Evaluation of Pioneering Smart City Applications Across the Globe

The smart city concept is emerging as a strategy to confront the problems faced in cities. A smart city is a place where, traditional networks and services are made more flexible, efficient and sustainable to improve urban operations for the benefit of its residents via information, digital and telecommunications technologies. In this study smart city phenomenon offer significant economic, educational, environmental and social contributions is analysed from a global perspective, with a focus on its implementation around the world. In this context it is aimed to explain the definition and features of the smart city concept; to highlight the main achievements of the smart city concept; to discuss Seoul, London and New York City, which are among the leading cities in smart city applications according to the Eden Strategy Institute's Top 50 Smart City Government Ranking of 235 potential smart cities in the world for 2020/2021; and to reveal the applications that make these cities smart and the role of city governments. Smart city experiences in these three leading cities are discussed comparatively in the context of literature research and ten basic factors consisting of vision, leadership, budget, financial incentives, support programmes, talent-readiness, people-centricity, innovation ecosystems, smart policies, track record. When the cities in the top 50 smart city rankings are considered holistically, the three indicators that the cities are most successful in are Track record, Vision and People-centricity, while the indicators they are less successful in are Financial incentives, Support programmes and Innovation ecosystems. Seoul, like all leading smart cities, is very successful in terms of Track record indicator; London in terms of Vision and Track record indicator; and New York in terms of Vision indicator. The results show the importance of inter-sectoral impacts and socially connected aspects of smart city initiatives and provide guidance for planners&designers and politicians.