Abstract
• A brief description of the "problem": While research on Smart Sustainable Cities (SSC) have fueled a rapidly expanding scholarly work in recent years, the key trends and future research avenues are still ambiguous. • Background – our review aims to: (1) identify the most influential contributions, (2) mapping the research on smart sustainable cities, (3) visualizing the trends in this field of research through network analysis, (4) highlighting areas for future research. • Reference to two or more scholarly or official works: • de Jong, M., Joss, S., Schraven, D., Zhan, C., & Weijnen, M. (2015). Sustainable–smart–resilient–low carbon–eco–knowledge cities; making sense of a multitude of concepts promoting sustainable urbanization. Journal of Cleaner Production, 109, 25-38. • Bibri, S. E., & Krogstie, J. (2017). On the social shaping dimensions of smart sustainable cities: A study in science, technology, and society. Sustainable Cities and Society, 29, 219-246. • A brief indication of the methods used: This study examines the content of SSC by applying network and bibliometric analyses. Based on data from 312 articles, we analyze the scholarly work to identify and map SSC as an emerging area of research. • An outline of the principal results, outcomes, findings and lessons: Our analysis suggests that SSC is grounded in five distinct clusters, namely implementation, technology, performance, policy, and value. The results of this study help academics and practitioners to navigate the literature on SSC, provide a map of existing scholarly work, and recommend promising avenues for future research. Further, this review provides a holistic examination on SSC issues and challenges and how they are being addressed by identifying, diagnosing, and tackling these challenges. • Finally, a note about the extent to which the work is (or is not) generally applicable: Our article reviews existing literature on what is known on SSC and how we can advance this area of research.
