# A Comprehensive Survey on the Societal Aspects of Smart Cities
## 1 Introduction
Japan has Woven City, a smart city that aims to create a carbon-neutral environment by promoting autonomous vehicles and conditions for pedestrians. However, it is important to note that this city is owned by Toyota, and its residents have no say in its management. The objective of Woven City is to generate and test new technologies for the company, with residents serving as another source of information [12,13]. Possibly a better example is the government-sponsored smart city project of Kitakyushu City, which aims to improve environmental sustainability and find innovative solutions to energy problems. While several companies (e.g., Nippon Steel, IBM Japan, or Toshiba) are high-level stakeholders in the project, the city's municipal government also is, and the citizens' opinions and ideas are taken into consideration. This has resulted in a more effective implementation of the proposed solutions compared to other Japanese smart city projects [14]. South Korea has experience with smart cities [15], as seen in the Songdo smart city in Incheon [16] or Seoul [17]. These cities have implemented technology to improve transportation, citizens' living conditions, cultural projects, and more. One of the latest additions to smart cities in South Korea is the Busan Eco Delta Smart City. Its goals include creating twenty-eight thousand new jobs in high-tech industries, improving living conditions, which are projected to add five years to residents' life expectancy, and increasing ecological sustainability through the exclusive use of renewable energy sources and by water and waste management programs that focus on reuse and recycling [18]. Africa is home to many impoverished nations, which face a range of challenges, including lack of infrastructure, unstable governments, high populations, and economic insecurity [19]. Smart cities offer opportunities to improve all of these factors and provide a good return on investment [20]. This is why more economically and technologically advanced nations are investing in smart cities in Africa. Kigali city in Rwanda is one such city that has made use of smart technologies to improve by creating smart waste management systems emphasizing green infrastructure and ecological sustainability. The city has focused on renewable energy, sustainable public transportation, and wetlandsrestoration [21]. South Africa is investing heavily in the development of smart cities, with four smart cities currently in construction. However, due to the expected completion time of twenty-five years, improvements will occur slowly over time, and complications are expected to occur over such a long period. These cities are Lanseria Smart City, African Coastal Smart City, Mooikloof Mega-City, and Durban Aerotropolis [22]. To create a smart city, a strong and well-developed infrastructure is essential. At a minimum, it is required that (i) sensors be placed throughout the city for collecting the needed data, (ii) communication networks to transmit these data, (iii) databases to store the collected data, (iv) computing resources and services to analyze and transform the available data into meaningful information, and (v) suitable applications to transform this information into added value for authorities and inhabitants. However, technological advances have led to differences in the current implementations of these supporting infrastructures when compared to initial conceptions. First, sensors were analog devices that were part of machines they were sensing (e.g., speedometer, pressure sensor, or thermometer) and provided the status of these machines directly to human operators. However, with the introduction of ICTs, multiple sensors can now share their information with advanced control systems that allow a single user to oversee a large number of sensors. Moreover, sensors also became digital, smaller, and more energy efficient, allowing for sensor packages that collect multiple different types of data.