  Citation: Dashkevych, O.; Portnov, B.A. Criteria for Smart City Identification: A Systematic Literature Review. Sustainability 2022, 14, 4448. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su14084448 Academic Editors: Orlando Troisi, Anna Visvizi, Wadee Alhalabi, Shahira Assem Abdel Razek and Paolo Gerli Received: 20 March 2022 Accepted: 5 April 2022 Published: 8 April 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). sustainability Review Criteria for Smart City Identification: A Systematic Literature Review Oleg Dashkevych and Boris A. Portnov * Department of Natural Resources and Environment Management, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Haifa, 199 Aba Khoushy Ave., Mt. Carmel, Haifa 3498838, Israel; daskevycholeg@gmail.com * Correspondence: portnov@research.haifa.ac.il Abstract: The transition towards greater smartness is an emerging trend in the development of modern cities. This transition manifests itself in the widespread adoption of information and com- munication technologies (ICTs), cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT), and other technological tools aimed at improving the level of city smartness. Although numerous studies have focused on the smart city (SC) phenomenon, knowledge about empirical criteria that can be used to define a city as “smart” and to measure the degree of a city’s “smartness” remains limited. The present study aims to bridge this knowledge gap by a systematic literature review of recent studies, in which various empirical criteria are used for SC identification. The study helps to identify a total of 48 SC identification metrics, which are further split into three main categories—smart digital technology, living conditions, and environmental (ecological) sustainability. Among these groups of criteria, the “smart digital technology” group of metrics appears to be the most popular, while criteria pertinent to “ecological sustainability” are applied considerably less often. As the study also reveals, only about half of the criteria used by empirical studies for SC identification actually relate to urban residents’ needs, with the rest being general technological measures. Therefore, for a balanced SC assessment, we suggest a ranking system based on the nine most important metrics, which equally represent all the main aspects of the SC phenomenon while placing an emphasis on the improvement of the quality of life of local residents. The proposed system is applied to several major cities across the globe to demonstrate its use and usefulness. Keywords: smart city; criteria; systematic literature survey 1. Introduction In 2018, there were some 7.6 billion people in the world, of which 4.2 billion (or ~55%) lived in urban areas. By 2050, the global population is projected to increase to around 9.8 billion, of which some 6.7 billion will be living in cities [1]. According to the UN estimates [2], by 2030, the number of megacities with more than 10 million residents is expected to exceed 40. It is also expected that such megacities will consume 81% of the world’s resources, while by 2050, energy demand might rise to about 620 exajoules (EJ) [3]. Although the rate of urbanization in Europe has been slowing in recent years, ~72% of the continent’s population currently lives in urban areas, and in some countries, such as the Netherlands, the rate of urbanization already exceeds 90% [4]. As urbanization progresses, many cities accumulate problems, such as environmental degradation [5,6], deteriorating infrastructure [7], poverty [8], and societal inequality [6,8]. Solving these problems directly affects the level of well-being of citizens, the environmental situation, and the sustainable development of the city as a whole. According to the UN, cities play a key role in promoting sustainable development, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) explicitly refer to Sustainable Cities and Communities as the 11th SDG, while the UN Agenda 2030 emphasizes an objective Sustainability 2022, 14, 4448. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14084448 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability