Classification of Smart City Research - a Descriptive Literature Review and Future Research Agenda

Smart City (SC) has been a popular area of research and practice during the last decade. An in-depth examination of the existing literature reviews on SCs divulges the scarcity of studies classifying the literature into multiple themes and identifying the popular and less popular themes based on the number of peer reviewed research papers under respective theme. Hence, in this study, a descriptive literature review of 86 peer-reviewed papers on SCs has been conducted to bridge this gap. The findings demonstrate that themes such as SC services design and management, innovation and technology, and citizens’ engagement in design and development of SCs have been extensively studied, whereas, themes such as the social impact, governance and policy, and performance indicators and standards have received moderate attention. However, there are also less popular themes such as the implementation barriers and SC strategy. Further, this study provides a reference source to future researchers. It also delivers valuable information to the policymakers and government bodies, which are actively, involved in the SC projects.