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The Role of Smart City Approach in
Sustainable Urban Planning Processes

the failed cities do not have an integrated and comprehensive development
strategy, they extremely focus on the use of technology, they do not include
human capital factor into the smart city transformation processes, they ignore
the participation of citizens in the local decision-making processes, they fail to
set a balance between economic growth and environmental sustainability and
do not have certain aspects (vision, cooperation, organisation, participation,
risk management, inclusiveness, project development capability, supportive
legal framework etc.) (Chomoso et al., 2020; Cömertler and Cömertler, 2021).

2. The Role of Smart City Components in Sustainable Urban Systems
Technology-based developments as well as information and communication
technologies change the urban life and the habits of urban residents, and
at the end of this transformation process, the expectations of citizens have
changed in the quite different way. As expressed previously, it has become
a obligation to integrate information and communication technologies into
each field of urban life in order to allow local administrations, in particular,
to develop new perspectives for various problems observed in the basic
activity fields of cities (environment, water supply, housing, transportation,
communication, urbanization processes etc.) and to increase the quality of
life of citizens and their satisfaction of the public services (Goodspeed, 2015).
The ‘smart city’ vision, introduced to enhance and improve the quality of
life in modern cities, has enabled cities to digitalize over time and to acquire a
‘digital identity’. In the list included in the Motion Index 2018 published by IESE
Cities in 2018, it is seen that smart cities were ranked by taking into account
10 main topics and indicators on sustainability and life quality worldwide, and
these cities come to the fore with this vision. Examples of cities such as New
York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Reykjavik, Singapore, Seoul, Toronto, Hong Kong,
Amsterdam, Songdo are included in this list (Cities In Motion, 2018). In the case
of Turkey, it is seen that as of 2018, preparatory studies have been carried out
within the scope of the National Smart Cities Strategy and Action Plan (Uçkun,
2002; Köseoğlu and Demirci, 2018). Starting from this point, three important
features of the smart city concept come to the fore: (a) being innovative, (b)
problem-solving ability, and (c) active use of information and communication
technologies. In order to ensure these features to find solutions to the problems
caused by urban system, it should incorporate basic principles such as interaction
and communication between objects, governance, sustainability, human focus
and improving the quality of life (Şahin and Örselli, 2003).
When it comes to the digitalization of urban life, the idea of Society 5.0 is
an important milestone. The idea of ‘Society 5.0: Super Smart Society’, which
was introduced at the CeBIT fair held in 2017 and launched in Tokyo, is built

Year 2 / Issue 3 / January 2023 189