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Smart Cities—A Vision of the Future
or the Present?
Anna Brdulak
Abstract
This chapter aims to look more closely at the subject of smart cities in
view of sustainable development. The discussion about the concept of smart cit-
ies is becoming particularly important from the perspective of dynamic urban
processes. Authorities of growing metropolises handle not only greater space
that must be managed but also all consequences resulting from the phenomenon
such as slums or traffic congestions. That is why, they more often resort to mod-
ern technologies which facilitate and improve the quality of inhabitants' life. At
the same time they try to get citizens involved into issues concerning building the
social capital. The chapter discusses examples of technological improvements
applied in selected cities aspiring to be called a smart city.
Keywords
Smart city
·
Sustainable development
·
City development
·
Urbani-
zation
·
New technologies
1 Introduction
The concept of sustainable development is gaining more importance at times
of the economic slowdown. That is why, it is worthwhile looking at its assump-
tions. A definition of sustainable development provided in the report of the
World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987 also called
G.H. Brundtland's report by the Norwegian Prime Minister in charge of the
Commission is considered one of the first ones. According to this definition sus-
tainable development basically aims to meet development aspirations of the cur-
rent generation to enable next generations to realize the same ambitions (Borys
1999
). The basis for sustainable development is constituted by internal and
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