Smart City Results and Sustainability: Current Progress and Emergent Opportunities for Future Research

The notion of sustainability has gained increasing popularity in smart city research. While numerous studies have focused on how smart city initiatives either undermine or contribute to sustainability, a few essential questions remain unanswered. First, a vast body of knowledge has been accumulated on the results of smart cities, particularly their short-term outputs. However, it is not clear how those results can be sustained over time. Second, most of the existing literature touches on environmental and economic sustainability, whereas other perspectives, such as social and cultural sustainability, are still underexplored. Given these gaps, this study seeks to contribute to the sustainability and smart city literature by answering the following research questions: (1) To what extent have the results of smart city initiatives been addressed in previous studies? and (2) To what extent have smart city scholars addressed the different dimensions of sustainability? A narrative literature review was conducted. Our findings indicate that the sustainability of smart cities can be understood in two ways—the duration of results and the multi-dimensional long-term sustainability goals. Based on the findings, this study proposes a few intersections of the two concepts and an agenda to guide future research on sustainability in smart cities.