The impact of smart city technologies: lessons from three UK cities

The concept of smart city has been discussed widely in the academia and policy terms, mainly referring to the ways in which cities can be managed more efficiently. Nevertheless, the real implications of smart technologies in urban practice often remain unexplored. Today, especially, not much is known about the challenges of smart city implementation in the context of the built environment. In order to demystify the concept of the smart city, this paper uses three UK cities, namely Bristol, Manchester and Milton Keynes, to report on how smart city ideas are designed in practice. The result of this paper gives some ideas towards the challenges of integrating technological and social innovation by providing real-life processes on the ground.