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The use of AI has progressed rapidly in recent years, and the notion of smartness is commonplace. However, while the topic of smart cities has received considerable research attention, there has been a lack of discussion about the use of smart technologies in prisons. While, especially in Eastern countries, AI in law enforcement is mainly used for security and control purposes (in Hong Kong, intelligent CCTV can detect unusual behaviour, and wristbands are used to collect data on prisoners), in Northern Europe the trend is to build smart prisons where AI is used as a rehabilitation tool (in Finland, Virtual Reality is employed to help rehabilitation). Adopting a comparative approach, the aim of this article is to demonstrate that AI is a transformative technology that is provoking structural changes in criminal law enforcement – especially in prisons – and that these changes express two opposing tendencies, that could transform the essence of penalties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photorealistic 3D models are important data sources for digital twin cities and smart city applications. These models are usually generated from data collected by aerial or ground-based platforms (e.g., mobile mapping systems (MMSs) and backpack systems) separately. Aerial and ground-based platforms capture data from overhead and ground surfaces, respectively, offering complementary information for better 3D mapping in urban areas. Particularly, backpack mapping systems have gained popularity for 3D mapping in urban areas in recent years, as they offer more flexibility to reach regions (e.g., narrow alleys and pedestrian routes) inaccessible by vehicle-based MMSs. However, integration of aerial and ground data for 3D mapping suffers from difficulties such as tie-point matching among images from different platforms with large differences in perspective, coverage, and scale. Optimal fusion of the results from different platforms is also challenging. Therefore, this paper presents a novel method for the fusion of aerial, MMS, and backpack images and point clouds for optimized 3D mapping in urban areas. A geometric-aware model for feature matching is developed based on the SuperGlue algorithm to obtain sufficient tie-points between aerial and ground images, which facilitates the integrated bundle adjustment of images to reduce their geometric inconsistencies and the subsequent dense image matching to generate 3D point clouds from different image sources. After that, a graph-based method considering both geometric and texture traits is developed for the optimal fusion of point clouds from different sources to generate 3D mesh models of better quality. Experiments conducted on a challenging dataset in Hong Kong demonstrated that the geometric-aware model could obtain sufficient accurately matched tie-points among the aerial, MMS, and backpack images, which enabled the integrated bundle adjustment of the three image datasets to generate properly aligned point clouds. Compared with the results obtained from state-of-the-art commercial software, the 3D mesh models generated from the proposed point cloud fusion method exhibited better quality in terms of completeness, consistency, and level of detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes public perceptions about the impact of 'smart cities' programs on governance and quality-of-life. With smart city scholarship focusing primarily on technical and managerial issues, political legitimacy remains relatively underexplored—particularly in non-Western contexts. Drawing on a Hong Kong-based survey of over 800 residents conducted in 2019, this study analyzes the results of probit regressions on dependent variables for governance (participation, transparency, public services, communication, and fairness) and quality-of-life (buildings, energy-environment, mobility-transportation, education, and health). Findings show more optimism about the impact of smart cities on quality-of-life than on governance. Awareness about the smart city concept associates positively with expectations about smart city benefits, but the effect is sensitive to education level and income. This study deepens understandings about the political legitimacy of smart cities, at a time when urban governments are accelerating investments in related technologies. More broadly, it adds contextual nuance to research about state-society relations and, at a practical level, supports policy recommendations to strengthen information and awareness campaigns, better articulate smart city benefits, and openly acknowledge limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Equity and inclusion continue to pose significant challenges for many cities. Disparities in access to resources and facilities among the residents of these areas are often influenced by factors such as geographical location and income level, among others. Therefore, creating a quantitative basis to detect spatial and socio-economic inequities in residents' access to vital infrastructures is crucial for advancing smart cities. This paper introduces a novel measure of Spatial Inequity that is based on 1) computing building-level scores for each building in terms of access to facilities, and 2) comparing the distribution of the scores of these facilities using the Gini coefficient. The proposed building-level scores will enable the identification of GIS hotspots at a high resolution. Then, the Gini-based measure will facilitate a comparison