Blue-Green Smart U-Cities via Clean Technologies: Toward High Sustainable and Low Greenhouse Gas Emissions Urban Areas
Smart Cities for Sustainability
ISBN: 978-1-80455-903-1, eISBN: 978-1-80455-902-4
ISSN: 1877-6361
Publication date: 11 December 2023
Abstract
The technological revolution is fundamentally changing our lifestyle, work, and communication. There is still no accurate information about the future of this great transformation, but one thing is quite clear: the speed of the transformations in terms of scale and complexity, like a storm, will go through all aspects of a society's life and change all the current paradigms. One of the expectations from the fourth industrial revolution will be the expansion of smart cities in accordance with sustainable development criteria. In order for a city to be truly smart and innovative, city officials must pay attention to elements such as renewable and clean energy such as the internet of things, smart networks, smart parking, and smart transportation. In another sense, there must be a balance between economy, environment, and society in order to build a strong, sustainable, and flexible smart city that will survive the test of time. Of course, based on the 7PS model, the dimensions of culture and education are very important and fundamental for high sustainability. Researchers and those involved in the implementation of smart cities have explained the main indicators to identify these cities, which include some of the following items: For example, smart building, environmental protection, smart garbage collection, digitization of all government affairs and administrative work, widespread use of smartphones and electronic devices, complete, convenient, and universal access to the internet, car sharing service and online taxi. Other important indicators include the intelligentization of the traffic system and urban planning, citizen participation, economic ecosystem, optimization in electricity, water and energy consumption, development of electric and electric public transportation fleet, quality control and management, and reduction of air pollution. In this chapter, the theory of i-Sustainability Plus and i-Comprehensive Strategic Urban Plan is introduced as the beating heart of the ubiquitous blue-green smart city design. In such urban areas, it is all about the combination of real life, virtual reality, and in addition the future of clean technologies. In general, it can be said that sustainable smart cities are a solution to combat the challenges of urbanization.
Keywords
Citation
Mohammadian, H.D. (2023), "Blue-Green Smart U-Cities via Clean Technologies: Toward High Sustainable and Low Greenhouse Gas Emissions Urban Areas", El Amine Abdelli, M., Sghaier, A., Akbaba, A., Gamoura, S.C. and Mohammadian, H.D. (Ed.) Smart Cities for Sustainability (Advanced Series in Management, Vol. 32), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 83-102. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1877-636120230000033007
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2024 Hamid Doost Mohammadian. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited
1. Introduction
The twenty-first century is characterized by increasing urbanization, population growth and huge social, economic, and environmental problems resulting from them, along with the growth and expansion of information and communication technology at the global level. The contradiction between economic growth and environmental preservation, the confrontation of the ultramodern citizen with the city of the industrial age (modern), and the inability to respond to the needs of the citizens of the present age led to the introduction of the sustainable smart city approach. This approach seeks to solve the problems with the help of clean technologies, including the internet of things. Therefore, sustainable innovative smart cities based on sustainability, advanced technologies, and digitalization can be a tool to create new urban areas with high livability quality and less global challenges, especially environmental problems, through a sustainable smart city master plan. The most important point in the development of smart cities is their sustainability. Environmental sustainability means the preservation of natural capital, which requires us humans to observe limits in the consumption of renewable materials and in the consumption of water and energy resources and not to consume more than what natural systems can provide. Sustainability also includes a wide range of different urban components that support citizens, depending on the level of development of the city, the inherent characteristics of the city, the desire to change the existing situation, the available resources, and the wishes of the citizens. In this section, ubiquitous blue-green cities are introduced as a major tool to combat the challenges of urbanization. The main goal of this study is to create a practical model to propose how to use inclusive blue-green cities as a tool for designing modern urban places in order to achieve high sustainability and sustainable development. The subgoals of livability and high quality of life achieve the main goal of the research. The first subgoal is to show what green-blue infrastructure is everywhere, and the last goal of the study is to find out how modern urban environments combat the challenges of urbanization by improving livability and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve the objectives of the research, several questions must be answered:
How do ubiquitous blue-green cities deal with the challenges of urbanization?
What is the role of inclusive concept in creating sustainable urban areas?
How to achieve ubiquitous blue-green cities?
How does rapid urbanization worsen the quality of life and create environmental challenges, especially the emission of greenhouse gases?
What is the role of a modern and sustainable urban master plan in creating a high quality of livability and less emission of greenhouse gases?
In order to answer the research questions and achieve the objectives, it is important to follow a sound methodology. Systematic literature review (SLR), research-based survey, and review of case studies and their analysis are proposed as methodological tools in this research.
