Assessment of Smart City Approach: Its Tools and Components

ABSTRACT: Cities nowadays especially those “non-smart” are facing challenges such as: effects of climate change, increasing in population versus resource depletion, transport problems and changing in lifestyle of people, while in the paradigm of smart city the urban area is capable to cope with most of these challenges. Despite the term of smart city is inconstant terminology and until now has not been specifically defined, in other words, there is no standard definition of this term, but now we could say that the smart city is a developed urban area that produces a sustainable economic development and creates an optimal place for people to live by increasing the quality of life through high enhancement of the both components of the city ( soft components and hard components ) with multiple key areas; governance, economy, people, environment, , mobility and built environment. This research explained some of the prominent variables facing most cities in world, in term of challenges of the natural environment, built environment, mobility and socio-economic features that slow down the wheel of development toward achieving a better life for inhabitants. Much of these problems and challenges can be solved by draw up a policy to develop the city based on principles of major world‟s smart cities. This research also developed a scientific approach to explain smart city concept, clarified the benefits of applying this model of cities, also suggested a new “array” of the dominant components of smart cities and which of those components are recommended and implemented in four ranked smarter cities in the world. Keywords: Smart City, Hard Components, Soft Components. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………