of the distribution of the scores, and determine if they are evenly distributed and equitably accessible. The Gini coefficient was highest (0.89) for waste management and elderly care, and lowest (0.56) for hospitals, reflecting varying levels of inequality. This study applies this Spatial Ineqity methodological framework to Hong Kong, a representative of Highly Dense Cities. The framework benchmarks urban infrastructure, identifies hotspots, and selects interventions for equitable urban development. • Novel approach identifies spatial inequities via building-level scores & Gini coefficient. • Precise hotspot identification enhances targeted interventions in dense urban areas. • Applied methodology in Hong Kong offers insights into urban development complexities. • Gini coefficient unveils varying degrees of inequality across essential services. • Geospatial analysis & quantitative measures support equitable urban resource allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like many cities in advanced economies, Hong Kong has embraced the "smart city" agenda. In this article, we engage with a number of ethical issues surrounding smart city development. We assess the ethical implications of four different smart city initiatives in Hong Kong - the use of a facial recognition system, the Smart Lamppost Pilot Scheme, the Free-flow Tolling System, and Electronic Health Records System - from the perspective of relational egalitarianism. Our analysis suggests that there are various moral risks - that a particular smart city initiative may fall short of some relevant normative requirements - depending on the levels of their voluntariness and transparency. Finally, we consider a number of strategies for mitigating these moral risks and maintaining socially egalitarian relationships among citizens of a smart city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based mainly on a Hong Kong-wide survey carried out in March-April 2021, while also drawing on a round of stakeholder interviews from July 2020 to December 2021, the article interprets the linked phenomena of trust and the smart city in the specific context of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. In the main body of the article, four angles are used to understand facets of trust-smart city relations, centred on characteristic trust, trust and technology, the role of intermediaries, and trust in government. The main findings of the survey centre around the data trust paradox (of high support for technology in a low-trust environment), the social impact of trust and mistrust (strongly correlated with age and political affiliation), and trust in the smart city as a weathervane of trust in government. Factors such as a digitally literate population, a decades-long investment in technology, and a substantial record of delivery provide solid reasons to believe that a strategic-technical narrative on the smart city might succeed where others have failed to convince. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based mainly on a Hong Kong-wide survey carried out in March-April 2021, while also drawing on a round of stakeholder interviews from July 2020 to December 2021, the article interprets the linked phenomena of trust and the smart city in the specific context of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. In the main body of the article, four angles are used to understand facets of trust-smart city relations, centred on characteristic trust, trust and technology, the role of intermediaries, and trust in government. The main findings of the survey centre around the data trust paradox (of high support for technology in a low-trust environment), the social impact of trust and mistrust (strongly correlated with age and political affiliation), and trust in the smart city as a weathervane of trust in government. Factors such as a digitally literate population, a decades-long investment in technology, and a substantial record of delivery provide solid reasons to believe that a strategic-technical narrative on the smart city might succeed where others have failed to convince. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like many cities in advanced economies, Hong Kong has embraced the "smart city" agenda. In this article, we engage with a number of ethical issues surrounding smart city development. We assess the ethical implications of four different smart city initiatives in Hong Kong -- the use of a facial recognition system, the Smart Lamppost Pilot Scheme, the Free-flow Tolling System, and Electronic Health Records System -- from the perspective of relational egalitarianism. Our analysis suggests that there are various moral risks -- that a particular smart city initiative may fall short of some relevant normative requirements -- depending on the levels of their voluntariness and transparency. Finally, we consider a number of strategies for mitigating these moral risks and maintaining socially egalitarian relationships among citizens of a smart city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the making of place-led smart neighborhoods. Based on a multimethod research design that combines narrative city walks, participant observations, secondary research, and in-depth interviews, this study takes two older neighborhoods in the Northwest New Territories of Hong Kong as case sites to examine, elaborate on, and envisage the idea of constructing smart neighborhoods through digital placemaking. It finds that neighborhood residents are potentially the most significant