www.sciencetarget.com International Journal of Environment and Sustainability [IJES] ISSN 1927-9566 Vol. 5 No. 3, pp. 1-15 (2016) Smart Cities and Sustainability: A Set of Vertical Solutions for Managing Resources Mohamed Abdel-All Ibrahim and Doaa Medhat Morsy * Architectural Department, Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University, Egypt Abstract. The Smart City vision can be viewed as a “system of systems”, where all systems within it are interconnected, in constant communication with each other in real time, exchanging information, and making smart decisions all in a sustainable and highly efficient model. Two decades ago, the Smart City concept was born to address emerging city sustainability issues and was mainly focused on energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions reduction. More recently the term was attached to the role of ICT infrastructure. This paper aims to clarify interrelations between the Smart City concept and fostering the sustainable development of cities. The paper is based on an analytical study of the main characteristics and systems of a Smart City, emphasizing the significant role of Future Internet in the development of Smart Cities. The first section is a short introduction to challenges and drivers for a Smart City. Sections two and three discuss the technological context of Future Internet and the expected impact of Internet-of-Things, sensors, tags, and cloud computing on Smart Cities. The next two sections analyze the main Smart City Systems and approaches for managing them. Moreover, sections six and seven analyze two of the top performing Smart Cities in Europe and also address the UAE 2021 Vision in order to assert the environmental impacts that occur as a result of transforming into a Smart City. This paper concludes with a common framework for transforming cities into smart ones, which depends on the nature, circumstances, and resources of each city. *Correspondence: Keywords. Smart Systems, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Data Centers, Future Internet, Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, New Urban User Experiences, Amsterdam, Barcelona do3a2_med7at@hotmail.com 1. Introduction If present trends continue, there will be more than 9 billion humans in the world in 2050, and about 70 % of them will live in urban areas. Due to the rapid urbanization, there are over- whelming challenges for cities’ authorities to meet, like complex service delivery challenges and increased demand on ageing city infrastruc- ture (Figure 1). Moreover, we have experienced multiple revolutions in technologies in the fields of ICT, renewable energies, electric vehicles, etc. (Nicholson, 2010). There will be an urgent need for smarter, more sustainable cities to make life bearable for so many people. The Smart City term is used in a holistic way to describe various aspects ranging from Smart City as an IT-district to a smart city regarding education or smartness of its inhabitants. The Smart City notion has also been approached as part of the Digital City broader term, where a generic multi-tier common architecture for digital cities was introduced and assigned smart city to the “Service Layer”. The generic multi-tier architecture contains the following layers: (Anthopoulos and Vakali, 2012) (Figure 2) - User layer: Concerns both local stakeholders who supervise the city and offer e-services and end-users who consume services - Service layer: Incorporates all e-services offered