rapid urban change. Some of the posible dimensions and priorities where urban areas can be transformed are public transport system, health care, traffic, efficient energy and resources use