2. Literature Review
2.1 Sustainability
A sustainable smart city refers to an area where clean technologies are used to improve the quality of life, self-efficiency of urban services, and competitiveness. This indicates the importance of cities in social, economic, and environmental development and the balance of these three areas in the present era. In these cities, the economic, social, and environmental needs of future generations are taken into consideration. In the last few decades, the fear of population growth, consumption growth, lack of facilities, etc., has been the subject of many theorists of the world, and paying attention to environmental responsibilities has brought hope in this field. And the crisis caused by social anxiety is an important challenge that highlights the importance of social cohesion in the sustainability model. But the economic dimension supervises how to distribute and use the limited resources needed to improve people's lives. In order to survive, cities and communities in the age of intelligence, in addition to the traditional dimensions of sustainability (social, environmental, and economic), need more dimensions to be able to resist the extensive changes around them. In other words, planning future scenarios requires a new definition of sustainability in order to anticipate and prepare for shocks and crises. In the definition of high sustainability, cultural, technological, educational, and political dimensions are added to the traditional dimensions. Educational sustainability, with the sixth priority in line with other dimensions, should be developed relatively in universities, communities, and businesses to drive innovation and implement strategic plans for resilience against shocks. Fig. 6.1 shows these points in addition to peace and love (Doost Mohammadian & Rezaie, 2019).
![Fig. 6.1.
7PS Model With the Pillars' Priority, Connections, and PEACE/LOVE [Doost. H, 2017] (Author, 2017).](/insight/proxy/img?link=/resource/id/urn:emeraldgroup.com:asset:id:article:10_1108_S1877-636120230000033007/urn:emeraldgroup.com:asset:id:binary:S1877-636120230000033007-f06-01.jpg)
2.2 Urbanization Challenges
Nowadays, people move to cities to benefit from higher livability and quality of life. That is, more than half of the world's population lives in cities, and it is predicted that by 2050, two-thirds of the world's people will live in urban areas. Despite the fact that urban residents have more comforts than rural residents, many problems threaten them. Basically, these challenges can be analyzed in two categories: environmental problems and challenges related to livability.
2.2.1 Environmental Problems
Ever since mankind stepped on the earth, it has had a continuous and stable interaction with its environment. But the growth of the population and the achievement of new scientific inventions and discoveries and the movement toward a modern and industrial society have caused today's man to live in a crisis-ridden world. In recent decades, in addition to social and economic crises that are considered serious threats, environmental problems and crises should also be added to the list of global crises. Global environmental problems are important threats to human sciences because the severity of the process of environmental destruction due to population growth, urbanization, forest destruction, noise pollution, endless consumption culture, energy crisis and limited durability of reserves, waste and destruction of natural resources, etc., have all caused extreme human intervention in nature. This approach has upset the balance of the natural environment and caused environmental pollution. In other words, the expansion of human societies and the development of urbanization have led to the emergence of phenomena such as destruction and pollution of the environment. Basically, the increase in greenhouse gases is the main cause of climate change.
CO2 is the most significant contributor to climate change. CO2 emission is related to the usage of fossil fuel and human activity. Since the 1970s, CO2 emission has increased. Combustion of fossil fuels, land use changes, and population increasing could have an influence on CO2 emission and make it increase (Cioca, Ivascu, Rada, Torretta, & Ionescu, 2015). In addition, land use and land cover change could make energy budget of the Earth be changed and make climate shifting (Desjardins, 2013). This is not only related to a country or a specific territory, but it is a problem for the whole world and includes various issues.
2.2.2 Challenges Threaten Livability and Quality of Life
Today, cities have become the main place of work and a major part of human life, and because attention to the quality of life, conditions, facilities, and needs of city residents is a vital issue, various approaches have been proposed for the development and improvement of living conditions in them. One of those conditions is livability. A city can be considered livable when the increasing growth of urbanization takes place without harming the needs of the future generation. On the other hand, citizens can receive more services and take a step toward urban comfort. The concept of livability has emerged alongside sustainability as a slogan in public discourse and planning. Planners and policymakers in relation to the creation or preservation of cities refer to the concept of livability as a guiding principle for investment and decision-making and shaping the social, economic, physical, and biological urban environment. In fact, livability is the standard of living and the overall desirability of people's lives in a settlement like a city. Due to the change of viewpoints from mere standardization to qualitative viewpoints and the introduction of sustainable development approach and theory instead of macroeconomic viewpoints and physical wisdom, the issues of quality of life and livability of the city have received serious attention. This issue is a multipurpose concept that is associated with many areas of the living environment in urban areas, including physical and sociocultural environments.
Not only environmental challenges but also the other urbanization problems such as slum, economic problems, health diseases, poverty, social instability, and insecurity would worsen livability and quality of life. In other words, urbanization challenges are significant menace to livability and quality of humans' life and fundamentally, humanities through influencing on humans' needs based on Maslow's Hierarchy and supplying needs. So, quality of livability could be threatened. Fundamentally, urbanization challenges are threats to humanities and human beings through reducing quality of livability and quality of life.
