Spatial Formation Potential of the Smart City Concept: New Smart Cities and their Evaluation with the AHP Method

The concept of a 'smart city' is viewed both as a strategy to tackle urban challenges in existing cities and as a fundamental approach for planning new residential areas with diverse goals. This article began by identifying a gap in research on 'smart new cities', where the smart city concept plays a central role, despite the extensive body of work focused on smart cities in general. In the first part of the study, we conducted an in-depth analysis of smart new settlements and compared their urban plans. In the second part, we applied the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), a multi-criteria decision-making method, to quantify the role of the smart city concept in the physical development of new settlement areas. Specifically, we evaluated how the parameters of the smart city concept influence the spatial formation of newly built smart cities. The findings revealed that the importance levels of the smart city concept's subcomponents differ in new smart cities, and urban design processes are shaped accordingly. Thus, the urban planning of these new smart cities varies based on the specific smart city parameters prioritized during the design phase.