Uncovering obstacles and limitations of smartness: a cross-case analysis of smart cities and smart real estate

Abstract

Smart cities and smart real estate are increasingly used to enhance urban efficiency, sustainability, and quality of life. Nevertheless, their implementation is hindered by interconnected challenges across concepts, technology, governance, economics, society, ethics, and the environment. Thus, this paper examines how and why interconnected limitations constrain the smartness of smart city and smart real estate initiatives and identifies the governance and implementation responses revealed by cross-case comparison. The analysis of secondary academic sources, policy papers, standards, and industry reports compares Toronto, Songdo, NEOM, and Barcelona. The results identify six categories of limitations: conceptual and strategic; technological and infrastructural; governance and institutional; economic and financial; social and ethical; and environmental. The analysis shows that the challenges facing these initiatives go beyond technology alone and include ambiguous definitions of smartness, poor governance, limited public involvement, privacy and surveillance risks, high implementation and maintenance costs, interoperability issues, and unverified assumptions that technological advancement will deliver sustainability. The comparison of cases highlights that the success of these initiatives depends on effective governance, responsible data management, public trust, financial feasibility, institutional coordination, and a life cycle approach. The study concludes that smartness should be understood as an integrated institutional, economic, social, technological, and environmental capacity rather than as the mere adoption of digital technologies.