2.3 Restrictions
Fundamentally, restrictions are the other type of challenges, the word confront with. In addition, many innovations that changed life and the world were invented through restrictions. For instance, the Second World War is one of the most important proofs for humans to create new achievements through innovation. For instance, invention of the computer, nuclear bombs, aerospace, genetics, and others were invented after World War 2. In addition, Cold War between the United States and Soviets created the third wave, which Alvin Toffler indicated made new achievements through innovation such as internet. These innovations like computers, internet, and others created through restrictions of wars are altered humans' life. The most important restrictions are:
wars,
sanctions,
challenges concerned on increasing population,
Increasing Demands
Depletion of Resources
low Sustainability,
Low Quality of Livability+Low Quality of Life
Low environmental sustainability, low political sustainability, low educational sustainability, low cultural sustainability, low social sustainability, low technical sustainability, low economical sustainability
risks.
Natural Disasters and Accidents
Project Risk Management (PRM)
Financial Risk Management (FRM)
Govern Mentality Risk Management (GRM)
Enterprise Risk Mangement (ERM).
2.3 Ubiquitous City
Information and communication technology has been proposed as the main axis of transformation and development of the third millennium. In this area, the city is also changing due to the evolution of the concept of urban space and the emergence of new information and communication technology infrastructure. In other words, today the role of information technology and communication infrastructures is extremely important; the reason for this is the emergence of environmental, social, and economic opportunities and the disappearance of time and place limitations.
U-City is defined as “a city in which ubiquitous based services are offered at any time and in any place in urban space by realizing high-tech IT, construction, traffic application technologies to enhance urban life quality and city competitiveness” [21].
In U-city, any citizen can get any service anywhere and anytime through any ICT device. ICT development has made the conventional city in terms of intelligence, innovation, and evolution to E-city and then to U-city. In addition, U-city is aligned with environmental sustainability and sustainable smart (or knowledge) city, which makes the ubiquitous computing available to the urban elements such as people, building, infrastructure and open space. High-speed networks, advanced communication services, digitalization, and smartness have an important role in U-cities. Digitalization such as ICT are used in several areas in U-cities like social science, geography, planning, and architecture (Lee, Cameron, & Hassall, 2019).
2.4 Blue-Green City
Blue-green cities are based on sustainable water management and green strategies (University of Newcastle). Basically, to get blue-green city, blue-green infrastructure is required. In recent decades, green infrastructure is not enough to adapt to the environment, and access to water is one of the important water infrastructures in smart cities. Following the growth of urban communities, water consumption is significantly affected. As a result, all urban residents have sustainable access to water with simple processes, and the use of efficient resource consumption solutions instead of the old ones and minimizing the wastage of this vital substance is of special importance among urban planners. Also, the lack of a precise concept for the smart city can be an important component in understanding the importance of providing a real plan for city managers. For all its advantages, digital information evokes in the minds of urban planners the fact that arguments about them are much more real than when managers want to discuss objective evidence and experience. More importantly, even if a precise definition of real digital information and smart cities is provided, it is still necessary to manage this information by experts, while the infinite understanding of smart management is also of particular importance. In other words, the blue-green urban environment can be a tool to fight the challenges of urbanization and create sustainable and livable urban areas.
3. Greenhouse Gas Emissions as Significant Threats for Sustainable Threats
In recent decades, environmental challenges are realized as one of the main threats of the world and humanities. So, environmental sustainability as a key to struggle with environmental challenges is required to maintain the nature and environment for humans' life. In addition, environmental sustainability is related to other aspects of sustainability. It means that it is needed to gain sustainable development. So, it is vital to achieve sustainable environment in order to maintain the planet for living.
Greenhouse gas emissions are the main reason for many environmental challenges, especially climate shifting named as the most significant threat for the preserving the planet and humanities. In other words, these gases not only make climate change but also the other environmental challenges such as migration of species, devastating of hurricanes, desertification of fertile areas, negative impacts on agriculture, and disturbing the nature and environment. All these challenges influence the planet and human beings for living. Therefore, reducing effects of these gases in order to preserve the planet and future life is suggested as a solution.
Carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide are the main greenhouse gases created through humans' activities and fossil fuels. Generally, carbon dioxide is made by fossil fuels and industrial processes, carbon dioxide created by forestry and other land use. Methane and Nitrous Dioxide made by different humans' activities create the main level of greenhouse gases. Further, it is necessary to make humans' activities align with reducing greenhouse gas emissions to develop environmental sustainability. It is required to use strategies to gain neutral greenhouse areas, especially carbon-neutral areas as a key to struggle with environmental problems through reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To gain such areas, it is needed to reduce usage of fossil fuels as main resources of energy in industry, transport, forestry through utilizing renewable and clean energy resources, improving public transport, clean transportation based on hybrid vehicles, nonpolluting vehicles like bicycle and electronic vehicles and walkable cities, utilizing other kinds of energy resources instead of fossil fuels like waste as a source of energy, especially in industry. In addition, promoting ecological awareness, environmental education among citizens, and consuming organic products could be used as tools to struggle with environmental challenges.
