Abstract
Urban areas all over the world are looking to become Smart Sustainable Cities (SSCs), i.e. sustainable urban environments that extensively use ICT and related technologies. However, little is known about the effectiveness of SSC initiatives in terms of sustainable outcomes and/or the factors driving such initiatives. This paper provides empirical evidence on the role of air quality as target of and trigger for SSC initiatives in Wallonian municipalities. Results from regression analyses indicate that, for those municipalities with a higher scope to achieve emissions reductions (low levels of past air quality) and a strong commitment in their smart city initiatives (level of implementation and orientation), SSCs are acting as a successful transnational local initiative for sustainability. They also support the view that sustainability is a major driver of the SSCs, since a better quality of air positively affects the probability that a municipality engages in sustainability-oriented (but also digitally-oriented) smart city initiatives.
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Wallonia is one of the three Belgian regions (Flanders and Brussels-Capital being the others), and the Belgian case is generally interesting because several policies have been launched in recent years to support the development of “smart initiatives” at different administrative levels. Still, most “smart city” initiatives in Belgium tend to be organised around regional programmes involving ICTs and developed at the municipality level (Desdemoustier et al. 2019; Esposito et al. 2021), hence our focus on the Wallonian municipalities.
This includes analyses of the drivers of the commitment of human and financial resources to sustainability (Hawkins et al. 2016; see also Wang et al. 2012) and the drivers of the adoption of sustainability policies (Wang 2012), mitigation measures (Krause 2012a; Wang 2012; see also Wang et al. 2012), and a combination of both using an index or ranking (Saha 2009, Krause 2012a, Prado et al. 2012).
Note, however, that empirical evidence shows that urban areas involved in (trans)national initiatives on average commit more resources to sustainability (Hawkins et al. 2016), are more likely to adopt sustainability policies (only in the case of transnational initiatives according to the results reported by Krause 2012a) and, in the case of transnational initiatives, are more likely to adopt mitigation measures (Wang 2012).
Ideally, we would also like to claim that the SSCs in Wallonian municipalities are largely representative of smart city initiatives globally. We do not have any evidence supporting this claim, but we can argue, following previous related studies (Neirotti et al. 2014; Estevez et al. 2016; Angelidou 2017), that our results are likely to hold for analogous institutional settings.
The interpolation method was empirically validated by a local study on the area of Charleroi in the years 2008–2010. The report in French can be found at http://193.190.182.213/WebAirQuality/RapportEtudes.aspx. Also, the geographical distribution of the 23 stations can be found at https://www.wallonair.be/fr?mode=complet.
On the other hand, the sample overrepresents municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants (they are about 16% of the sample but only 5% of the Belgian municipalities), which is consistent with larger municipalities being more inclined to pursue smart city initiatives (Manville et al. 2014).
It is also interesting to note that the Wallonian municipalities that participated in the regional smart programme are likely to be in advanced stages of the continuum that defines a smart city (Nam and Pardo 2011). In fact, the 37 participants in the programme that answered the survey have on average higher values in the level of implementation variable than the other 24 Wallonian municipalities in the survey.
Data provided by the Service public de Wallonie (see http://etat.environnement.wallonie.be/contents/ indicatorsheets/FFH 17.html for details in French). The 10 programmes considered are (year of launching in brackets): “Semaine de l’arbre” (2003), “Contrat de rivière” (1993), “Fauchage tardif des bords de routes” (1995), “Plan Maya” (2011), “Opération combles et clochers” (1995), “Plan communal de développement de la nature” (1995), “Projet AlterIAS” (2010), “Cimetière Nature” (2015), “Conseiller en environnement subventionné par le SPW” (2008), and “Parc naturel” (1979).
As measured from the answers to the Smart City Institute survey (see Sect. 3.2.1) question “What is the level of implication of the following agents in the public sector, the private sector, and civil society in the smart city projects launched by your municipality?”, the answers being coded 0 = “Don’t know”, 1 = “Strong implication”, 2 = “Average implication”, and 3 = “Weak or non-existent implication”.
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Manjon, M., Crutzen, N. Air quality in smart sustainable cities: target and/or trigger?. Ann Reg Sci 68, 359–386 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00168-021-01089-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00168-021-01089-4