# Clustering Smart City Services: Perceptions, Expectations, Responses
## 1 Introduction
### Querying the 'Normative Bias' of Smart Cities Research Thesis and Its Implications  
Fertilized by insights from a variety of disciplines, research on smart cities flourishes. Today, valuable insights to the debate are brought by researchers affiliating themselves with urban and regional studies, sociology, politics, international relations, political economy, and certainly computer science [3; 4; 5; 6]. Ideally, the plethora of insights would have allowed the research community to build a multidimensional framework enabling a comprehensive study of issues and matters pertinent to the field of smart cities. But it is not the case; the field remains fragmented. To some extent, smart cities research has turned into a battlefield where diverse critical insights, diverging conceptual approaches, diverse normative imperatives, compete for the right to define the field. In addition, the computer science community sees smart cities research as a formidable testing ground for ideas based on the prospect of utilization of ever more sophisticated technologies. Clearly, this variety of approaches and perspectives applied to smart cities' research bears a great number of opportunities. At the moment, however, challenges seem to outweigh them. It is imperative therefore that an inter- and multi-disciplinary smart cities research agenda consolidates. To this end, more reflection on the conceptual precepts of the debate is needed. This includes the perennial questions of ontology and epistemology in smart cities research. Only in this way the vast field of smart cities research can be delineated, the numerous avenues of research that the field avails itself to can be identified, and finally, synergies exploited. Consensus has consolidated that smart cities research ought to be part and parcel of the broader debate on sustainability. It is in this context that this paper highlights the interconnections and metaphors that emerge between the information and communication technology community (including computer science, information systems, computer networks, computer security etc. ), social sciences, business-related research, and policy-makers. Establishing a strategic fit among these groups and, thereby, exploiting synergies that insights each of these groups bring to the discussion on smart cities constitutes a value contribution to this research. In this study, we are building upon our previously published research [1; 2; 3] and we are elaborating on the concept of smart city services and linking end-users' perceptions and expectations with the industry's awareness of and capacity to respond to these needs. In our research, a smart city service is defined as _an integrated value carrier for the integration of citizens' and communities' quality of life and wellbeing based on advanced technological enablers (ICT)_. The strategic objective of this research is three-fold:  
* To understand what are the key technological enablers that support smart services in urban and rural areas. For this purpose, an extensive analysis of related research concluded to seven clusters of information and communication technologies that are discussed further in Section 3. * To analyze what are the basic and innovative smart services under each category, showing the perceptions of smart city users about their intention in the use of these services and the added value they are bringing to them. In our previously published research [2] we concluded that three different major types of smart users exist. The motivation here is directly related to our so-called \"normative bias\" in smart cities research. One aspect of this bias can be the following: computer scientists have the capacity to deploy various technologies to offer smart cities services and to believe that these services will be accepted by users and will deliver value to them. The key question is if their expectations related to the adoption of their services meet also the perceptions and expectation of users of smart city services.