Fundamentally, growth in renewable energy, level of demands in electricity, improving vehicles efficiency and a shift in electricity generation from coal to neutral gas, improving ecological awareness, environmental education, and culture based on environmental friendly could be used as techniques to create neutral greenhouse gas areas in order to struggle with environmental challenges threaten humans' beings and the future of the world.
Based on greenhouse gases as the main reason of environmental challenges, it is vital to control emission of them to struggle with these problems in order to maintain the planet, environment, and the nature for future generation to live in this planet. Neutral greenhouse gas area is the best solution to struggle with environmental challenges, especially climate shifting created by greenhouse gas emission. In this research, blue-green smart city is suggested as a path to create neutral greenhouse areas.
4. Toward Sustainable Cities With Livability and High Quality of Life
Sustainable cities are cities that have high sustainability and sustainable development. Based on authors' researches, seven pillars of sustainability are required to gain sustainable development:
Educational Sustainability: The future of a country is concerned on their juveniles. In other words, youths of a country make its fate. Skillful, perseverance, and responsible youths are required to achieve sustainable society. So, sustainable education is needed to grow innovative and entrepreneur children who are able to create a sustainable and successful society. Generally, sustainable education is related to cultural, social, and technical sustainability and could improve sustainable economic. In addition, proper education would grow children who are responsible about their environment and endeavor to improve environmental problems. Fundamentally, sustainable education is required to achieve sustainability in a society.
Technical Sustainability: Technical sustainability could create new technologies and ways to struggle with environmental problems or improve economic systems. So, it would improve not only environmental and economic sustainability but also social sustainability.
Political Sustainability: Democracy, freedom and political stability are vital for a sustainable country. Generally, citizens of a society should be aligned with political policy to gain political sustainability. Democracy, freedom, equality, transparency and honestly are essential elements for political sustainability. Political problems might cause a revolution in a society that threatens a society. Fundamentally, political sustainability is required to gain social sustainability and improve livability and quality of life in a country.
Social Sustainability: Social responsibility and social sustainability could develop quality of life and livability. A balance between work and life, opportunities for job and education, welfare, social responsibility, high quality of life, certified future, and social security is necessary to achieve social sustainability. Generally, it is one of the most essential elements to preserve a society and a country.
Cultural Sustainability: In some categories, culture is a component of social sustainability, but based on the authors' concept, cultural sustainability is one of the aspects of sustainability. Cultural norms could be altered in a society by revolutions, immigrated citizens, etc. Cultural deviation is a significant threat for not only cultural sustainability but also social sustainability. In addition, cultural sustainability could influence political and economic sustainability.
Economic Sustainability: Economic policy makes human well-being, quality of life and equality without threatening the ecosystem's sustainability. Economic sustainability is needed to gain social sustainability and high quality of life. Proper management strategies, stable banking, economic stability, appropriate exports, proper strategies concerned on companies, especially SMEs, and stable communication in business are formed sustainable economic.
Environmental Sustainability: It is one of the most controversial issues in recent decades and generally concerned on global. Environmental sustainability is required to gain all aspects of sustainability. Sustainable environment means that humans' activities are aligned with the environment not to threaten the future of environment and resources. Climate change is the most significant threat for an environment. New and proper technologies should be utilized to deal with climate change and maintain the world.
These aspects of sustainability make sustainable cities with high quality of life and livability. So, there is a relation between sustainability, livability and quality of life. Generally, livability and quality of life are about humans' needs based on Maslow's hierarchy. Fundamentally, quality of life is about life satisfaction, including everything from family, physical health, education, wealth, employment, security and safety to freedom, the environment and religious beliefs, and livability is concerned on health, security, wealth, education, safety and job opportunities, transportation, public services, housing, recreation and environmental quality. Therefore, these two parameters will be gained by sustainability. Seven pillars of sustainability supply humans' needs in the appropriate path, and high quality of livability and quality of life will be achieved (Figs. 6.2–6.6).
To conclude, livability and quality of life could be named as indicators of sustainable cities. Although in recent decades, sustainable cities couldn't create appropriate livable urban areas, smartness is required to make sustainable cities kept up with humans' demands in order to supply humans' needs and create sustainable livable urban areas with high quality of livability. So, in this research, Blue-Green smart city is suggested as a path to create sustainable and livable urban areas. In addition, through this solution, neutral greenhouse gas areas will be gained because such urban areas are environmentally friendly, aligned with green strategies and sustainable water management.
