Smart City concepts: from perception to acceptability

This paper studies the sustainability of the Smart City from the acceptability perspective. Assuming that there is a possibility for end-users to reject some of the Smart City principles and, consequently, to jeopardize its perenniality, we argue that studying how citizens perceive some of the Smart City concepts is a prerequisite for the assessment of the Smart City sustainability scheme. In this paper, we test the acceptability of the Smart City by confronting the theoretical concepts generally mobilized in the literature with the people’s actual perceptions. To this end, a short survey was distributed on the occasion of three Smart City events. This article analyses the obtained results in regard of three demographic factors (age, gender and professional background). It thus repositions chore concepts of the Smart City in regard of acceptability, and particularly in relation to the associated risks for its sustainability.