DEVELOPMENT OF EVALUATION INDICATORSFOR SMART SHARING CITY
Wheeyoun CHEONG1, Naohiro KITANO2 and Akinori MORIMOTO3
1(1-8-12, Nishiwaseda, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-0051, Japan)

E-mail: wheeyoun.cheong@toki.waseda.jp
2Member of SGB, Professor, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University(3-4-1, Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan)
E-mail: kitano.naohiro@aoni.waseda.jp
3 Professor, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Waseda University(3-4-1, Okubo, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan)
E-mail: akinori@waseda.jp

The idea of smart sharing city recently emerged in the field of urban planning as a result of continuous
development of ICTs, expansion of sharing economy and necessity of sustainable development. To help
cities to monitor their performance and to set plans to transform towards the smart sharing city, development of the new indicator framework is necessary. This paper focuses on developing an indicator framework for smart sharing city, by clarifying characteristics of the existing indicator frameworks for sustainable cities and reviewing ongoing sharing activity involved policies.
Key Words : smart sharing city, sustainable development, sharing economy, indicator frameworks

Smart sharing city, a new urban design concept
suggested by Japan Society of Civil Engineers Smart
Sharing City Subcommittee, integrates the idea of thesmart sustainable city and the sharing city. Smartsharing city is defined as a city which aims to achievesustainable development by sharing underused assets
with the help of ICT infrastructure, thus, maximizing
benefits of the public and individuals at the sametime4).
In urban planning, indicators are often used as aquantitative, qualitative or descriptive measure to assess the performance of the city or to set the target orgoal which the city aims to achieve. However, smart
sharing city has no tools developed to monitor its performance as it is a recently proposed urban designconcept. Therefore, in this study, an indicator framework for the smart sharing city is developed, which
can be used as a tool to set the measurable targets andto monitor the performance of the city as the smart
sharing city.

1. INTRODUCTION(1) Background
According to the United Nations report on urbanization, urban population is increasing every year andby 2030, it is estimated that over 60 percent of theworld population will reside in urban areas1). Rapid
urbanization and concentration of the population tourban areas brought several urban sustainability challenges, such as local traffic problems, growth in general wastes, high and inefficient consumption of energy and social exclusion.
As a solution to overcome urban sustainability
problems, several urban design concepts have been
actively discussed. One of the urban design concepts
is the smart sustainable city, which highlights the useof information and communication technologies(ICTs) to increase efficiency of urban operations andquality of life, according to International Telecommunication Union (ITU)2).
Another concept is the sharing city. Although thedefinition of sharing city is not yet clearly established, Seoul, which proclaimed Sharing City Seoul
Project from 2012, is explaining the sharing city as“a city where communication and cooperation are
well established between individual citizens, public
societies and enterprises and where sharing activities
are actively performed3)”.

(2) Research Objectives
Through the evaluation on existing indicator
frameworks for sustainable cities and review on sharing economy policies and projects, this study aims todevelop an indicator framework which can evaluate
the city’s progress of transformation towards thesmart sharing city. Using the developed indicator
1

framework, progress of Seoul and Kitakyushu towards the smart sharing city and urban sustainability
will be evaluated.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW(1) Preceding Studiesa) Research on smart sharing city
Komeiji4) organized existing models of urban planning for sustainable development, suggested thesmart sharing city as a new model and defined it as acity which effectively and efficiently utilizes sharing
activity, and which pursues the concept of compact
city and smart city. He also emphasized that in smart
sharing city, sharing activity must provide benefits toboth social and personal at the same time. In anotherstudy, Komeiji5) introduced benefits followed bysharing mobilities and sharing urban spaces on individuals and society.
b) Research on sharing economy and sharing city
Hamarai6), in his study on sharing economy andcollaborative consumption, defined sharing economy
as an activity of sharing the access to resources andservices between people within the community.
Chang7) defined the sharing city as a city which economic activities are driven by sharing economy andsharing spaces are provided enough for citizens touse. He also derived an index to measure sharing citylevel of three major cities in Korea. Chasin8) analyzed
522 sharing economy enterprises all over the world.
Then he categorized the type of resources shared bypeer-to-peer sharing activity and sorted out resource
types based on their popularity.
c) Research on comparative analysis of city-scale
indicator frameworks
Neirotti9) provided an overview of domains andsub-domains of smart city highlighted in several urban development studies. Ahvenniemi10) divided theindicators from smart city and sustainable city assessment frameworks refer to the 10 sector categories, tosee the difference between the smart city frameworks
and urban sustainability frameworks. Huovila11) developed a taxonomy for smart sustainable city frameworks and used it to analyze the difference in the balance of indicators in indicator standards based on
their urban focus and evaluation purposes.