5. Blue-Green Ubiquitous Cities as a Key Toward Livable and Sustainable Urban Settings With High Quality of Life and Less Greenhouse Gas Emissions
We have been living in an era that needs to be changed in order to maintain the world for future generations and make high quality of livability and life for the present generation. In other words, global challenges created through rapid and unplanned urbanization such as poverty, slum, economic problems, environmental challenges, climate change, insecurity, social instability, and health diseases threaten the planet and humans’ being. So, it is vital to struggle with these problems to maintain the world and humanities. Among these challenges, environmental problems and climate change made by greenhouse gas emissions are realized as important ones, which could directly and indirectly influence on other challenges and make them worse. Generally, environmental challenges make livability and quality of life worse through supplying humans’ needs. As it was mentioned, growth in renewable energy, level of demands in electricity, improving vehicles efficiency and a shift in electricity generation from coal to neutral gas, improving ecological awareness, environmental education, and culture based on environmental friendly could be used as keys to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. To achieve these solutions, smartness, digitalization, high technologies such as IT, cloud computing like IoT and IoE, sustainability, innovation, and proper comprehensive strategic urban plan are required. So, in this research, Blue-Green Ubiquitous cities are introduced as a way to struggle with urbanization challenges and create sustainable, neutral greenhouse gas urban areas with high quality of livability and life for living. These cities could be kept up with rapid citizens’ demands and aligned with environmentally friendly, sustainable water management and natural ecologic. So, such cities would make livable urban areas through sustainability and supplying humans’ needs.
Nowadays, green strategies aren't sufficient enough to maintain the planet and deal with environmental challenges because many environmental problems are based on water management. So, besides green strategies and being environmentally friendly, proper water management as a response to struggle with important environmental challenges based on water problems like water shortage, flood, secretion, and others is needed. Therefore, to utilize Blue-Green strategies in designing urban areas, Blue-Green Comprehensive urban plan is required. In addition, digitalization, smartness, high technologies, and innovation could be used to achieve Blue-Green strategies. Therefore, Blue-Green Smart Comprehensive urban plan is vital to achieve Blue-Green Ubiquitous cities. Growth in renewable energy, level of demands in electricity, improving vehicles efficiency and a shift in electricity generation from coal to neutral gas, improving ecological awareness, environmental education and culture based on environmental friendly. Smartness, digitalization, high technologies, and innovation are techniques to achieve comprehensive urban plan aligned with Blue-Green strategies.
Blue-Green Ubiquitous cities are sustainable urban areas with high quality of livability and quality of life. To gain such urban areas, Smart Blue-Green comprehensive urban plan including Ubiquitous Blue-Green infrastructure, project management aligned with Blue-Green strategies and value engineering besides sustainability are needed.
Blue-Green infrastructure improves environmental sustainability, inclusive growth, and humans' basic services in urban areas. In other words, livability and quality of life will be increased through Blue-Green infrastructure. Smartness and ubiquitous concept are tools to achieve such infrastructure.
For instance, Blue-Green mobility through smartness, digitalization, and high technologies is one of the tools required to gain Blue-Green infrastructure. Nonpolluted vehicles like bicycle, hybrid and electronic vehicles, promoting public transport, walkable cities, utilizing clean and renewable energy and utilizing risk management to mitigate risks in mobility such as environmental, sustainability, health, standards and other risks could be tools to develop Smart Blue-Green mobility aligned with environmental friendly, sustainable water management and sustainable development.
Besides Smart Blue-Green infrastructure, sustainable and smart project management including risk management, resource management, and strategic planning are required as tools to achieve sustainable infrastructure based on Blue-Green strategies. In addition, value engineering is needed to improve challenges related to comprehensive urban plan through innovative and smart improvement and solution to design sustainable comprehensive strategic urban plan aligned with Blue-Green and smart strategies. Fundamentally, comprehensive strategic urban plan based on Blue-Green strategies, smartness strategies, and sustainable development is the best key to create modern urban areas to struggle with urbanization challenges and make better living areas with high quality of livability and quality of life through supplying and providing humans' needs appropriately.
Based on authors' experiences, i-sustainability plus and i-comprehensive urban plan are tools to achieve modern urban areas. These two theories are based on ubiquitous point of view, combination of reality and virtually, and innovative project management. In other words, ubiquitous concept and innovation are used as techniques to create a new version of sustainability and comprehensive urban plan named i-sustainability plus and i-comprehensive strategic urban plan. Fundamentally, these new models are required to be able to struggle with global challenges in recent decades. It means that in this era, because of significant challenges and growing demands of humans, sustainability and sustainable urban plan aren't sufficient enough to keep up with urbanization demands. So, innovation and ubiquitous are introduced as new paths to achieve sustainability in this era.
Fundamentally, according to authors' point of view, the main techniques and tools to design sustainable comprehensive strategic urban plan in order to create Blue-Green ubiquitous urban areas are: innovation as technique; seven pillars of sustainability including economic, cultural, educational, social, political, technical, and environmental aspects; digitalization and high technologies such as IT, IoE, IoT, and smartness as techniques; comprehensive strategic urban plan including value engineering as an improvement tool, Blue-Green, and smart mobility; and project management concerned on Blue-Green strategies and sustainability and Blue-Green and smart infrastructure.
