Smart Sustainable Cities—Case Study Südwestfalen Germany

Mona Treude, Ralf Schüle and Hans Haake
Additional contact information
Mona Treude: Wuppertal Institute, Döppersberg 19, 42109 Wuppertal, Germany
Ralf Schüle: Joint Centre Urban Systems, Faculty of Humanities, University Duisburg-Essen, Universitätsstraße 2, 45141 Essen, Germany
Hans Haake: Wuppertal Institute, Döppersberg 19, 42109 Wuppertal, Germany

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 10, 1-16

Abstract: The transformation of society into sustainable structures is one of the most important tasks for the future. That cities have a decisive role to play in this transformation process has been known at least since Rio 1992. They have enormous pressure to act for change: They are at the same time problem and solution for sustainable development. Currently there is another significant development for cities—the need and external pressure to be “smart”, often understood merely as applying the latest digital technologies to become more efficient. The Smart City and the Sustainable City can work hand in hand or hinder each other, depending on their interpretation. In this study we focus on five Smart Cities in Western Germany to get a closer look at how they shape their processes and whether the underlying motivation is to become a technologically Smart City, focus on sustainable development, or both. With the help of the innovation biography research method, we show how cities shape the dynamic process towards forming a Smart City, the role sustainable urban development plays in the process, who the actors involved are, and the important role improved knowledge management then plays for the diffusion of the Smart Sustainable City within the region. It becomes clear how important communication and narratives are both in the process within each City towards forming a Smart Sustainable City and for the first step of diffusion, the adaptation of other cities within the region. This study is intended to serve both as a basis for cross-regional consideration and dialogue for the transfer of successful processes.

Keywords: Smart City; Smart Sustainable City; innovation; innovation biography; inter-municipal cooperation; knowledge and knowledge management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/10/5957/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/10/5957/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:10:p:5957-:d:815365

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().