Abstract

Cities struggle to enhance their sustainability by fostering their smartness, i.e. their ability to use advanced technologies and resources in an intelligent and integrated way to achieve a socially and environmentally viable economic growth. The transition towards urban ecosystems has been proposed as a practical solution to merge smartness and sustainability in the smart city discourse. However, little is known about the recipe for implementing and organizing a sustainable smart urban ecosystem. The bibliometric analysis and interpretive narrative review presented in this article found some contrasting perspectives on the approaches that should be embraced to run a viable smart urban ecosystem, shedding light into the manifold attributes of sustainable urban smartness. The research findings suggest that the viability of smart urban ecosystems relies on the ability of focal actors to implement a techno-bureaucratic governance model which relies on an integrated policy framework that accounts for the tripartite social, economic, and environmental challenges faced by cities. Citizen-centredness and greenness are the core values that embed urban smartness. Such values are useless if not backed by community engagement. Further developments should be targeted to unravel the role of datification and computerization in underpinning the collective intelligence of smart cities for the purpose of urban sustainability.