A smart city is an urban area that utilizes digital technology to collect data from citizens, devices, buildings, cameras, and other devices to operate and provide services. A smart city is created to achieve sustainable development and promote an improved quality of life for the citizens through the utilization of technological advancements and the proper management of natural resources. Thus, the study has been carried out to recognize and rank the factors affecting the development of smart cities.
The research is of an applied nature in terms of its objective and has used the exploratory sequential mixed methods. In the first stage, factors were collected using content analysis based on previous studies, which resulted in 63 codes. In the second stage of the research, the importance of the identified components was evaluated by 18 municipal managers.
The findings showed that the dimensions of quality of life, information and communications technology, environmental sustainability, physical infrastructure and efficiency have the highest importance for the development of smart cities in Iraq, respectively. According to the obtained results, it is clear that the managers of urban affairs in Iraq should use digital technologies to create jobs, reduce poverty and unemployment rates, and develop medical and educational services. The results of this study showed that it is important that urban policymakers prioritize investment in the social dimensions of smart cities, such as quality of life and creating information technology infrastructure, to achieve smart cities.
The theoretical contribution of this research is to provide a conceptual model of the factors affecting smart city development based on past studies.
