TITLE:
Transformation Model towards Sustainable Smart Cities: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia as a Case Study
AUTHORS:
Ali Mohammed Ajlan, Abdullah Mohammed Al Abed
KEYWORDS:
Sustainable Smart City, Transformation Model, Riyadh
JOURNAL NAME:
Current Urban Studies,
Vol.11 No.1,
March
29,
2023
ABSTRACT: The purpose of this research was to create a model that contributes to
the transformation of Riyadh into a sustainable smart city, as well as to
assess the extent to which Riyadh meets the requirements of smart cities in
light of the proposed model. To achieve the study’s objectives, the descriptive
survey method was used, with a questionnaire that included (30) items to
collect appropriate data from the study sample, which consisted of (400)
specialists in the field of smart sustainable cities. The study’s findings
revealed that the model for transforming
Riyadh into a smart sustainable city is built on a number of components,
including sustainable urbanization patterns, urban systems and domains, data
sources and storage services, cloud computing, big data applications and
services, and urban communities and their activities. The study’s findings also
revealed that the developed model’s contribution to the transformation of
Riyadh into a smart sustainable city was significant, as the arithmetic mean of
the respondents’ responses to the components of the study model as a whole was
high (3.85). Based on these findings, the study recommended that the city of
Riyadh review the urban patterns of modern residential neighborhoods and increase
their environmental efficiency, as well as expand the establishment of urban
observatories that deal with urban and environmental affairs and emphasize
their role in the interim review of residential
neighborhoods, which supports the city’s urbanization path. The study
also recommended that the city of Riyadh develop and build massive data centers
distributed across several regions, as well as work to enable the use of
renewable energy production sources, in addition to consolidating Riyadh’s role as a regional center for cloud computing and an
attractive technology investment based on innovation in the region.