Whose Future is Smart?: A Systematic Literature Review of Smart Cities and Disadvantaged Neighborhoods

Smart cities aim to create more livable, sustainable, and inclusive urban environments by leveraging the potential of technology and data. But whose future is smart? This is the overall question addressed in this paper when we conduct a systematic literature review on smart city research focusing on disadvantaged neighborhoods in Western welfare states. Disadvantaged neighborhoods are characterized by lower socio-economic status and social exclusion among its residents and a higher share of migrants and/or people of color. We search for how disadvantaged neighborhoods are included inb smart city research. This literature review prologues with a scoping review to find central key words and definitions which are later used as search words for a systematic review in Scopus and Web of Science. The identified publications are afterwards analyzed focusing on how smart city applications in disadvantaged neighborhoods are presented and analyzed. This review shows an astonishing lack of research and knowledge on smart city applications in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Furthermore, a lack of inclusion of disadvantaged neighborhoods in the imagination and implementation of smart cities, together with a digital divide. There are few associations to social policy and other ambitions to increase digital and other forms of inclusion in the smart city and make smart technologies to a tool to leverage inclusion and equity.