Page 155 - Shaping smarter and more sustainable cities - Striving for sustainable development goals

"A smart sustainable city is an innovative city that uses information and
communication technologies (ICTs) and other means to improve quality of life,
efficiency of urban operation and services, and competitiveness, while ensuring that it
meets the needs of present and future generations with respect to economic, social,
environmental as well as cultural aspects".
Source: ITU‐T Study Group 5 and UNECE, 2015.

Having established a comprehensive working definition of SSC, the following section identifies the
key technical specifications that provide an enabling environment for the design and
implementation of SSC strategies.

3 Building a master plan: towards an integrated

management in SSC

Emerging experiences aimed at the design and realization of SSC have evidenced that there is no
single approach to make a city smarter and more sustainable. Each city constitutes a unique system,
where different actors and city agencies, undertaking a range of activities, interact at multiple
scales, using different facilities and infrastructures. Recognizing the particular environmental and
societal contexts of the city, its purposes priority actions, as well as its history and characteristics,
has become crucial not only to ensure effective governance, but also to determine the most
appropriate path towards becoming smart and sustainable.

Local administrations need to prepare municipal strategic plans as frameworks for the
implementation of Smart Cities initiatives; optimise urban services and tailor them towards citizens;
move away from standardised and uniform service models to models that involve the provision of
personalised services; develop transparent tariff systems, which reflect the real cost of providing
services to citizens; create small big data with useful information about KPIs and develop integrated
technological platforms that enable the management of intelligent cities.

Building on the work conducted by the FG‐SSC, the SSC Master Plan presented in Figure 1 provides
an overview of the key components and stages involved in the process of building “an integrated
management scheme for SSC.

ITU‐T's Technical Reports and Specifications 145