Fig.1 Flow of researchAlso, the smart sharing city does not have an assessment tool to evaluate the performance. Indicator
framework developed for smart sharing city would benecessary to monitor the performance and development progress of the city.
(3) Research framework
The research is conducted as shown in Fig.1.
First, after definitions of smart sharing city andsharing economy are clarified through the review ofexisting studies, characteristics of existing indicator
frameworks for sustainable cities are evaluatedthrough comparative analysis. Then, based on the analyzed results, indicator framework for smart sharing
city is developed.

3.

COMPARATIVEANALYSIS
INDICATOR FRAMEWORKOF(1) Selection of frameworks for analysis
This study evaluates eight sets of existing indicator
frameworks, which are listed in Table 1, to clarify
the characteristics of indicator frameworks designed
Table 1 Selected eight indicator frameworks for analysis(2) Novelty in this research
There are various existing indicator frameworks
designed to evaluate the performance of sustainable
city smart sustainable city and several comparative
analyses between these indicator frameworks havebeen done. However, these studies have barely focused on the indicators measuring sharing activity or
sharing economy.
2each indicator’s relevance to city sectors and urban
focuses. Thus, to what extent do indicators associatedwith each of city sector and urban focus can be clarified.
(3) Characteristic of indicator frameworks
Based on the result of score distribution by city
sector category, Fig.3 is drawn. It shows the proportion of indicators relevant to each of city sector. According to Fig.3, it is found that majority of indicator
frameworks except ISO 37122, included “Health and
Safety” and “Economy and Innovation” as top two
sectors which gained the highest points (average20%). On the other hand, “Energy” (average 5%),“Transportation” (average 6%) and “Built Environment” (average 6%) are sectors which gained thelowest points.
Fig.4 is drawn based on the score distribution result by urban focus category, showing proportion ofindicators associated with each of urban focus. It isobserved that majority of indicators in every framework are directly associated with sustainability (average 89%), with no connections to or integration
with smart technology or sharing economy. Overall,
only few numbers of urban sustainability indicators
are reflecting smart technology (average 8%) or sharing economy (average 3%).

for sustainable cities. Among large variety of indicator frameworks, eight sets of indicator framework are
selected, based on the four criteria designed for thisresearch.
The frameworks are chosen by using four criteria:
1) the target area to be evaluated by the framework
must be a city scale; 2) the framework must be published by the major international standardization organizations or developed by local government for reliability; 3) the framework must have enough description or measurement method of the indicator; 4)
the framework must include indicators that measureurban sustainability.
(2) Evaluation of indicator frameworks throughcategorization
As a result, in total of 657 indicators from 8 different sets of indicator frameworks are analyzed. Indicators are categorized by city sectors and urban focuses according to the structure as in Fig.2.
City sector includes 10 categories which are: Natural environment; Built environment; Water andwaste management; Transportation; Energy; Economy and innovation; Education and culture; Healthand safety; Governance and public engagement; andICT. City sector represents the urban living sector
where city’s project can be intervened and its implication on urban sustainability improvement can bereflected.
Urban focus includes 3 categories which are: Sustainability, Smart and Sharing. As the main purposeof adopting smart technology and sharing economy
in the city is to achieve urban sustainability, Sustainability is considered as a concept which includes
Smart and Sharing category. Urban focus represents
the strategy which city adopts to achieve urban sustainability by means of smart technology such as ICTor sharing economy. Urban focus is further divided
into Society, Environment and Economy. It is to identify the indicators relevance to either social, environmental or economic sustainability.
For evaluation, scores are distributed based on

Fig.3 Proportion of indicators by city sector

Fig.2 Categorization structure for comparative analysis of indicators

Fig.4 Proportion of indicators by urban focus
3

Although Kitakyushu does not have a specific urban development strategy which is entirely devoted
to the sharing economy or smart city, the city is operating several projects which integrates sharing
economy. Additionally, its remarkable performance
towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) and acknowledgment as SDGs Future City
by the Japanese government and SDGs Pilot Model
City by OECD show Kitakyushu’s possibility totransform towards smart sharing city.
(2) Seoul’s strategy on urban sustainability
Seoul has been recognizing the necessity of sustainable urban development. The city’s commitment
to sustainability is evident in the Smart Seoul 2015
project and Sharing City, Seoul project.
Through the Smart Seoul 2015 project, Seoul attempted to integrate smart technologies into the city.
One of the main achievements of the project wasbuilding up smart infrastructure by expanding areas
with free public Wi-Fi connection accessible
throughout the city, providing an environment wheresharing activity can spread.
Sharing City, Seoul project was first announced in2012, aiming to create new jobs, to solve environmental issues and to recover trust-based reciprocity
between people by incorporating the concept of sharing economy into the city’s urban policy. As a part ofthe strategy, the city introduced new ways to shareresources between people, including car sharing,
public bike sharing and house sharing.
Three policies of Seoul listed on Table 2, which
are related to sharing activity and imposed in city sector of transportation and built environment are reviewed.