actors and hosts of smart spatial attributes. The mechanism emerges through people's diverse and technologically mediated interactions. At the neighborhood scale, the everyday urban smart neighborhood is produced via individuals' socializing and the sharing of information about events. Smart neighborhoods are facilitated and sustained by relatively practical and simple technologies, and their making is more an approach for improving the quality of urban life than a designated goal to achieve. This research concludes that residents' digital placemaking plays a significant role in developing lived smart cities. Three main implementation directions are proposed. • Residents' everyday digital placemaking plays significant role in developing lived urban smartness at the neighborhood scale. • The making of smart neighborhood is more an approach for improving quality of urban life rather than a designated goal to achieve. • Examining urban neighborhoods as smart places in a highly context-sensitive everyday setting reveals the complexity of smart city research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2020 introduction by China's central government of a national security law (NSL) in Hong Kong marked a watershed moment in the social and political history of the semiautonomous city. The law emerged after months of street protests that reflected declining public trust in Hong Kong's government. Against this turbulent backdrop, Hong Kong's policy projects moved forward, including smart city development. This article explores public trust in and political legitimacy of Hong Kong's smart cities endeavors in the period leading up to the introduction of the NSL. At a theoretical level, the smart cities phenomenon invites critical reflection about tensions between technocracy and democracy, but this topic remains largely unexploited by empirical literature. Using survey data from 1,017 residents, this study identifies confidence in the benefits of smart cities but lesser trust in privacy and security and lesser satisfaction with participation opportunities in related policymaking. Probing these dynamics, the study finds that trust in smart city mechanics and governance associate positively with support for smart cities, controlling for ideology and issue awareness. Illuminating a theoretical and practical puzzle, these findings contribute empirically to discussions about the political legitimacy of scientific, technological, and technocratic undertakings in the public sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combination of dense urban development, hilly terrain, and intense seasonal rainfall has caused acute landslide problems in Hong Kong, which are manifested by a death toll of over 470 people since the late 1940s. Tackling landslide problems in an urban setting, in particular under the effect of climate change, calls for a development and implementation of a holistic risk management strategy. It entails the use of engineering and non-engineering approaches, involving policy, legislative, administrative, innovation, technical, educational, community-based, and emergency-preparedness provisions. In this paper, these two approaches are showcased by the slope safety system that has been developed and promulgated in managing landslide risk for building Hong Kong as a world-class smart city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article maps the parameters of an emerging field of struggle around "openness" pertaining to digital data in the postcolonial smart city. Whereas colonial governance operated in relative secrecy with archives not quite available to ordinary citizens, what do we make of current institutions from government departments to banks flaunting their commitment to Open Data? Looking at data activism in Hong Kong, this article highlights the (post)colonial histories that have shaped the reception of Open Data in this context. More so, it explores the ways in which the techno-materialities of data infrastructures affect and reconfigure postcolonial struggle. Building on Kelty's discussion of "recursive publics" and Hui's account of recursivity, my notion of recursive politics underscores the mutuality of social history and techno-materiality. While recursive politics can contribute to technodiversity, I analyze how such politics weigh up against the political and ethical investments of postcolonial struggle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• A quantified approach to evaluate users' attitudes towards Crowd Management System. • Estimating the Willingness-to-Pay with the Contingent Valuation method. • Perceived usefulness and online payment habit greatly influence users' attitudes. • Good indications for future research on the use of ICT for safety enhancement. Smart city projects are being launched globally to enhance the well-being of citizens. Meanwhile, the value-added of the projects is not easy to evaluate due to the non-market nature of the public services provided. This study intends to investigate the attitudes of potential users of a Crowd Management System (CMS) to help with the decision-making on smart city projects. The CMS studied in this paper is applied in large-scale events to enable safe and efficient dissipation of event participants as one of the pilot Smart City projects in Hong Kong. It does so by providing real-time information on public transport for their return journeys when a large number of participants all finish their activities within a short time span. Reducing injuries of pedestrians