Background

A city is the product of historical forces that shape its developmental trajectory. Among these forces are colonialism, industrialization, technology, and information. Today, the concept of the Smart City has emerged as one response to the various challenges of twenty-first-century urbanization. This concept converges with other ideas that seek to address the complexities of everyday life in a post-industrial world characterized by informational capitalism—such as the sustainable city, creative city, green city, and livable city. Among these various frameworks, the Smart City has become the discourse that receives the greatest attention from municipal governments and urban planners worldwide.

Fundamentally, a city is a reflection of its own political economy and history. It is the result of a collective imagination that merges use value and exchange value, elite political interests and poverty, fixed and circulating capital, multimodal transportation systems, and land-use arrangements that reflect urban political dynamics, investment strategies, population density, social class, historical trajectories, and societal aspirations. There is no single urban model that can be universally applied—no one-size-fits-all solution. Every city in the world exhibits highly diverse characteristics. Within the framework of capitalist urbanization, most cities grow by “consuming themselves”—demolishing the old to construct the new—in order to reduce crime, pollution, and waste, while enhancing safety and comfort to accelerate commodity circulation and stimulate economic growth.

Each historical period consistently demonstrates progress in three principal domains: first, capital accumulation; second, the evolution of ideologies that influence development directions; and third, technological advancement. The smart city paradigm belongs to this third domain. It is grounded in information technology and informational capital as the driving engines of progress. However, behind this commitment lies a fundamental concern: human interests are often marginalized by technological efficiency, thereby blurring the boundary between the human and the technical. The central challenge, therefore, is how to balance technological utilization with democratic politics and to ensure that citizens’ voices remain at the core of smart city development.

International Conference on Smart City Innovation (ICSCI)

• Social Innovation and Data-Driven Policy for Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• Urban Transformation toward Smart, Safe, and Inclusive Cities
• Strengthening Urban Resilience through Smart and Sustainable Cities
• Smart Governance and Technology in Planning Sustainable Urban Form

The primary focus of this conference lies in social, governance, and technological perspectives, encompassing disaster risk management, public policy innovation, urban data analytics, and the application of community-based and technology-driven strategies to strengthen urban resilience. Accordingly, the conference targets academics, researchers, practitioners, and policymakers interested in advancing both conceptual and practical approaches to resilient, inclusive, and technologically progressive urban development oriented toward sustainability. Participants are encouraged to submit original research papers that address literature reviews, theoretical advancements, empirical studies, and practical implementations related to smart and sustainable urban development.