Are Smart Cities Too Expensive in the Long Term? Analyzing the Effects of ICT Infrastructure on Municipal Financial Sustainability
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The study is well presented, and it represents an interesting insight into smart cities cost analysis, from different points of view. The main limit of the study is that all the case-study cities are located in Mexico, and in order to have a larger picture of the conclusions, it would be interesting to extend the research to other socio-cultural environments.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 1,
Thank you for your comments and helpful suggestions. The reviews were thoughtful and constructive and served to refocus and improve the overall quality of our article.
Overall, the reviewers’ comments and recommendations agree that this study covers an underexplored question. They provide suggestions for improving the research focus, approach, and methods, as well as the results and their implications for smart city projects in practice.
In this response, we explain how we have addressed each of the helpful comments and suggestions from your reviews and others reviews in this revised version. We believe that our manuscript presents a challenging research question for smart cities and has been greatly improved by responding each of reviewers’ comments and suggestions. Finally, we want to emphasize our willingness to incorporate any additional suggestion for the final version of the manuscript.
Again, we are thankful for this opportunity and hope we have adequately addressed each of your questions, recommendations, and comments with the goal of producing a better research product for Sustainability.
Best regards,
Comment: The study is well presented, and it represents an interesting insight into smart cities cost analysis, from different points of view. The main limit of the study is that all the case-study cities are located in Mexico, and in order to have a larger picture of the conclusions, it would be interesting to extend the research to other socio-cultural environments.
Response: Thank you for this comment! We agree with your suggestion and, in this revised version, have included a text in the Conclusion section acknowledging the selection of cases within a single socio-cultural environment as a limitation of the study. We are also suggesting expanding the research to other national contexts as an idea for future research. See yellow-colored text in last paragraph of section 5 Discussion and Conclusions in p. 20.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This article analyzes the impact of implementing smart city projects on the financial sustainability of financial governments of Mexico. I found this perspective very interesting, and too under-explored in research, considering that the financial aspect is a very important factor for practitioners.
Using panel data techniques, the authors identify many relationships between financial sustainability and a wide range of indicators. This might be one “negative” point of the article, there is a lot to digest here. But I commend the authors in the work they did to put it in the form of an article that still reads fluidly. All these relationships are as many valuable research leads, so this paper and its wide range of findings were needed to pave the way for that.
The literature review is complete, the methodology is sound, and the findings are well presented and well discussed. Overall, this is a solid paper.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 2,
Thank you for your comments and helpful suggestions. The reviews were thoughtful and constructive and served to refocus and improve the overall quality of our article.
Overall, the reviewers’ comments and recommendations agree that this study covers an underexplored question. They provide suggestions for improving the research focus, approach, and methods, as well as the results and their implications for smart city projects in practice.
In this response, we explain how we have addressed each of the helpful comments and suggestions from your reviews and others reviews in this revised version. We believe that our manuscript presents a challenging research question for smart cities and has been greatly improved by responding each of reviewers’ comments and suggestions. Finally, we want to emphasize our willingness to incorporate any additional suggestion for the final version of the manuscript.
Again, we are thankful for this opportunity and hope we have adequately addressed each of your questions, recommendations, and comments with the goal of producing a better research product for Sustainability.
Best regards,
Comment: This article analyzes the impact of implementing smart city projects on the financial sustainability of financial governments of Mexico. I found this perspective very interesting, and too under-explored in research, considering that the financial aspect is a very important factor for practitioners.
Using panel data techniques, the authors identify many relationships between financial sustainability and a wide range of indicators. This might be one “negative” point of the article, there is a lot to digest here. But I commend the authors in the work they did to put it in the form of an article that still reads fluidly. All these relationships are as many valuable research leads, so this paper and its wide range of findings were needed to pave the way for that.
The literature review is complete, the methodology is sound, and the findings are well presented and well discussed. Overall, this is a solid paper.
Response: Thank you for these comments! We appreciate your kind words. For this revised version, we have reviewed the whole article again for a fluid and concise argumentation and English proofreading. We also made a few changes to the analysis and results section to improve its readability.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper describes evaluation of ICT infrastructure on smart city from digital financial sustainability point of view. This topic is interested in general readers including economics experts. However, this paper should be revised according to the following comments.
(1) In introduction described in Section 1, this paper should clarify objectives and goal in this paper. Currently, contributions by this paper are not clarified.
(2) In summary of smart city described in Section 2, concepts and features on smart cities have been discussed widely. Scope and/or requirements of targeted smart city should be identified. For example, the latest ISO standards have specified the framework of smart cities and community, see ISO 37155-1 and ISO 37155-2. Moreover, the ISO technical specification has provided requirements and criteria of them, see ISO TS37151.