can be achieved in major gatherings to improve safety. This paper presents an experimental analysis of users' attitudes towards the CMS with the Contingent Valuation (CV) method. A marathon event in Hong Kong was chosen for an on-the-spot survey of actual users as part of an experimental study. Subsequently a similar survey was carried out off-site among marathon runners not participating in that event (as a control group) for data reliability comparison. The Willingness-to-Pay value is also derived from the pooled samples to evaluate users' attitudes. Besides, the results indicate that runners' perceived usefulness and online payment habit significantly influence the stated Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) for the CMS in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intelligent Parking Information Systems (IPIS) being implemented in the built environment are regarded as an effective measure for transport management in smart cities, where congestion due to parking search has caused air pollution apart from time wastage. An IPIS improves the efficiency of disseminating real time parking vacancy information and provides convenience to drivers via Apps installed in their smart phones. After giving an overview of various IPISs being applied globally, this research on a typical IPIS is aimed at valuing the benefits to drivers and modelling how variations in the independent variables affect their use. A stated preference approach is presented with a discrete choice survey conducted in Hong Kong with more than 800 valid samples. Contingent Valuation (CV) is applied to evaluate the intangible benefits associated with the use of IPIS, based on the estimation of Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) for its installation with a binary logit model. An aggregated WTP would be useful to policy makers when making decisions to scale up the system. It was found that three factors (download habit , parking time , and parking App usage) have positive impacts on WTP, whereas length of driving experience turned out to have a significantly negative influence. The econometric analysis provides useful contributions for the objective assessment of the viability of IPIS projects and their further investment in an emerging smart city environment. • Intelligent Parking Information Systems are increasing popular in smart cities. • Intangible benefits include reductions of congestion, parking time, pollution and accidents. • Contingent valuation is useful to evaluate the intangible benefits with demonstrable results. • Three related econometric models have been built to identify significant factors affecting the Willingness-to-Pay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the Asiascape: Digital Asia special issue on 'smart communities' discusses how new technologies have created a paradigm of 'smartness' that informs how innovators, entrepreneurs, policy makers, and administrators imagine sociality in urban spaces. This is visible in plans for turning Singapore, Hong Kong, or Taipei into 'smart cities', and countries such as India, Japan, and South Korea are similarly rolling out initiatives that promise to revamp urban life across the region. Such 'solutionist' attempts to address the complexities of contemporary social life through technology cleverly fuse surveillance techniques, capitalist structures, free labour practices, and neoliberal governance to create urban utopias of safety, convenience, and community. We have asked the contributors to this special issue to explore what people do, through and with digital technologies, as they establish, claim, contest, and alter various social relations in the name of 'smart community', and this article introduces and discusses their results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The drive towards open data aims at improving government transparency, motivating citizen participation and unlocking commercial innovation. However, various intertwining barriers hinder the adoption of open data. They are stemming from legislation and licensing, technology and operation, use level, institution and governance, as well as economic considerations. Through the use of social network analysis (SNA), this study identified 43 barriers faced by stakeholders in an open data project in Hong Kong and investigated their interdependencies. Hong Kong was selected as a representative case due to its relatively low ranking in the Global Open Data Index (24th) and poor data quality. It was found that the lack of an open data policy should be tackled as a matter of priority to provide technical guidance for the public sector, ensure data quality and achieve expected outcomes. It is also necessary to improve the IT literacy/mindset of the public sector, refine the governance structure relating to the delivery of open data initiatives, encourage engagement from private entities and provide a feedback loop for users. This study explored the interrelationships between various barriers to open data adoption and proposes practical recommendations to enhance open data development in the context of emerging "smart cities". • The adoption of open data has encountered five categories of barriers faced by different stakeholders. • A barrier which is not properly solved can predispose other barriers within the project. • The lack of open data policy should be tackled as a matter of priority in Hong Kong. • Open mindset and IT literacy within the government organizations remain to be improved. • Other practical recommendations were proposed to enhance open data development in the context of emerging "smart cities". