Page 23 - Reference framework for integrated management of an SSC - A U4SSC deliverable on city platforms

Furthermore, ICTs must establish defined urban functions in Smart and Sustainable Cities and help
foster participation during the city design and planning process among citizens, governments,
businesses, and other stakeholders. This engagement is expected to facilitate participation and the
sharing of knowledge for urban governance, which is essential to keep the city’s future economic,
social and environmental development in line with a credible smart sustainable vision.

In this same way, some urban spaces are subject, to a greater or lesser degree, to modern global
phenomena such as tourism, an activity which nowadays involves a massive yearly movement of
nearly 900 million tourists according to 2022 data from UNWTO. The reception of such a volume
of tourists is a reality that comes with unavoidable impacts that must be faced when defining the
smart and sustainable city strategy, due to the fact that these spaces constitute one of the main
tourist consumption scenarios.

Even with this definition and understanding of a smart sustainable city, its manifestation varies by
city, country, and region, depending on the city’s level of development, cultural attitudes towards
change, financial resources, technical landscape and capabilities, and general aspirations. A Smart
and Sustainable city in Africa would be unique for that country and the context of the region,
compared with its counterpart in the context of Latin America, South Asia or North America. ITU-T
is helping to build Smart Cities in many different forms:

• Technical standards to harmonize and protect key investments in ICT infrastructure.

• U4SSC Initiative .
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• Toolkit on Digital Transformation for People-Oriented Cities and Communities .
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2.1 Challenges facing Smart and Sustainable Cities

Intelligent infrastructure adoption is slow and needs to be managed carefully fundamentally due
to high investments and long amortization periods. There are various levels of adoption of this
type of technology depending on location, the capacity of local leaders and officials, the strength
of the local market, and the type of technology being implemented.

There are some barriers to smart infrastructure adoption such as:

• Cross-cutting nature of smart infrastructures. The deployment of an intelligent infrastructure can
constitute a solid base for the development of economies of scale that would benefit different
departments and stakeholders, promoting the economic development of the community:
however, it increases complexity since it requires internal coordination and shared costs
between different areas.

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