# Decoding Urban Intelligence: Clustering and Feature Importance in Smart Cities
## 1 Introduction
Thus, there are upcoming unexpected challenges for the infrastructure (housing), transportation, energy provisioning, economy, environment, education, employment, public services, and healthcare of cities. The yearly Sustainable Development Goals report analyzes the 17 goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, highlighting the current situation and future predictions. Goal 11 is \"Sustainable cities and communities\". Presently, approximately one quarter of the global population resides in squalid, densely populated urban areas, living in extreme poverty. Building high-quality infrastructure and providing everyone with access to basic services are crucial for improving the preparedness and resilience of cities for recovering from and responding to future crises. Considering the increasing trend of irregular urban sprawl, urgent actions are required for housing, transportation, and services in slums. The  
Figure 1: Percentage of urban population between 1950 and 2050. World Cities Report (www.un-library.org/content/periodicals/2518654x accessed on 1 September 2024) [1] analyzes the upcoming scenarios for cities, including the different features of cities, the degree of urbanization, inequalities, economies, green perspectives, urban planning, public health, governance, resilience, and innovation and technological advancements. Innovation and technology are pivotal for sustainable cities, as digitalization and automation are transforming economies and urban features. Plus, the need for decarbonization is enhancing green and smart technologies. Smart cities have become a dominant paradigm in contemporary urban policy, steadily gaining prominence each day. Smart cities with a dense concentration of people enhance dynamic resource sharing, networking, and collaboration, providing innovation. Consequently, the development and improvement of buildings, energy, transport, water, waste, air pollution, and greenness are crucial. ; thus, there exists an urge for smart city transformation of public services, social innovation, and the public sector. Numerous municipal administrations are adopting a smart city agenda to plan objectives for the future. As urban development advances and cities become increasingly smarter, it becomes essential to investigate the disparities in smartness among cities, identify the key factors driving the development of urban intelligence, and determine the primary elements that distinguish more advanced smart cities from their counterparts. Several indexes and classifications rank smart cities according to various factors, thresholds, and characteristics. Each methodology considers and assigns varying levels of importance to different attributes according to what are thought to be the best indicators of smartness (and future development) of a city. Although some of the aforementioned factors are measurable (e.g., economic aspects), some others are not (e.g., social aspects), thus the difficulty of numerically expressing smartness. Ericsson computed the Networked Society City Index (NSCL, www.ericsson.com/en/reports-and-papers/networked-society-insights accessed on 1 September 2024), stating that ICT is fundamental for creating new opportunities for innovation and growth. The latest available report, dated 2016, highlights the need for cities to rethink themselves to be able to completely exploit ICT upcoming innovations. The authors list characteristics of a future networked society (a concept thought to be more extensive than that of smart cities): (i) resilience, (ii) collaboration, (iii) participation, (iv) mobility, (v) strong and visionary leadership, (vi) new regulatory frameworks, and (vii) a holistic approach. The Networked Society City Index assesses and ranks cities according to their sustainable urban development (accessed via 8 variables and 31 proxies from the (i) social, (ii) economic, and (iii) environmental categories) and ICT maturity (accessed via 7 variables and 18 proxies from the ICT (i) infrastructure, (ii) affordability, and (iii) usage categories).