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, leading cities around the world have been striving to develop smart cities. Each city sets its goals and measures on smart city development having regard to its own circumstances, background and priorities. Hong Kong has been maintaining its leading position globally in terms of economic performance and digital competitiveness. With the staunch national support for I&T development, its fast-growing start-up ecosystem and fervid I&T atmosphere gradually created, Hong Kong is well-positioned to pursue smart city development. The Government published the “Smart City Blueprint for Hong Kong” in December 2017. The development plans cover six major areas with more than 70 initiatives so as to drive the smart city development in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Driven by advances in smart grid technologies, building prosumers have closer interaction in sharing energy and information towards net-zero energy communities with energy flexibility and smart readiness. Many studies have focused on transactive energy systems, whereas limited attention was paid to coordinated prosumer management involving electric and electro-thermal energy storages. In this paper, a hierarchical energy management system was developed for a commercial neighbourhood, where distributed prosumers can share their generation and batteries, and manage cooling loads and thermal storages, in subtropical Hong Kong. Several operational scenarios were formulated considering building-level and neighbourhood-level controls, to explore the synergies through peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing and demand flexibility. Techno-economic-environmental impacts were analysed comprehensively from the perspectives of the network, the utility, and each participant. Results show that by integrating the demand-side flexibility, the P2P system could use electricity more effectively and economically. The formulated P2P operation strategy utilising neighbourhood-level control minimised the operational cost by 24.6% and net equivalent CO 2 emission by 7.1%, compared to the traditional peer-to-grid operation. The profit for each participant can be allocated by regulating the compensating price in the dynamic internal trading. The study provides prosumers energy-flexible and grid-friendly operation to facilitate the sustainability of the smart grid. • Hierarchical energy management for active prosumers with hybrid energy storages. • Performance comparison under individual and coordinated demand-side controls. • Enhancing local self-sufficiency by 22.8% via the power and information sharing. • Analysis of the participants' cost savings with a dynamic internal trading model. • Guidelines for system planners and operators to promote low-carbon communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complexity and variety of buildings and the defects of point cloud data are the main challenges faced by 3D urban reconstruction from point clouds, especially in metropolitan areas. In this paper, we developed a method that embeds multiple relations into a procedural modelling process for the automatic 3D reconstruction of buildings from photogrammetric point clouds. First, a hybrid tree of constructive solid geometry and boundary representation (CSG-BRep) was built to decompose the building bounding space into multiple polyhedral cells based on geometric-relation constraints. The cells that approximate the shapes of buildings were then selected based on topological-relation constraints and geometric building models were generated using a reconstructing CSG-BRep tree. Finally, different parts of buildings were retrieved from the CSG-BRep trees, and specific surface types were recognized to convert the building models into the City Geography Markup Language (CityGML) format. The point clouds of 105 buildings in a metropolitan area in Hong Kong were used to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. Compared with two existing methods, the proposed method performed the best in terms of robustness, regularity, and topological correctness. The CityGML building models enriched with semantic information were also compared with the manually digitized ground truth, and the high level of consistency between the results suggested that the produced models will be useful in smart city applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the increase of big data and the advancement of technologies, comprehensive data-driven knowledge of urban systems is becoming more attainable, yet the connection between big-data research and its application e.g., in smart city development, is not clearly articulated. Focusing on Human Mobility, one of the most frequently investigated applications of big data analytics, a framework for linking international academic research and city-level management policy was established and applied to the case of Hong Kong. Literature regarding human mobility research using big data are reviewed. These studies contribute to (1) discovering the spatial-temporal phenomenon, (2) identifying the difference in human behaviour or spatial attributes, (3) explaining the dynamic of mobility, and (4) applying to city management. Then, the application of the research to smart city development are scrutinised based on email queries to various governmental departments in Hong Kong. The identified challenges include data isolation, data