Generally, illustrating these theories and the tools to achieve them isn’t sufficient. Besides them, implementation of these theories to gain Blue-Green ubiquitous cities is required. In other words, how to utilize these theories in cities and make them practical are vital. Fundamentally, project management based on innovation, smartness, and sustainability is a tool to achieve i-comprehensive strategic urban plan. For instance, innovative and smartness in mobility such as nonpollution vehicles like hybrid and electronic cars or innovative risk management are proper examples of innovative and sustainable project management in order to create i-comprehensive strategic urban plan. In addition, innovative and sustainable value engineering needed knowledgeable and vocational social capitals, education, cultural and Blue-Green smart infrastructure are required to design proper urban plan introduced as i-comprehensive strategic urban plan in order to gain Blue-Green cities. Further, combination of reality and virtually as ubiquitous is required to be kept up growing urbanizations' demands and struggling with global challenges. In addition, i-sustainability plus as tools based on ubiquitous life and services and innovative solutions could be used to design cities aligned with sustainable development, environmentally friendly, sustainable water management and urbanizations' demands.
So, Blue-Green city based on smart solutions would improve safety, time, health, environment and nature, connectedness, jobs, cost of living, education, and situation for life. In addition, such urban areas could promote sustainable development, sustainability, livability and quality of life through struggling with global and environmental challenges. For instance, China is located as the first stage of emission of greenhouse gases. Therefore, utilizing Blue-Green and smart solutions are essential for China and high polluted counties to reduce their environmental impacts on global challenges. In addition, nonpolluted vehicles like bicycle, hybrid and electronic vehicles, improving public transportation and renewable energy could create Blue-Green mobility in order to make Blue-Green infrastructure. Blue-Green mobility is required to achieve sustainable environment through reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. Generally, mobility based on Blue-Green strategies is the best path to create neutral greenhouse gas areas. Because renewable energy and nonpolluted energy are solutions to reduce these gases and Blue-Green mobility are based on such solutions.
Fundamentally, Blue-Green
Generally, such urban areas could diminish global challenges such as climate change, emissions of greenhouse gases, low quality of livability, health diseases and other problems through creating urban settings aligned with environmentally friendly, sustainable water management and ecological maintenance.
6. Case Study
6.1 Denmark
Denmark is known as a green state. Generally, Denmark follows strategies to gain high sustainability and smartness in not only big cities like Copenhagen but also in smaller cities like Glad Saxe. In other words, all cities in Denmark design a proper urban plan in order to achieve sustainability, high quality of livability, and high quality of life. Fundamentally, strategies utilized by governments, planners, decisions-makers, and citizens make this country one of the most sustainable and greenest country of the world. In other words, proper strategies create smart and sustainable infrastructure including sustainability, high quality of livability, and high quality of life. Generally, Blue-Green and smart mobility have an important role in creating a sustainable country. The most important strategies utilized to achieve Blue-Green and smart infrastructure are:
bicycle as main transport vehicle,
public Transport,
utilizing Renewable and Clean Energy in Mobility Systems,
independent of fossil fuels,
high standards,
transportation for everyone,
Blue-Green Shipping,
design different types of technology through innovation such as environmental science, pharmaceuticals, biomedicine, food and agriculture,
high digitalization,
becoming neutral CO2 area in 2050,
agriculture relied on renewable energy such as wind, solar, and biomass energy,
utilizing renewable and clean energy as main resources in home, industry, agriculture; fundamentally, country based on clean energy, and
High environmental sciences aligned with environmentally friendly, water control, and heating system to minimize environmental impact,
sustainable, innovative, and smart solutions used by countries in order to be aligned with government policies toward creating sustainable country,
architecture and construction aligned with sustainability,
creating high livability and quality of life through policies concerned on citizens' life such as secure insurance, high quality of education, work, housing, etc.
high education and teach high cultural norms, and
high quality of life through supplying humans' needs.
Fundamentally, all strategies used by governments create high sustainability and quality of life in Denmark. In addition, policies utilized by companies make them aligned with sustainability. For instance, Maersk shipping countries is a Danish company aligned with environmentally sustainability and water management. Smart and innovative strategies, innovative risk management, and utilizing renewable energy and sustainable policies used by this company make it an important role in achieving not only Denmark sustainable but also dealing with global environmental challenges.