Fig.5 Proportion of indicators by focus area

Fig.5 shows the proportion of indicators associatedwith economic, environmental and social sustainability.
From the result, it is confirmed that 7 out of 8 indicators
included indicators which are relevant to social sustainability the most (average 50%). Indicators related toeconomic and environmental sustainability are relatively evenly distributed, by average 22% and 28%, respectively.
To summarize, the result of comparative analysis
highlights that for some of city sectors, such as “Transportation” and “Built Environment”, their implication
on improved urban sustainability resulted by city’s project is underrepresented.
The result of comparative analysis also showed thatanalyzed frameworks significantly lack indicators
which represent implication of smart technology or
sharing economy, implying that current indicator
frameworks to measure urban sustainability are not incorporating smart technology and sharing economy asmeans to achieve sustainability.

Table 2 Summary of Sharing Policies in Seoul

4.

SEOUL
AND
KITAKYUSHU’SSTRATEGYON
URBAN
SUSTAINABILITY(1) Selection of case study area
Seoul, Korea and Kitakyushu, Japan are selected
as case study areas. Their government-driven and private organization driven city projects are reviewed
and indicator framework is developed based on thereview. Consequently, Seoul and Kitakyushu’s progress on smart sharing involved programs is evaluated.
Seoul is one of the leading global cities with a specific strategy devoted to the sharing economy12). Its
leading effort to realize sustainable city through urban development which incorporates strategies for
smart city and sharing city corroborates Seoul’s preparedness to work towards the smart sharing city andachieve urban sustainability.
4

“Nanum Car” is a shared car program in Seoul
which began from 2013 in order to reduce heavy traffic demand and to secure a pleasant public urban
space. “Seoul Bike” is a public bike sharing program
which has been operated since 2015 in order to resolve traffic cognition, air quality problems, and to
improve citizen’s health. “Room Sharing Between
the Generation” is a room sharing service for university students and elderly people who live alone in thehouse they owned. These three policies are part of the
Sharing City, Seoul project.

a public bike sharing service operated for the purposeof reducing the use of private cars and providing connections between public transit systems. Kitakyushu
teleworking center is a coworking space located in
Kokurakita-ku, Kitakyushu city which provides
coworking space, smart devices and start-up counseling program.

(3) Kitakyushu’s strategy on urban sustainability
Kitakyushu has been working on developing into asustainable city, by incorporating SDGs and conceptof sharing economy into the city’s development
plans.
Through the Kitakyushu Environmental Capital
Comprehensive Transportation Strategy, the city is
endeavoring to provide environmentally friendly
mode of transportation and to improve mobility of elderly people and students. As a part of the strategy,
the city introduced new transportation mode services
including car sharing and public bike sharing.
Kitakyushu has been also working on creating anenvironment where people can freely share theirideas and start a new business. Thus, the city is operating a shared office which provides coworking space
to anyone in need.
Three policies of Kitakyushu related to sharing activity and imposed in city sector of transportation andbuilt environment are reviewed. These policies arelisted on Table 3.
“Eco-drive” is a Kitakyushu’s car sharing program
initiated in 2010, in order to resolve environmental
problems raised by private transports. “City Bike” is(1) Composition of indicators
In order to access the result of activities and to monitor the desired long-term changes, the input-processoutput-outcome-impact model is selected and adopted
as a backbone structure of conceptual model. Therefore,
the process of implemented policies in Seoul and Kitakyushu generating results in relation to urban sustainability will be effectively visualized. The structure andbrief explanation of each stage of the model is presented
in Fig.6.
Indicators will be grouped into five different stages:
input, process, output, outcome and impact.
The first three stages, input, process and output, will
mainly represent the process of the project introduced
and become established. Therefore, these stages will becomposed of indicators which measure allocated resources and investigation for a program to take root andits immediate progress. The last two stages, outcome
and impact, will mainly represent the short term andlong-term result which a program intended to achieve.
Additionally, impact indicators is connected to one of
17 SDGs proposed by United Nations to represent longterm contribution to urban sustainability.
Consequently, two sets of indicators, each for assessment on shared mobility related policies and sharedbuilt environment related policies, will be developed.

