Published Article / In this paper an evaluation of smart socioeconomic, physical and environmental characteristics of Bloemfontein city of South Africa was done to understand the current scenario of the city and evolve perspective indicative planning guidelines for transforming the city into a smart city. The evaluation was done based on 74 smart indicators, and 30 factors under six characteristics, such as, smart economy, smart people, smart governance, smart mobility, smart environment and smart living. For this purpose, survey research methodology with analysis of primary and secondary data and review of the current Integrated Development Plan of the city was followed. The investigation of the various indicators revealed that although the city is lagging behind in most of the characteristics, yet provides ample opportunity to develop it as a smart city, if smart city concept and smart growth principles are employed in city development process.

Studies conducted for the US have found a positive effect of human capital endowments on employment growth, with human capital endowments diverging at the same time. In contrast, studies for European countries have found convergence of human capital endowments. This paper tests these relationships for 99 Austrian districts for the observation period 1971-2011 by estimating how the presence of high-skilled employment affects total, low-skilled and high-skilled employment growth. To this end, OLS, fixed effects and first difference regressions are estimated. The results show continuous convergence of high-skilled employment which, however, slowed downed significantly since the 1990s. In contrast to previous studies, evidence for positive effects of high-skilled on total and low-skilled employment is only weak and varies over time. Furthermore, the results show that total and high-skilled employment in suburban areas grew faster than in other regions, while districts which bordered the Eastern Bloc were disadvantaged. Nevertheless, spatial neighbourhood effects within Austria are only weak. (authors' abstract) / Series: Working Papers in Regional Science

Avec l’accélération sociale de la « modernité tardive », de nouveaux enjeux politiques et économiques occupent une place de plus en plus importante dans les compositions territoriales, en les confrontant à une recomposition forte des temporalités qui affectent le monde vécu. La transformation numérique n’en est pas la cause mais s’inscrit dans cette dynamique « d’éphémérisation du présent » et la renforce vraisemblablement selon des modalités concrètes, à divers niveaux d’échelle. Il s'agit dans ce travail de comprendre comment les relations entre les formes commerciales et les formes spatiales sont recomposées, redessinées pas la mutation numérique, en étudiant, dans le cadre d'une CIFRE, les évolutions respectives des commerces et du territoire du centre-ville de Rennes. Le projet de recherche proposé ici vise à comprendre l'articulation entre les pratiques de la ville, les pratiques commerciales, les lieux et espaces, mais également les temporalités. Ce programme de recherches, s’inscrit de façon très large dans les problématiques « Entre formes et normes » de l’équipe PREFIcs. Il repose sur une conception étendue des logiques d’information et de communication qui considèrent que l’information, pour être mise en sens, symbolique, doit être également un processus de mise en forme, prenant en compte l’articulation des formes organisationnelles. Cette recherche questionne donc la reconfiguration de l’espace-temps, celle des sphères publiques et des affectations matérielles comme cadre pour les logiques commerciales et les imaginaires de consommation. / Due to the social acceleration of "late modernity", new political and economic issues are taking more space in territorial compositions. Confronting them with a strong recomposition of temporalities that affect the lived world. The digital transformation is not the cause but is part of this dynamic "ephemeral present"? And is likely to strengthen it in concrete terms at various levels of scale. The aim of this work is to understand is to understand how the relations between commercial forms and spatial forms are recomposed, redrawn by the numerical mutation. By studying, within the framework of a CIFRE, the respective evolutions of the shops and the territory of Rennes’s city center. The current research program will help you understad the link between city practices, commercial practices, places and spaces, but also temporalities.This research program takes part of the "Between Form and Standards" program of the PREFIcs team. It is based on an extended conception of the logics of information and communication which consider that information, to make sens, symbolically, must also be a process of formatting, considering the articulation of organizational forms. This research paper therefore questions the reconfiguration in space and time, those of public spheres and material assignments as a framework for commercial logics and consumption imaginaries.

Internet of Things is an important part of realizing smart cities, this article introduces a proposal to build an Internet of Things system with LoRaWAN to achieve diverse smart city applications. There are three problems proposed and resolved in this research, how to maximize wireless devices’ lifetime with LoRa protocol characters， how to choose the gateways’ location for improving the efficiency and reduce costs, and about a good way to set up network servers to balance performance and consumption to implement in smart city applications. The IoT platform is built completely and running three applications on it in this research, Smart Parking, Smart Building Monitoring and Smart Sewage Monitoring. The methods of build platform and set applications are also explained in this article.

This thesis is a study with focus on real estate companies for one of several sub-projects under “Stadens kontrollrum” initiative in Västerås. “Stadens kontrollrum” is a concept that brought together expertise from various fields of industry, research and government to create a platform that will aggregate data from different stakeholders and proposed services to achieve the goal of making Västerås a smart and sustainable city. Our project aims to extend “Stadens kontrollrum” platform in order to make it beneficial for real estate companies. In this case study, we applied expert driven methodology, i.e. with domain experts. A detailed literature review has been performed. We identified user requirements based on the information gathered during workshops with nine participants from real estate and utility companies; interviews with three experts from Mälarenergi. During the study, we identified that data visualisation, predictive maintenance and big data analysis for decision making are the main tools, among others, that should be applied to facilitate user needs. Based on user requirements, we have suggested an architecture of a module for the “Stadens kontrollrum” platform that includes those features. To verify feasibility of the solution, a prototype was built and evaluated with a group of four experts from Mälarenergi. The prototype is going to serve as a live demo in workshops and further discussions with the potential users later in the project. A full prototype of the solution is planned to be implemented in the next stage of the project.