6.2 Finland
Finland is also one of the industrial countries that utilized strategies and policies to achieve sustainable urban areas aligned with green strategies, sustainable water management, and environmentally friendly and sustainable development. The main aim of Finland is to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable. In order to gain such goals, the most important strategies and polices used by governments, planners, decision-makers, and citizens are:
national strategies toward sustainable development,
high education,
education concerned on importance of sustainability especially environmental sustainability,
education of norms and altering them as a kind of culture,
conduct policy experiments,
making high livability and quality of life through high quality of education, services, life, housing, etc.
green economy,
utilizing sustainable water management and environmentally friendly strategies as keys toward sustainable cities,
invest in green economy,
strategies aligned with environmental sustainability like improving resources efficiency, renewable energy, and solar power,
utilizing strategies toward cleaner energy systems,
clean transportation based on clean, inclusive, and renewable energies such as electric cars, hybrid cars, bicycle, and public transport worked with clean energy,
policies to change transportation systems as a way to make public transport easier and safer,
industry based on clean and renewable energy such as biofuels, waste as source of energy, etc., and banning of the use of coal in power generation by 2030,
recycling as a solution toward sustainable choices,
utilizing innovative solutions and strategies by companies and businesses to achieve sustainability,
being independent of fossil fuels,
creating cities’ emission-free and carbon-neutral energy, and
creating cities toward sustainable development with high quality of life.
Generally, governments, NGOs, businesses, companies, and citizens work together to achieve sustainability and create urban areas with high quality of livability and life through supplying humans' needs in the best way and making sustainable living areas. In addition, besides of mentioned strategies; education of importance of sustainability, courses related to sustainability, smartness and innovation could be used as techniques to help strategies be proceeded. Fundamentally, Finland is known as one of the most sustainable countries, further it utilized strategies, policies and solutions to gain more sustainable areas based on green strategies and water control.
7. Discussion
Nowadays, the world confronts significant global challenges such as poverty, slum, economic problems, social instability, insecurity, health diseases, environmental challenges and climate change threaten preserving the planet and humans' life there. So, it is vital to deal with these challenges to not only maintain the world for future generation, but also to make better urban setting with high quality of livability and quality of life for present generation.
In this study, Smart Blue-Green city is introduced as a solution to struggle with global challenges especially environmental problems and climate change; in order to create neutral greenhouse gas areas with high livability and quality of life through developing sustainability. Fundamentally, smart Blue-Green urban areas are aligned with green strategies, sustainable water management, environmentally friendly, ecological sustainability and sustainable development.
To gain Smart Blue-Green cities; seven suggested pillars of sustainability by authors including economic, educational, technical, political, social, cultural and environmental sustainability, comprehensive strategic urban plan based on green strategies, sustainable and smart water management, ecological sustainability and high quality of livability, innovation, smartness, high technologies such as IT, IoT and IoE are required as tools.
Seven pillars of sustainability are needed to achieve sustainable development and livable urban areas. According to researches, high sustainability – cooperating of sustainability and ubiquitous concept – is the best key to develop sustainability nowadays. Basically, based on global challenges and rapid urbanization's demands, to achieve sustainability, sustainability through ubiquitous idea and innovation management named high sustainability by authors is required in recent decades. In other words, this kind of sustainability, is not only kept up with growing citizens “demands but also gain sustainable development and sustainability through reducing negative impacts of global and environmental challenges. A theory named i-Sustainability Plus is introduced by authors as a path to struggle with urbanization challenges and develop sustainability in this era confronted with significant challenges. In other words, in this era significant challenges needed to be solved through sustainability. Although sustainability is proper solution, it isn't” sufficient enough. Combination of sustainability, innovation, and ubiquitous is required as a way to achieve sustainability in urban settings.
In addition, comprehensive strategic urban plan is required to design sustainable and livable urban areas. Infrastructure, project management, and value engineering are components of comprehensive strategic urban plan. These dimensions should be concerned on Blue-Green strategies, sustainability, and smartness. Generally, Blue-Green strategies concerned on environmentally friendly, sustainable water management, sustainability, and green policies make infrastructure of cities sustainable. Further, sustainable infrastructure not only gains sustainable development but also improves livability and quality of life. Fundamentally, project management is utilized by urban planners and decision-makers as a tool to help them develop sustainable and smart infrastructure. For instance, risk management is an important tool in project management as a path to identify and mitigate risks in order to improve results through reducing risks. Risk management has an important role in creating sustainable and smart mobility. Public transport concerned on clean and renewable energy is about innovative risk management utilized in developed counties to reduce environmental risks, standards risks, and sustainability risks. In addition, high standards for transportation of dangerous goods is the other example of risk management to improve sustainable infrastructure. Therefore, project management's tools like risk management is needed to achieve proper infrastructure. Further, value engineering is a technique to increase infrastructure challenges. Fundamentally, these three dimensions could achieve comprehensive strategic urban plan aligned with sustainable development, sustainability, and high livability. A model named i-comprehensive strategic urban plan is introduced as an urban plan concerned on Blue-Green and sustainable strategic urban plan.
To conclude, comprehensive strategic urban plan and high sustainability are realized as tools to design modern and smart Blue-Green cities. Furthermore, innovation, high technologies like digitalization and smartness, IoE, IT, and IoT, could be techniques to develop high sustainability and Blue-Green comprehensive strategic urban plan.
