Sustainable Smart Cities and Villages

Dear Colleagues,

Technological evolution is a continuous process creating new opportunities to implement significant, high impact, humanistic visions. However, there is great concern about the current mode of exploiting technologies towards this objective. Research on smart cities, on the other hand, provides an excellent context for the cultivation of a collaborative, synergetic, community-driven integration of human minds, cultural individual contributions, the launch of businesses, interoperability and even happiness. It is quite straightforward to realize that human happiness in urban settings is no longer a priority. We propose that the improvement of human happiness should be the highest objective of any smart city initiative, whether driven by technology or not.

The objective of this Special Issue is to disseminate the latest high quality, interdisciplinary research in the domain of urban computing and smart cities and to also introduce the concept of smart villages as a key response to the desertification of the countryside through the adoption of integrative strategies for human development and economic growth with the use of sophisticated technology.

This Special Issue seeks to uncover and present the latest developments in meeting the needs of modern smart cities and smart villages towards sustainable development, prosperity and happiness for humanity.

For this Special Issue, we welcome papers dealing with case studies, literature reviews, survey findings, analytical methods, and tools. Examples of topics of interest include:

• Studies on sustainable smart cities research;
• Elaborations of the concept of smart villages;
• Smart urban applications for different domains of human activity including education, transportation, energy, accessibility, policy-making, governance, entertainment, collaboration, behavior, etc.;
• Advanced information and communication technologies for smart cities research including data mining, analytics, cloud computing, open source technologies, virtual and augmented reality, collaborative platforms, content management systems, etc.;
• Policy-making and sustainable government initiatives for smart social businesses and entrepreneurship in villages and rural areas;
• Case studies, prototypes and project deliverables related to smart cities research;
• Irregular migratory flows and smart villages initiatives;
• Public consultation and open smart democracy.

Prof. Anna Visvizi
Guest Editor

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