The Potential Smart City Outcomes for Urban Sustainability: A Hierarchical Dirichlet Processing analysis

This study explores the potential urban sustainability outcome of smart city innovation projects. Smart city concept refers to the use of digital technologies in urban planning, particularly for innovative transport systems, infrastructures, logistics and green and efficient energy systems. Urban sustainability includes three dimensions (socio-economic, economic and environmental) that need to be achieved by findings balance between the development of the urban areas and protecting the environment with an eye to equity in income. Although some studies claim a positive relationship between smart city projects and urban sustainability, we found a lack of studies that explores this relationship. We address this gap by conducting a hierarchical dirichlet processing on data retrieved ‘Intelligent Territory’ calls for projects implemented by the Wallonia Region (Belgium), where municipalities propose smart city projects to achieve urban sustainability. The study findings show that smart city innovation projects potentially support the three dimensiosn of urban sustainability following a government-led approach, where municiplaities sense societal needs and select the proper digital technolgoies to address them to achieve urban sustainability outcomes.