Can smart cities bring happiness to promote sustainable development? Contexts and clues of subjective well-being and urban livability

Smart city development has gone beyond pure applications of intelligent technologies and requires effective integration of human well-being, social landscapes, and the built environment to create sustainable living. Happiness reflecting citizens’ quality of life could be the gateway to sustainability, but few studies incorporated it into smart city planning. This paper clarifies the correlations between smart cities and urban happiness. The analyses show that the smart environment associated with green spaces, air pollution control, and recycling services significantly influences happiness. Moreover, improving urban infrastructure thoroughly is more critical for increasing well-being and livability than providing technical products for end users. Finally, different geographically gathered cities would face different challenges in maintaining happiness, including local (e.g., housing and population density) and global (e.g., the North-South divide) issues. Urban planners and governments must understand local and cultural contexts while cultivating global visions to identify cities’ actual needs and achieve sustainable development goals