Smart Cities

• Dr Mohsen Mohammadzadeh. University of Auckland

Researchers from different parts of the Pacific region will gather in this working group to consider the various aspects of Smart Cities as an emerging global trend. As we are arriving the fourth industrial revolution, smart technologies are gradually reshaping the contemporary cities including the physical environment and everyday life. Governments have deployed various plans and policies to implement these new smart technologies to address the existing urban issues as well as prepare the cities for the fourth industrial revolution as a diver of change in future. This working group will review and compare their cities’ plans and policies that have been prepared and implemented by both the central and local governments around the region.

This working group will investigate the different capacities of smart technologies such as Electric Autonomous Vehicles (EAVs) to attain sustainable development. Smart technologies provide a new source of information such as Big Data that assists in providing new understandings of the cities functions. This group will investigate the new capacities of Big Data for urban policy making. However, scholars have conceptualised smart cities in various ways. This working group will focus on how smart city as a new concept is largely used to generate indexes for city-branding and place-marketing in the global market.