Smart and Sustainable Cities in the MENA Countries: Combining Sustainable Growth and Climate Adaption?

Published: 2021
World Scientific Series on Environmental, Energy and Climate Economics: Volume 1, Climate and Development, pp. 345-365
ISBN/ISSN: 978-981-124-056-0 (e-book)

Abstract

Cities and urban areas will play an increasing role in mitigating and adapting to global warming. Combining this role with the overall concept of smart city development can lead to solutions that deliver on economic growth and climate protection at the same time. Our contribution aims to analyze the combination of economic, technological, and climate action in smart city projects in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. We focus on five MENA cities and juxtapose these to a comparison group of European cities with the aim to put our assessment results into an international perspective. We apply a staged methodology of analyzing external factors based on the Global Human Settlement (GHS) dataset and on an internal assessment by means of surveys in which representatives of cities responsible for smart city activities were interviewed.