Human Factors in Architecture, Sustainable Urban Planning and Infrastructure, Vol. 58, 2022, 1–7
doi: 10.54941/xxxxxx
Knowledge City vs Smart City.
Approaches and Development Areas
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Sonia Cueva-Ortiz
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CEAAD-EUT Center of Studies in Architecture, Art and Design-Territorial Urban
Studies, Universidad Tecnológica Indoamérica, Quito, Ecuador
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CITEHS Research Center for the Territory and Sustainable Habitat, Universidad
Tecnológica Indoamérica, Quito, Ecuador
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ABSTRACT 8
Knowledge Cities (KC) and Smart Cities (SC) have made significant investments with
influence throughout the world in only four decades. This has occurred although these
concepts are still being developed, being urgent to advance in their understanding.
This article focuses on comparing these types of cities, seeking to understand their
approaches, the fields of study in which they are developed and the lines of action in
which they are projected. A mixed methodology is applied, qualitative to deepen the
concepts and quantitative through the VOS viewer software, which is used to process
more than two thousand articles indexed in Scopus. We found that the KC is formed
around the notion of change of the productive matrix and develops issues related to
its urban spatial and social conformation. While the SC concept is developed in the
technological sciences, relating more to the use of the internet of things (IoT), big
data, cloud computing, and its application in the city.
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Keywords: Innovative milieu, Knowledge-based urban development, Knowledge city, Smart
city, Urban theory
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INTRODUCTION AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 23
From the study of towns such as Palo Alto or Cambridge, which had rapid 24
economic growth due to a large flow of innovations related to ICTs, the 25
notion of innovative environment emerged in 1985 (Castells & Hall, 2001) 26
and later the notion of city of information linked to the so-called information 27
age (United Nations & ITU, 2003), later known as the city of knowledge 28
(Carrillo, 2015). 29
SCs have several definitions that describe what a smart city should be. Thus 30
in Caragliu et al. they say “We believe a city to be smart when investments 31
in human and social capital and traditional (transport) and modern (ICT) 32
communication infrastructure fuel sustainable economic growth and a high 33
quality of life…” (2009, p. 50). On the other hand, the study by Camero 34
& Alba (2019) describes the benefit of the use of technology, making the 35
components of the traditional city more efficient, which is in line with the 36
description of Hall et al. (2000), while other authors relate the concept of SC 37
with that of sustainability (Albino et al., 2015). 38
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