Asia Pacific, which makes up 60% of the world’s population, is emerging as a dynamic region in the world in terms of economic and technological growth (UNFPA, nd). Some countries in the region are leading performers in information and communication technology (ICT) indicators (UN ESCAP 2016). Also, East and North-East Asian countries contribute three-quarters of fixed broadband subscriptions in Asia (UN ESCAP 2016, p. 9).

It is no surprise that Asian cities are also recognized as leaders in designing smart cities that harness digital information to improve operational efficiency, and this book attempts to provide an introduction to some of the context, challenges and developments around smart cities in a number of countries in the region. Singapore, for example, is a city that consistently is ranked as ‘one of the smartest cities’ around, with a unique approach to centrally housing massive amounts of information collected from its citizens with the government instead of with an individual company. Other countries, such as Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam or Korea, have developed smart cities at different levels and overcame challenges related to creating smart cities in traditional urban settings. Vietnam, for example, applied the smart city concept to governing a historical center in an ancient capital while Thailand is building a smart tourist city on an island.

1.1 Smart Cities: An Overview and General Issues

The concept of smart cities is not new, although it seems like a modern urbanism and sustainability-driven trend. The use of information technology and data for more efficient cities governance has become promising as early as 1970 when Los Angeles became known for its first urban big data project that used computer databases, cluster analysis, and infrared aerial photography to “gather data, produce reports on neighborhood demographics and housing quality, and help direct resources to ward off blight and tackle poverty” (Vallianatos 2015). Arguably the first smart city was Amsterdam in 1994 when it created a virtual digital city to promote Internet usage; the trend solidified in the 2000s with large corporations such as IBM and Cisco invested significantly in research and development of projects that used sensors, networks and analytics to help cities run more efficiently (Woetzel et al. 2021). Continued government and industry investment span off a growing number of smart cities initiatives in Japan (2010), Barcelona (2011), China (2013), and later other cities in Europe, Singapore and Vietnam, just to name a few.

As cities got smarter, the vision is that they are becoming more livable and more responsive as a result of leveraging technologies in urban environments. The last decade has seen an important shift from smart technologies being regarded as tools to improve efficiency to feasible enablers of a better quality of life. Technology and data used purposefully have become a powerful mechanism to make better decisions for a more livable future and sustainability has emerged as an aim of smart cities, as important as resource efficiency and governance (Woetzel et al. 2021). With the help of the Internet of Things (IoT) Technology to collect and analyze large, heterogenous amounts of data, sustainable smart cities are today’s vision in bridging the gap between sustainability targets and urban development strategies. Rankings of most sustainable smart cities being topped by many European cities but also Asian cities like Singapore (Woetzel et al. 2021). While smart cities are now touted as imperative for a sustainable future, the approach is not without challenges: working with existing infrastructures in traditional cities when applying new technologies may be costly and unsuitable for cities with a long history, as described in some chapters in this book.

This book provides a discussion of the opportunities, developments and some of the challenges specific to smart cities in Asia. It starts in Chap. 2 with an overview and some definitions of smart cities, alongside perspectives from scholars and practitioners on problems with these cities from both legal and technical perspectives. Chapter 2 introduces a framework to conceptualize a few common topics related to smart city governance. Doagoo reviews the concept of smart cities discussed by scholars and international institutions such as the UN Economist Network, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and the World Economic Forum 2019. The chapter also highlights some smart city initiatives in the world, sketches an overview of the smart city movements in Asian countries, and analyzes the various mechanics and concepts of smart cities to demonstrate that smart cities are not a one-size-fits-all approach. Finally, the author illustrates several common concerns and challenges relating to smart city governance, which include privacy, security, and public–private partnerships.

The concept of smart cities heavily relies on collecting large amounts of citizens’ data and, as several chapters in the book highlight, can raise concerns as to what data is being used for. Because the processing of big data is an essential element as much as is the technological innovation in smart cities, the protection of privacy and personal data becomes pivotal to the sustainability and success of smart cities. While the internet and advanced technologies can help to optimize governance, they can also make people prone to cyberattacks. Chapter 3 starts this discussion by examining the ongoing challenges and solutions of managing data privacy for smart cities where data is collected from countless sensors and devices. By focusing on the technical aspects of data privacy, the authors show that while smart cities provide new business opportunities for software organizations to process, manage, utilize, examine, and generate data, they also create many privacy challenges. These challenges include obtaining a shared understanding of privacy and achieving compliance with privacy regulations. Li and Werner recognize that while smart cities support people’s ability to make rational and prudent decisions based on real data, the privacy of that data should not be overlooked.

1.2 Legal Frameworks and Problems with Smart Cities in Asia: A Country Analysis

The following chapters focus the discussion of issues around privacy protection in specific regions, countries, and cities, using selected industries or case studies of smart city projects to illustrate benefits and challenges. In Chap. 4, Martinus explores the privacy concern of smart cities in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in three active members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations: Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The discussion starts with the concern of citizens, experts, and policymakers in the region about smart cities’ data protection and security. Smart technologies, such as big data, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things, are perceived as enablers for cities to control air pollution, reduce traffic, streamline public services, and make energy use more efficient. Experts, however, underline that personal and behavioral data collected by smart technologies have not been adequately protected, thus bringing significant risk to individual privacy. The COVID-19 pandemic has also further intensified the dialogue to address privacy concerns in the digital sphere. Drawing from the experience of COVID-19 tracing applications in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, the author finds that despite concerns about technical issues and accessibility, the practice of surveillance and the effectiveness of such technology adoption to fight COVID-19 remain in debate. The dialogue on data protection in the digital sphere has become more complex as there are contesting interests between the need to ensure public safety and the need to protect individual privacy.