8. Challenges and Solutions
Nowadays, the most important challenge that humanities confront with is sustainability. Sustainability directly and indirectly influences other global challenges. Generally, all global challenges threaten the planet and humans' life. So, it is vital to struggle with them.
Fig. 6.6 shows the most important global challenges and suggested solutions related to this research.
9. Conclusion
Nowadays, the world confronts a lot of global challenges such as economic problems, poverty, environmental challenges, slum, and climate change, social instability, health diseases, and unsafety. It is concluded that:
These challenges threaten humans' life and the maintenance of the world. So, it is vital to struggle with these problems.
Among all these challenges, environmental problems and climate shifting are the ones that directly and indirectly influence other challenges.
Humans' activities and emission of greenhouse gases are the main reasons for environmental challenges. Therefore, neutral greenhouse gas areas are needed. Independency of fossil fuels, usage of renewable energies, improving public transportation, nonpolluted vehicles including hybrid, electronic vehicles, and bicycle, industry based on clean energies, and clean energies as main energy resources are the best solutions toward such areas.
Fundamentally, Blue-Green areas not only develop environmental sustainability but also create Blue-Green infrastructure made sustainable development, sustainable urban areas with high livability and quality of life.
The IoT and its new applications have updated and enabled the ways of becoming a smart city on a global scale. This modern technology equips the city with the ability to remotely monitor, control, and manage urban facilities and devices as well as generate new insights and actionable information from quantitative streams of real-time data.
Sustainability is one of the key parts of smart cities, and achieving it requires investing in efficient and environmentally friendly management. The rapid growth of urban clusters in recent decades has brought a sharp increase in the demand for energy resources, which is sometimes so high that it exceeds the available local resources. A long-term solution to meet the growing energy demand is the “smart energy chain”, which relies entirely on renewable energy sources such as solar and wind energy. Through a smart digital-based system, this system provides the possibility of transferring clean and stable decentralized energy to any part of the urban area.
Mobility is the heartbeat of a city, that's why smart mobility and transportation networks are prioritized in many smart city plans. Urban areas such as multimodal transportation, smart parking, and smart traffic lights are often included in this concept. This approach is based on rethinking the transport infrastructure used in everyday life, not only in terms of traditional cars, electric vehicles, and public transport but also in terms of completely new and innovative forms of transport such as on-demand, ride-sharing services and car-sharing programs. Considering such considerations can improve the accessibility and livability of a city.
And finally, as we said above; One of the main features of the twenty-first century is urbanization and population growth; major social, economic, and environmental problems; and the expansion of information and communication technology in the world. The difference between economic growth and environmental protection, the confrontation between the ultramodern citizen and the modern industrial city, and the lack of response to the needs of the citizens have led to the idea of a sustainable smart city. This city seeks to solve the problems that arise in the new century with the help of information and communication technology such as the internet. The criticality of social, economic, and especially environmental problems in today's cities shows the importance of this issue. A sustainable smart city is formed based on the principle of equality and social inclusiveness, increasing the quality of life of citizens, creating productivity, creating flexible infrastructures, using information and communication technology, and preserving the environment. In a sustainable smart city, renewable energy, smart networks, smart parking, and smart transportation should be used and the social, economic, and environmental level of the city should be improved in an integrated manner.
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- Prelims
- Part 1 Smart Cities and Technologies
- Post-Pandemic Urban Planning and Use of Information Technologies in Smart Cities
- Smart Destinations and Eco-friendly Practices
- An Alternative Model of Living: Smart Eco-cities
- Urban Transport Solutions for a Sustainable and Smart Mobility Future: Macro-Environmental Analysis
- Evaluation of Smart City Projects in Eco-Gastronomy Dimension: The Example of Turkey
- Blue-Green Smart U-Cities via Clean Technologies: Toward High Sustainable and Low Greenhouse Gas Emissions Urban Areas
- DRMM and Comprehensive Global Blue-Green Clean Sustainable Urban Mobility Risk Mitigation Plan for Mapping Future Smart Cities Through the 5th Wave Theory
- Part 2 Digitalization and Sustainability
- Eco-City Tourism in Smart Cities for Sustainability
- Smart Tourism Destinations and Digitalization of Cultural Heritage for Sustainability
- Recent Developments in the Evaluation of Renewable Energy Resources in Tourism Businesses: A Bibliometric Analysis
- Urban 6.0 and Utopia Concepts via Sustainable, Clean, Inclusive, Innovative, and U-Mobility Through the Theory of Comprehensive Everything
- Mapping Future Urban Plan – Toward Blue-Green Smart City and Mobility Through the 5th Wave, i-Sustainability Plus, and DCT Theories (Case Study: Songdo and Seoul in South Korea)
- Index