# Citizens' Perception of Smart Cities: A Case Study
## 2 Literature Review  
In this section, various surveys and studies that present the effects and benefits as well as the impact of smart cities on the citizens' lives and how citizens participate in forming a smart city, are analyzed. The information and communication technology (ICT) applications form an essential factor for the development of sustainable smart cities, thus their adoption has become a significant model for municipal cooperation between government and corporations. In [10] the authors outline a study where several Taiwanese citizens are being surveyed. The purpose of this study was to emphasize the fact that smart city services provide their citizens with an improved living environment which increases the quality of life. Furthermore, the study aimed to point out how important it is for the citizens' when their ideas and perspectives are taken into account during the planning of the smart city's services. The results of the study highlighted the citizens' willingness to accept the ICT-based smart city services especially when their design is based on innovative processes that offer personal privacy and high quality of services. The city engagement factor did not seem to have played a major role in influencing the participants' usage of the smart city services in [10]. However, [PERSON]'s et al. in [11] presented that city attachment (engagement) affects both citizens' attitudes toward urban services and citizens' usage of them. The major difference between the aforementioned investigation and the one in [10] is that the findings of the latter were based on data that were collected by the citizens of a European city: the city of Zaragoza in Spain. Final outcomes revealed how citizens' city attachment levels and other personal factors contribute to urban services usage. As mentioned in [12], the more the citizens use the urban services, the better the service's performance, the life's quality, and the greater the satisfaction with urban management become. It is confirmed that the use of public transportation (which is an urban service) leads to the production of substantial savings for the citizens [13] and, also, to additional benefits for the environment, as it reduces air pollution, traffic injuries, and CO2 emissions [14]. The survey's framework resulted from a number of hypotheses relevant to the influence that the city attachment has on attitudes toward urban services and the use of them as well as on the city attachment's dependence on citizens' demographic features. The data were gathered from various groups of citizens in Zaragoza (different for each group) through a questionnaire that included questions about attitudes towards urban services, city attachment and the personal necessity to use the services. Although the results indicated that city engagement affects the attitudes toward urban services positively, the effect of city attachment on the use of these services is not of high significance. Moreover, city attachment was positively affected by the age factor in a positive way and negatively affected by the educational level of the participants. In contrast, urban service usage was positively affected as well by highly educated people and it was not affected by the age or gender of participants. Generally, the citizens' role in smart cities is significant and their participation in the development of smart city initiatives seems crucial. In [15], the authors analyze the concept of co-production, which can be considered as a boosted type of participation of citizens, with their involvement in the creation and development of public services and policies. Co-production is based on the redistribution of power between citizens and government. \"Smart\" citizens constitute a fundamental dimension of smart cities thus, no smart city can be formed without smart citizens. Every smart city initiative impacts the citizens' way of life and this can lead to a failure in case the citizens do not accept to adapt their lifestyles accordingly or to collaborate by adopting \"smart\" behaviors.