Life is a Journey in Smart and Sustainable Districts

Worldwide, cities grapple with the expectation of putting the brakes on climate change. Before acting, smart districts often serve as a testing bed for strategies towards carbon-neutrality. If effective, scale-up agendas at city-level are formulated. Smart districts are touted for their sustainability lever, as their core rationale is encouraging residents to use ‘smart energy technologies’ which increase efficiency or integrate renewable energy sources. The primary focus of these districts is on technical implementations of available sustainability services instead of orienting their service-portfolio around citizens. The result is a mismatch of supply and demand of sustainability-inducing services. We take in a customer journey perspective when searching for literature and conducting qualitative interviews. Results reveal a framework for mapping service touchpoints into citizen journeys. The framework is meant to benefit district planners to tailor their service selection to meet their citizens’ needs and exploit the district’s sustainability potential at the citizen interface