# Citizens' Perception of Smart Cities: A Case Study
## 1 Introduction  
At the beginning of the 21 st century, cities are presented as the primary source for some of the biggest concerns and challenges that the world has ever faced. Rapid urbanization (which leads to overpopulation), diminished resources, and continuous climate changes are some of these challenges. Gradually, this leads to many other global challenges and concerns, such as energy over-consumption, climate changes, resource constraints, and air pollution. To cope with the aforementioned challenges, the concept of sustainable urban development emerged through the \"Smart City\" concept to define urban planning significantly [1]. The \"Smart City\" concept constitutes the precursor of sustainable development and it targets improving life in cities by using innovative and state-of-the-art technologies. To become smart, a city should develop an approach of services that are mainly focused on citizens who are the primary beneficiaries of the things and services a Smart City can offer.  
The \"Smart City\" concept is defined as a concept that can tackle environmental, economic, and social challenges that modern cities are facing and will continue to face in the future [1]. By focusing only on using Information and Communication Technology systems, a smart city can get more closely related to people and communities [2]. Nowadays there may not have been yet a clear and globally accepted definition for the smart city, but, despite this fact, cities are embracing the notion of achieving smartness to achieve sustainable development and economic growth and, also, to improve their citizens' quality of life. In a simplified way, we can define a \"smart city\" as a city that uses advanced technologies in order to achieve the goals it has set. These goals may be financial development, education, eradication of poverty, social equality, enhanced citizens' security, tourism, cultural education, intercultural physique, environment, and fast citizen service in public services and can vary, depending on the city's geographical location, the socio-economicconditions, the resources that the city can allocate and the perceptions of the respective local authorities.  
Smart cities projects are related to many domains of applications, such as communication, culture, energy, environment/climate, health, tourism, and transport. \"Smart cities\" are closely related to \"smart buildings\" and \"smart devices\", but neither cities, buildings, nor devices are smart by themselves. Nowadays while there is a plethora of applications that can be utilized and support the concept of Smart cities [3; 4; 5; 6] the whole concept relies on the city administration's smartness, politicians, and citizens to utilize technology in \"smart\" ways [7].  
With new communication channels and interaction, citizens have acquired the opportunity to play a more active role in the city. The significant increase in citizens' democratization and production capability has turned them into key factors for the innovation process and development of a city [8]. To succeed in the development of smart cities, citizens should be involved as an integral part of the process as they are both users and decision-makers and can also be reliable sources of data and information [9]. Citizens' participation, ideas, and perspectives are critical factors for smart city development. The bigger the participation and the involvement in their (smart) city's decision making, the better the understanding of the benefits and the positive impact that the smart city provides them.  
In this work, we aim to present the citizens' perception of the smart city concept, and reveal the level of knowledge of Greek and Cypriot citizens regards to a Smart City's actions, application and elements. In addition, we target to illustrate to what extend the Greek and Cypriot citizens have realized the importance, the positive impact and the benefits that a \"smart project\" can offer in their lives.