5.

INDICATOR FRAMEWORKSMART SHARING CITY

FOR

Table 3 Summary of Sharing Policies in Kitakyushu(2) Development of conceptual model
Referring to the purpose and characteristic ofSeoul’s and Kitakyushu’s policies reviewed, the conceptual model is developed. Conceptual model is designed each for shared mobility and shared built en-

Fig.6 Structure of Conceptual Model
5

Table 4 Example of indicators for shared mobility

Fig.7 Conceptual model for shared mobility

is linked to the contents in each bubble of the conceptual model.

6. ANALYSIS BY THE DEVELOPEDINDICATOR FRAMEWORK(1) Data interpretation
To evaluate the change in each indicator over time,
two numerical data in different years are acquired
from the online database. Then, the change is considered by the traffic light rating system in order to show
the trend of improvement, no change or deteriorationfor each indicator measure more easily.
After calculating the percentage point difference or
the percent change between two data points of thestart year and the end year, colored markers are labeled according to the condition set as in Table 5. For
the rating, the desired direction of an indicator wasconsidered as well. For example, the desired direction of the indicator, “CO2 emission from the transportation sector” is “negative” as it is desirable thatthe value to decrease in the future.

Fig.8 Conceptual model for shared built environment

vironment. Conceptual model on shared mobility addresses policies imposed in transportation sector, including car sharing and bike sharing programs, andshared built environment addresses policies onshared house and shared office.
Fig.7 and Fig.8 show conceptual model created forshared mobility and shared built environment, respectively.
The conceptual model of sharing economy is designed to summarize the intervention of implemented
sharing economy policy and its gradual impact to sustainable development in 5 stages (input-process-output-outcome-impact). It also visualizes the connection between implications in each stage by arrows.
Then, based on the conceptual model designed, objectively verifiable indicators which can measure theperformance of policy at each stage are selected.

(2) Assessment result by indicator frameworka) Results of Seoul
After applying the traffic light rating system to thedeveloped indicator framework, the trend of each indicator is measured, and the overall direction ofSeoul’s urban policy related to the smart sharing city
is identified.
Table 5 Traffic light rating system
Marker(3) Selection of indicators
Then, 18 indicators and 20 indicators are selected
and included in the framework based on the conceptual model on shared mobility and shared built environment, respectively. While selecting indicators,
availability of the data is checked simultaneously.
Part of indicator framework for shared mobility isshown in Table 4. The column, “what to measure?”(blank)6

Condition

Trend Description

Scoring

greater than 3% toward
desired direction of indicator

Improvement+1

between 3% and -3%

No significant change0

greater than 3% toward
undesired direction ofindicator

Deterioration-1

Measurement not available

Cannot be assessedNot counte

Fig.11 Summary of trend in shared mobility of Kitakyushu

Fig.9 Summary of trend in shared mobility of Seoul

Fig.12 Summary of trend in shared built environment of Kitakyushu

Fig.10 Summary of trend in shared built environment of
Seoul

Fig.11 represents the trend of indicators relevant to“Eco-drive” and “City Bike” policies of Kitakyushu.
Figure is showing positive trends in input and processlevel, while showing relatively large number of indicators without remarkable changes in output to impact level. The result can be explained that productfrom the deployed projects is not reflected instantly
as the scale of the projects is small relative to thecity’s population.
Fig.12 shows the trend of indicators relevant to Kitakyushu Teleworking Center and shared houses in
Kitakyushu. In this figure, only two indicators in output and impact level are showing deteriorating trend.
Although it is showing positive progress overall, Kitakyushu still need improvements in output and outcome level. It is observed that resources and essential
infrastructures assisted by the city in input and process level are not fully utilized, thus not fully delivering the anticipated products.

Fig.9 represents trend of indicators associated with
“Nanum Car” and “Seoul Bike” policies of Seoul.
Here, indicator measures under input and processlevel are improving while indicators under output andoutcome level are showing mostly showing nochange or degeneration. It can be comprehended that
although the government’s support and actions taken
to carry out Nanum Car and Seoul Bike program havebeen well managed, the intervention that the programs produced is insufficient.
Fig.10 shows trend of indicators associated with
“Room Sharing Between Generations” project andshared offices in Seoul. Here, in most of levels, indicators are showing mixed trends of improvement, nochange and deterioration. Evaluating more specifically, majority of indicators in input-outcome levelshowing no change or degeneration are directly related to housing affordability. The result implies that
Seoul achieved efficient use of urban spaces, however, its overall progress in providing affordable
housing is failing.
b) Results of Kitakyushu
The trend of indicator measures and the overall direction of Kitakyushu’s urban policy related to thesmart sharing city is assessed by the traffic light rating system.