Chapter 5 continues the thread of data and privacy in smart cities by discussing the need for a coherent policy on cross-border data flows to make the city of Hong Kong smart. Yu and Mercurio observe that to remain relevant and competitive, a smart city must rely on external data not only for short-term commercial needs, such as international payment transactions, but also for long-term innovation, content creation, product development, business viability, and support and updates for smart devices and vehicles. This requirement concurrently involves legal issues connected with privacy, trade, e-commerce, finance and cybersecurity, and intellectual property, which, in turn, is further complicated by the need to protect data, enforce laws, and access tools for the creation of new content or innovations. This chapter takes Hong Kong as a case study to examine the conflicting legal and other issues facing smart cities, including how to provide access to tools and data to enable the creation of apps, content, or products and adapt products for local and global needs; how to encourage use and deployment of data-dependent systems such as artificial intelligence; and how to allow companies to fulfill obligations to provide customer support, enable commercial transactions, or enable the flow of digital currencies. The authors advocate for the establishment of a coordinated framework and policy for managing cross-border data flows with respect to the governance of smart cities.

Moving to Thailand, Chap. 6 focuses on a specific smart city project in the tourist island of Phuket to highlight privacy and personal data-related issues arising from the development of smart cities. Based on recent smart city campaigns in Phuket involving closed-circuit television installation and digitally-tracking wristbands, Phusamruat finds that local actors’ privacy perceptions and data processing practices substantially deviate from the privacy views and practices required by the Thai Personal Data Protection Act. This deviation may result in a lack of implementation of the Act or force inevitable changes to local community life to meet a new legal standard. The global–local tension between norms brought by visitors from various cultural backgrounds and the local tradition makes finding common ground far more difficult. This case demonstrates the limitations of current legal approaches to embracing diverse societal views and interests, while also paving a new way to understand privacy in smart cities and integrate this knowledge into their universal design.

Smart Cities require new strategies and regulatory frameworks to account for the renewed relationship between technology, government and society. The challenge is in establishing legal mechanisms that control the potential harm from technological advances and new services while enabling innovation (Gasiola 2022). Chapters 7 and 8 provide an overview of the legal framework for smart cities in Vietnam in recent years and the driving forces behind this evolution.

In Chap. 7, Nguyen (Cuong) highlights that the Vietnamese legal framework for smart city projects is still in an early stage of development with room for improvement, especially in the areas of legal rules for ICT application, urban governance of infrastructure, construction and engineering laws, intellectual property rights, and protection of personal data. This chapter shows that the promotion of smart city projects requires a huge effort from both central and local governments. The author believes that some local governments are active and interested in experimenting with smart city projects, but the lack of a sound legal framework could be a hindrance for realizing this ambition. This chapter also suggests that the central government should play a bigger role in constructing a legal framework that is more favorable to the implementation of smart city projects in local governments.

Further, Chu in Chap. 8 continues the discussion about the legal framework of Vietnam with a focus on personal data protection. Similar to other jurisdictions including Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, Vietnam has been revising its legal framework to address the need for personal data protection. The development of smart cities in Vietnam raises concerns among city residents about transparency in data collection and how to ensure that such data is not misused, disclosed, leaked, or exploited for the wrong purposes. This chapter reviews the Vietnamese legal framework for data protection to highlight that data protection law in Vietnam should be reformed for the development of smart cities.

Chapter 9 switches to the financial and banking aspect of smart cities in Vietnam. In cities where payments are expected to be digital, banking plays an important role. This chapter first reviews the literature on digital transformation in the banking sectors and the current commercial banks’ digital transformation landscape in Vietnam. It provides examples of some local commercial banks to show that digital banking should be considered an integral part of smart cities. Ha and Nguyen (Linh) also analyze the challenges facing Vietnamese banks in their digitalization process to become smarter banks and puts forward some recommendations about how to leverage this process in the Vietnamese banking system. The authors assert that digital transformation is key to the banking industry creating value for the customer and keeping pace with innovation in smart cities where people expect real-time instant gratification.

Chapter 10 closes the discussion about smart cities in Vietnam by examining a case of the Intelligent Operations Center (IOC) in Thua Thien Hue province and analyzing its smart city implementation inside a historical and cultural city. The IOC, which was designed and implemented to lay a sound foundation for smart city technologies, helps the local government supervise and control citizens’ social activities and predict social trends. The IOC also encourages the participation of citizens in managing the city. Nguyen (Ngoc) believes that the future of urban tourism belongs to smart cities and makes several recommendations to boost tourism and increase the participation of inhabitants in co-creating more value for the province in the smart city project.

1.3 Final Notes

This book aims to provide audiences with an overview of smart cities in Asia from different perspectives. While the topic of Smart Cities in Asia: Regulations, Problems, and Development does not address all concerns and questions about smart cities in Asia, the discussions outline regulatory frameworks of some countries, addresses certain problems, and projects the development of smart cities in the region. The book also establishes a network of scholars and practitioners who are interested in researching smart cities. The editors and authors welcome all comments, suggestions, and initiatives promoting scholarship in this area.