abstract: There is much at stake with the smart city. This urban governance movement is predicated on infusing information-and-communication technology into nearly all aspects of the built environment, while at the same time transforming how cities are planned and managed. The smart city movement is global in scale with initiatives being rolled out all over the planet, driven by proponents with deep pockets of wealth and influence, and a lucrative opportunity with market projections in the billions or trillions of dollars (over the next five to ten years). However, the smart city label can be nebulous and amorphous, seemingly subsuming unrelated technologies, practices, and policies as necessary. Yet, even with this ambiguity, or perhaps because of it, the smart city vision is still able to colonize urban landscapes and capture the political imaginations of decision makers. In order to know just what the smart city entails I work to bring analytic clarity to the actions, visions, and values of this movement. In short, the arc of this project moves from diving into the "smart city" discourses; to picking apart the ideologies at its heart; to engaging with the dual logics—control and accumulation—that drive the smart city; and finally to imagining what an alternative techno- politics might look like and how we might achieve it. My goal is that by analyzing the techno- politics of the smart city we will be better equipped to understand these urban transformations— what logics drive them, what they herald, and what our role should be in how they develop. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology 2016

Open data is information readable by machines that are freely available to others and it is further the defining element of a smart city. However, little research has been conducted within the area of open data within the smart city context. Further, the smart city initiative explored is the second to be established in Sweden, and an open data platform will serve as the cornerstone in the smart city initiative. In addition to that, the collaboration between the stakeholders is a key factor for reaching the common goal when creating a smart city. In this case study, the researchers have conducted an exploratory case study in order to examine how stakeholders can collaborate within a smart city initiative to foster innovation through the use of open data. Therefore, key stakeholders within the project have been interviewed and the concept of digital innovation network has been adopted to get a deeper understanding of the project, as it involves institutions and companies from both public and private sector that aims to be innovative together. Further, this study identifies four key concerns to guide the smart city initiative. There is a need for a clear strategy and committed management when opening up and handling data; to involve public opinion in data collection, analysis and application to make the open data platform function; to bridge the knowledge resources between the stakeholders in order to benefit from the collaboration in the project; and make a distinction in how to share data between the two discovered innovation networks.

Le secteur public est un domaine en perpétuelle mutation, de par la pression économique actuelle mais aussi du fait des progrès technologiques constants. C'est en particulier le cas des collectivités territoriales, dans lesquelles les agents du secteur public sont soumis à de fortes pressions, notamment par la nécessité d'assurer un service de qualité aux usagers tout en minimisant les coûts engagés, mais également du fait de devoir développer de nouvelles compétences pour répondre à des exigences en évolution. Les projets actuels, impliquant de multiples technologies et le besoin de travailler en synergie avec les acteurs territoriaux, sont devenus primordiaux pour la gestion des chaînes logistiques du secteur public. Le domaine du génie industriel a développé diverses méthodes pouvant répondre à ces nouveaux besoins. Ces méthodes englobent différentes théories et pratiques allant du progrès permanent à la gestion de la chaîne logistique jusqu’à la gestion de la relation client. Ces pratiques visent avant tout à améliorer la coordination et l'intégration de toutes les activités nécessaires à l'élaboration d’un produit ou un service. L’apparition de nouvelles démarches, telles que la Smart City, légitime la mise en pratique de méthodes industrielles pour la gestion de services répondant à l’intérêt général d’un territoire. Dès lors, l'objectif de ce travail a été de transposer aux collectivités territoriales des méthodes issues du génie industriel, en s’appuyant sur la démarche de la Smart City, afin de permettre une synergie entre les partenaires, tout en augmentant la productivité de l’organisation dans la fourniture de services publics plus performants.

This thesis deals with an architectural case study of the administrative building called Office Špitálka in the Svitava industrial zone bordered by the Svitava River in the east, Ring Road in the west, Milady Horákové Street in the north and Zvonařka Street in the south. Špitálka Smart City is located right in the centre of this area. The thesis is modelled on the Centre of the Špitálka Smart City urban study, that was the outcome of the pre-thesis seminar in the winter term 2020/21. The main feature of the building is it's futuristic design and modern concept. Apart from offices there are also spaces for commerce, eating, leisure activities or relaxation. The key atributes are the open-air atrium and the building being in direct connection to the new "Smart City“ quarter.

While several authors have focused on the different components of smart city projects and practicalities for their development in large urban areas, despite the absence of a consensual definition of what a smart city is, limited attention has been given to the transformation process achieved by multi-actor relations derived from a sustained network of social innovation and collaboration in smaller cities. Focusing on the Swedish city of Umeå, this study focuses on answering the research question: How is the city of Umeå achieving a smart city transformation? For this purpose, this manuscript inductively examines the opinions and experience of several professionists and decision-makers involved in smart-city projects for a theoretical identification of the observed social phenomena allowing this sustained development. Hence, this work seeks to contribute with further literature development on successful projects to counter an identified problematic of unbalanced development strategies in urbanization projects that generate larger social inequalities as a result of lack of agreement between actors, design failure, policy mismatch and other limitations. This manuscript identifies Umeå’s current development as a best-practice in Sweden of a human-centric smart city project based on a Quadruple-Helix model for social innovation, heavily fostered into practice through citizen trust.