Abstract
Planning a smart city is an ambition that requires more than just a vision to change. Strategizing and developing action plans are the first building blocks for such a transformation. Nevertheless, ensuring effective outcomes and sustainability of the transformation calls for adopting an approach that employs smart diagnosis to support decision making. In addition, promoting social and environmental justice as part of the transformation process cannot be achieved without mainstreaming gender sensitivity via effective public participation instruments. According to Ekman (2018), there is a tendency in the milieu of smart cities for the reduction of complexity by placing primacy in planning on information technology, economic profit and top-down political government. He argues that an obvious example of this reduction is the ‘split between the comprehensive, strategically top-down national program for more than a dozen U-cities in South Korea (...) and the main concerns in the most recent anothology as citizen’s right to the digital city (Foth et. Al 2016), which signals the need to emphasize participatory inclusive governance’. Therefore, Ekman (2018) suggests that smart city planning cannot assume a blueprint as a ground for city (trans)formation. Meanwhile, Greco and Crest (2015) call for shifting the focus of the discussion from “how cities can be smarter” to “how intelligent technologies can lead us to rethink the patterns of urban development by making them fair and inclusive, as well as efficient and sustainable”. To this end, this case study report analyses how Tepebaşı Municipality, located in the city of Eskişehir, has demonstrated with its smart urban regeneration project that spanned the period of 66 months how to couple technological advancements with good urban governance to achieve smartness as well as social and environmental justice i.e. a dual approach that involves gender mainstreaming by increasing citizen’s participation in decision making. The case study report adopts an explanatory deductive approach to verify the hypothesis about the positive impacts of smart city planning in overcoming challenges to sustainable development. The explanatory approach is also essential to understanding how the design interventions contribute to achieving social and environmental justice. The adopted integrated approach that is complemented by ICT and smart strategies has catapulted Tepebaşı municipality to the forefront as a model for sustainable smart city. It is the first municipality in Turkey to meet its specific targets for the 17 SDGs of the 2030 agenda. It is also the first municipality in Turkey to deliver its sustainable energy action plan (SEAP) interim report that demonstrated the level of excellency in seven areas. ICT and smart strategies were deployed in several action fields, which are low energy districts, sustainable mobility and integrated infrastructure, and society. The establishment of the ‘Life village’ was a fruit of articulate integration of the citizens’ needs in the planning of the city. The ‘Life Village’ hosts 12 buildings that provide different social services including Alzheimer Care Centers, Disabled Assembly Atelier for mentally-disabled citizens, Physiotherapy and Rehabilitation Center, Nursing Homes for visually impaired citizens, Art Residence, Primary School, Day Care Center, Health Care Center, Nursing Homes for healthy senior citizens, and Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Association Center. The entire village is served with smart grid connectivity, district energy-efficient retrofitting, and distributed renewable energy generation. This model for transformation is replicable since it emphasizes monitoring and evaluating the gradual transformation the city undergoes thus drawing empirical evidence required in future replication processes. To replicate the smart city solutions implemented in Tepebaşı, the Lighthouse projects cooperation manifesto was signed in 2017 which utilises this urban regeneration model that is based on the joint transformation of the districts, urban mobility and infrastructure.