7. CONCLUSION(1) Key findings of research
In this research, eight indicator frameworks developed to evaluate the urban sustainability of the city
are evaluated and policies related to sharing economy
7

in Seoul and Kitakyushu are reviewed. Then, basedon the review, indicator framework which can assess
the progress of Seoul and Kitakyushu toward smart
sharing city is developed and applied.
Through this study, characteristic of existing indicator frameworks for sustainable cities is clarified: 1)
only few of them includes indicators which measures
sharing activity; 2) they are underrepresenting theimplication on improved urban sustainability resulted
by city’s project intervened in transportation andbuilt environment area.
Moreover, by the evaluation through the developed indicator framework, Seoul’s and Kitakyushu’s
project and progress on car sharing, public bike sharing, shared house and shared office, whose implication on improved urban sustainability take place inthe transportation sector and built environment sector, are carefully assessed. Consequently, policies’
current strength and area to take remedial action inorder to deliver the anticipated benefits of the sharing
involved policy are clarified.

REFERENCES[1] World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision(ST/ESA/SER.A/420). New York: United Nations: United
Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2019.
[2] International Telecommunication Union. Recommendation
ITU-T Y.4900/L.1600 Overview of key performance indicators in smart sustainable cities. Geneva: Telecommunication standardization sector of ITU, 2016.
[3] Song, M., Sharing City Seoul. Seoul: The Seoul Institute,2015. (in Korean)[4] Komeiji, T., Osada, T., Daimon, H., Morimoto, A., “Smart
Sharing City as a Proposal for Sustainable Future City.”
Proceedings of Infrastructure Planning Vol. 56. CD-ROM.
Japan Society of Civil Engineers (JSCE). 2017. (in Japanese)[5] Komeiji, T., Daimon, H., Osada, T., Koike, H., “Fundamental Study on the Relationship Between the Life Extension
and Sharing” Proceedings of Infrastructure Planning Vol.
57. CD-ROM. Japan Society of Civil Engineers (JSCE).
2018. (in Japanese)[6] Hamari, J., Sjöklint, M., Ukkonen, A., "The sharing economy: Why people participate in collaborative consumption," Journal of the Association for Information Scienceand Technology, Vol. 67, No. 9, pp.2047-2059, 2016.
[7] Chang, Y., Lee, J., Kang, S., "A Study on the Distribution
Characteristics of Indexes Representing the Level of Sharing City: Focused on Seoul Gyeonggi, and Incheon Metropolitan in Korea." Journal of Korea Planning Association
Vol. 52, No. 3, pp.75-91, 2017. (in Korean)[8] Chasin, F., et al. "Peer-to-peer sharing and collaborative
consumption platforms: a taxonomy and a reproducible
analysis." Information Systems and e-Business Management Vol. 16, No. 2, pp.293-325, 2018.
[9] Neirotti, P., et al. "Current trends in Smart City initiatives:
Some stylised facts." Cities Vol.38, pp.25-36, 2014.
[10] Ahvenniemi, H., et al. "What are the differences between
sustainable and smart cities?" Cities Vol. 60, pp.234-245,
2016.
[11] Huovila, A., Peter B. and Miimu A., "Comparative analysisof standardized indicators for Smart sustainable cities:
What indicators and standards to use and when?" Cities
Vol. 89, pp.141-153, 2019.
[12] Vith, S., Oberg, A., Höllerer, M., & Meyer, R., “Envisioning the “Sharing City”: Governance Strategies for the Sharing Economy” Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 159(4),1023–1046, 2019Rochet, J.-C., and Tirole, J., Platformcompetition in two-sided markets, Journal of the European
Economic Association, 1(4), pp.990-1029, 2003.

(2) Follow up
In this study, Seoul and Kitakyushu are chosen ascase study areas and their policies are reviewed tomeasure the progress towards smart sharing city. Majority of indicators included in the developed indicator framework are compatible with cities around theworld. Therefore, evaluating the progress of multiple
cities which shows preparedness or potential to transform into smart sharing city with unified indicator
framework will allow cities check their progress relative to other cities. Also, it will be possible to set
international target for smart sharing city based on
the city which shows the best performance.

(Received , 2020)(Accepted , 2020)8