(3) In summary of smart city in Section 2, articles identified in References are mostly too old. Recently, many articles on smart cities have been published within a couple of years, especially contribution by ICT. Authors should refer the latest publications.
(4) In Section 3, methodology of this research should be clarified. This section should explain observable facts, and then the approach of analysis based on these facts. Currently, these steps are not readable.
(5) In Section 5, the relationship between this section and previous sections is not clear. This section should be described step-by-step based on previous sections, Sections 3 and 4.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer 3,
Thank you for your comments and helpful suggestions. The reviews were thoughtful and constructive and served to refocus and improve the overall quality of our article.
Overall, the reviewers’ comments and recommendations agree that this study covers an underexplored question. They provide suggestions for improving the research focus, approach, and methods, as well as the results and their implications for smart city projects in practice.
In this response, we explain how we have addressed each of the helpful comments and suggestions from your reviews and others reviews in this revised version. We believe that our manuscript presents a challenging research question for smart cities and has been greatly improved by responding each of reviewers’ comments and suggestions. Finally, we want to emphasize our willingness to incorporate any additional suggestion for the final version of the manuscript.
Again, we are thankful for this opportunity and hope we have adequately addressed each of your questions, recommendations, and comments with the goal of producing a better research product for Sustainability.
Best regards,
Comment: This paper describes evaluation of ICT infrastructure on smart city from digital financial sustainability point of view. This topic is interested in general readers including economics experts. However, this paper should be revised according to the following comments.
(1) In introduction described in Section 1, this paper should clarify objectives and goal in this paper. Currently, contributions by this paper are not clarified.
Response: Thank you! We appreciate your comments and valuable suggestions. Here are the actions taken for addressing each of your comments. In the Introduction (Section 1), we carefully reviewed and clarified the objectives and goal of the article. In this revised version, we have also highlighted and clarified what we believe are the main contributions of this paper. See yellow-colored text in the fourth paragraph of p. 2.
Comment: (2) In summary of smart city described in Section 2, concepts and features on smart cities have been discussed widely. Scope and/or requirements of targeted smart city should be identified. For example, the latest ISO standards have specified the framework of smart cities and community, see ISO 37155-1 and ISO 37155-2. Moreover, the ISO technical specification has provided requirements and criteria of them, see ISO TS37151.
Response: Thank you for this comment! In this revised version, we have clarified the scope and/or requirements of targeted smart city initiatives in the study as a selection criterion in the Literature Review section 2.1. Smart Cities and Sustainability and some clarifications in section 3 Research Design and Methods. Specifically, in the section 2.1 of the Literature review, we included a discussion of the latest ISO standards to enrich the framework for smart city and community in the study (see ISO 37155-1 and ISO 37155-2) and the ISO technical specification (see ISO TS37151). See yellow-colored text in the pp. 4-5 and final text in the section 2.1 in p. 5. Some clarifications in yellow-colored text about the use of the indicators from the ISO standards were included in the last paragraph of section 2.1. Clarifications about the scope and/or requirements to code a smart city were included in the last paragraph of p. 8 in the methodological section 3 "Research Design and Methods" (see yellow-colored text).
Comment: (3) In summary of smart city in Section 2, articles identified in References are mostly too old. Recently, many articles on smart cities have been published within a couple of years, especially contribution by ICT. Authors should refer the latest publications.
Response: Thank you for this comment! In this revised version, we have updated the reference list with a few recent articles on smart cities, particularly in Section 2. Please see six additional references with more recent articles: 17, 23, 24, 30, 33, and 36.
Comment: (4) In Section 3, methodology of this research should be clarified. This section should explain observable facts, and then the approach of analysis based on these facts. Currently, these steps are not readable.
Response: Thank you for this comment! In this revised version, we have significantly modified Section 3 (Research Design and Methods) to better explain the data and the approach of analysis we used for this study. We hope this helps the reader to better understand what we did in terms of design and analysis. Please see first paragraph of section 3 "Research Design and Methods" in p. 8 (see yellow-colored text). We also include Figure 3 to graphically represent the panel data model specification.
Comment: (5) In Section 5, the relationship between this section and previous sections is not clear. This section should be described step-by-step based on previous sections, Sections 3 and 4.
Response: Thank you for this comment! In this revised version, we have strengthened the relationship between what were sections 3, 4 and 5 in the original in order to improve clarity of arguments and consistency between the research design and methods and the analysis and results sections. Specifically, we have merged sections 3 and 4 into a more integrative research design and methods section with two subsections: “3.1. Panel Data Analysis” and “3.2. Comparison with Well-known Smart City Cases”.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
Review comments have been mostly resolved.
