As research on smart cities garners increased attention and its status consolidates as one of the fanciest areas of research today, this paper makes a case for a cautious rethink of the very rationale and relevance of the debate. To this end, this paper looks at the smart cities debate from the perspectives of, on the one hand, citizens’ awareness of applications and solutions that are considered ‘smart’ and, on the other hand, their ability to use these applications and solutions. Drawing from a detailed analysis of the outcomes of a pilot international study, this paper showcases that even the most educated users of smart city services, i.e., those arguably most aware of and equipped with skills to use these services effectively, express very serious concerns regarding the utility, safety, accessibility and efficiency of those services. This suggests that more pragmatism needs to be included in smart cities research if its findings are to remain useful and relevant for all stakeholders involved. The discussion in this paper contributes to the smart cities debate in three ways. First, it adds empirical support to the thesis of ‘normative bias’ of smart cities research. Second, it suggests ways of bypassing it, thereby opening a debate on the preconditions of sustainable interdisciplinary smart cities research. Third, it points to new avenues of research.

Energy sustainability is one of the key questions that drive the debate on cities’ and urban areas development. In parallel, artificial intelligence and cognitive computing have emerged as catalysts in the process aimed at designing and optimizing smart services’ supply and utilization in urban space. The latter are paramount in the domain of energy provision and consumption. This paper offers an insight into pilot systems and prototypes that showcase in which ways artificial intelligence can offer critical support in the process of attaining energy sustainability in smart cities. To this end, this paper examines smart metering and non-intrusive load monitoring (NILM) to make a case for the latter’s value added in context of profiling electric appliances’ electricity consumption. By employing the findings in context of smart cities research, the paper then adds to the debate on energy sustainability in urban space. Existing research tends to be limited by data granularity (not in high frequency) and consideration of about six kinds of appliances. In this paper, a hybrid genetic algorithm support vector machine multiple kernel learning approach (GA-SVM-MKL) is proposed for NILM, with consideration of 20 kinds of appliance. Genetic algorithm helps to solve the multi-objective optimization problem and design the optimal kernel function based on various kernel properties. The performance indicators are sensitivity (S_e), specificity (S_p) and overall accuracy (OA) of the classifier. First, the performance evaluation of proposed GA-SVM-MKL achieves S_e of 92.1%, S_p of 91.5% and OA of 91.8%. Second, the percentage improvement of performance indicators using proposed method is more than 21% compared with traditional kernel. Third, results reveal that by keeping different modes of electric appliance as identical class label, the performance indicators can increase to about 15%. Forth, tunable modes of GA-SVM-MKL classifier are proposed to further enhance the performance indicators up to 7%. Overall, this paper is a bold and novel contribution to the debate on energy utilization and sustainability in urban spaces as it integrates insights from artificial intelligence, IoT, and big data analytics and queries them in a context defined by energy sustainability in smart cities.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to rethink the focus of the smart cities debate and to open it to policymaking and strategy considerations. To this end, the origins of what is termed normative bias in smart cities research are identified and a case made for a holistic, scalable and human-centred smart cities research agenda. Applicable across the micro, mezzo and macro levels of the context in which smart cities develop, this research agenda remains sensitive to the limitations and enablers inherent in these contexts. Policymaking and strategy consideration are incorporated in the agenda this paper advances, thus creating the prospect of bridging the normative and the empirical in smart cities research. Design/methodology/approach: This paper queries the smart cities debate and, by reference to megacities research, argues that the smart city remains an overly normatively laden concept frequently discussed in separation from the broader socio-political and economic contexts in which it is embedded. By focusing on what is termed the normative bias of smart cities research, this paper introduces the nested clusters model. By advocating the inclusion of policymaking and strategy considerations in the smart cities debate, a case is made for a holistic, scalable and human-centred smart cities agenda focused, on the one hand, on individuals and citizens inhabiting smart cities and, on the other hand, on interdependencies that unfold between a given smart city and the context in which it is embedded. Findings: This paper delineates the research focus and scope of the megacities and smart cities debates respectively. It locates the origins of normative bias inherent in smart cities research and, by making a case for holistic, scalable and human-centred smart cities research, suggests ways of bypassing that bias. It is argued that smart cities research has the potential of contributing to research on megacities (smart megacities and clusters), cities (smart cities) and villages (smart villages). The notions of policymaking and strategy, and ultimately of governance, are brought into the spotlight. Against this backdrop, it is argued that smart cities research needs to be based on real tangible experiences of individuals inhabiting rural and urban space and that it also needs to mirror and feed into policy-design and policymaking processes. Research limitations/implications: The paper stresses the need to explore the question of how the specific contexts in which cities/urban areas are located influence those cities/urban areas’ growth and development strategies. It also postulates new avenues of inter and multidisciplinary research geared toward building bridges between the normative and the empirical in the smart cities debate. More research is needed to advance these imperatives at the micro, mezzo and macro levels. Practical implications: By highlighting the connection, relatively under-represented in the literature, between the normative and the empirical in smart cities research, this paper encourages a more structured debate between academia and policymakers focused on the sustainable development of cities/urban areas. In doing so, it also advocates policies and strategies conducive to strengthening individuals’/citizens’ ability to benefit from and contribute to smart cities development, thereby making them sustainable. Social implications: This paper makes a case for pragmatic and demand-driven smart cities research, i.e. based on the frequently very basic needs of individuals and citizens inhabiting not only urban but also rural areas. It highlights the role of basic infrastructure as the key enabler/inhibitor of information and communication technology-enhanced services. The nested clusters model introduced in this paper suggests that an intimate connection exists between individuals’ well-being, their active civic engagement and smart cities sustainability. Originality/value: This paper delineates the relationship between megacities and smart cities research. It identifies the sources of what is termed normative bias in smart cities research. To address the implications of that bias, a nested clusters model for smart cities is introduced, i.e. a conceptual framework that allows us to redraw the debate on smart cities and establish a functional connection between the array of normatively laden ideas of what a smart city could be and what is feasible, and under which conditions at the policymaking level.

Research on smart cities matures and new interdisciplinary approaches to the study of smart cities are proposed. At the same time, problems pertinent to communities inhabiting rural areas tend to be addressed, as if by the way, i.e., as a part of discussions in neighboring fields of research, be it environmental studies, sociology, or agriculture. Arguably, the concept of ‘the village’ has been largely absent in the academic debate, even if rural areas and countryside communities have been a subject of concern for robust policy frameworks, such as the European Union’s Cohesion Policy and Common Agricultural Policy. As a result, when advances in sophisticated information and communication technology (ICT) led to the emergence of a rich body of research on smart cities, the application and usability of ICT in the context of a village remained underdiscussed in the literature. Through this Special Issue, and the Editors’ earlier research on this topic, the Editors hope that the idea of the ‘smart village’ will be introduced into the debate. Against this backdrop, the objective of this opening review is three-fold: (i) to outline the conceptual boundaries of the term smart village, (ii) to highlight the thrust of the challenge inherent in smart villages research, and (iii) to shed light on the smart village research agenda as it unfolds. The relevance and validity of these claims are supported by references to research submitted to the Special Issue titled “Sustainable Smart Cities and Smart Villages Research”.