unavailability, gaming between costs and quality of data, limited knowledge derived from rich data, as well as estrangement between public and private sectors. With further improvement in the practical value of data analytics and the utilization of data sourced from multiple sectors, paths to achieve smarter cities from policymaking perspectives are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-objective optimisation of interactive buildings-vehicles energy sharing network. • A synergic buildings-vehicles energy sharing network with multiple interactions. • Energy flexibility exploitation with the advanced grid-responsive control strategy. • Techno-economic and multiple criteria with cost, emission and energy flexibility. • Multi-objective optimization using the Pareto archive NSGA-II algorithm. • Optimal solutions to energy-related conflicts for multi-criteria decision-makers. Systematic interactions between buildings, vehicles, and renewables can increase eco-economic viability on a neighbourhood scale. In this study, an interactive buildings-vehicles energy sharing network with multidirectional energy interactions was formulated for energy interactions and integrations together with a grid-responsive strategy for the management of off-peak renewable energy and grid electricity. Energy flexibility indicators (e.g., off-peak surplus renewable shifted ratio and off-peak grid shifted ratio) were introduced, developed, and implemented in an interactive buildings-vehicles energy sharing network for the energy flexibility assessment. Several energy-related conflicts, such as energy congestion contradiction and energy-related economic and environmental conflicts, were presented and discussed together with effective solutions provided to decision-makers for optimal design and robust operation. To reach a trade-off between energy-related conflicts, multi-objective optimisation was conducted, and implemented with an advanced multi-objective optimisation algorithm (called Pareto archive NSGA-II). The research results show that the formulated interactive buildings-vehicles energy sharing network demonstrates greater robustness and competitiveness than the conventional isolated system in terms of cost, emissions, and energy flexibility. Regarding multiple energy-related conflicts in the formulated interactive energy sharing network, the results show that multi-objective optimisation is able to decrease the equivalent CO 2 emissions of the buildings-vehicles energy system by 7.5%, from 147.4 to 136.4 kg/m2.a, and reduce the import cost from the electric grid by 8.5%, from 212.7 to 194.6 HK$/m2.a, together with a high energy flexibility: a maximum of 11.03% (1.5% in a conventional isolated system) of the off-peak grid electricity can be stored by the electrical storages and a maximum of 52.48% (33.6% in the conventional isolated system) of the off-peak surplus renewable electricity can be shifted to peak period. This study formulates an interactive energy sharing network between buildings and vehicles, together with quantifiable energy flexibility assessment criteria and effective solutions for dealing with multiple energy-related conflicts, which are critical for interactive buildings-vehicles energy sharing networks with high energy flexibilities in smart cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban rail system is a critical component of a smart and sustainable city. This paper applies the triple bottom line framework to assess Hong Kong's mass transit railway (MTR) performance. We collected data from MTR's annual reports and sustainability reports over the period 2008–2017. The data showed that MTR's urban rail system consumed 1,573 GW-hour (GWh) in 2017, up from 1,290 GWh in 2008. In terms of service capacity, MTR's urban rail system made 1.767 billion passenger-trips in 2017, up from 1.309 billon passenger-trips in 2008. The average passenger-km (pkm) travelled ranged from 10.4 to 11 km for city lines and from 28.4 to 29.5 km for airport express. The total pkm travelled by rail was 19.38 billion in 2017, up from 13.82 billion in 2008. Sustainability analysis showed that MTR's urban rail system had an efficiency of 0.076–0.093 kWh per pkm and produced 0.055–0.071 kg CO 2 -eq per pkm. Tobin's q value ranged from 0.638 to 1.043, suggesting that MTR's stock was undervalued in the capital market over the past decade. In terms of social performance, MTR's rail operations provided over 15 thousand jobs and handled 38.2 percent of public transport in 2017. • HK's urban rail handled 1.767 billion passenger-trips and consumed 1,573 GWh in 2017. • The total passenger-km travelled was 19.38 billion in 2017. • HK's urban rail system had an energy efficiency of 0.076–0.093 kWh per passenger-km. • HK's urban rail system emitted 0.055–0.071 kg CO 2 -eq per passenger-km. • The system's environmental and social performance has improved in the past decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart cities are emerging in most parts of the world. The cost-benefit analysis of such initiatives should include an unbiased consideration of potential procurement modes, especially when a substantial investment is entailed to scale up projects to the city level. Despite the enticing trend of public private partnerships (PPPs), city governments should evaluate the available options using an objective approach such as Multi-Attribute Utility Analysis (MAUA). The technique takes into account prioritized assessment criteria (which are tailor-made for smart city projects) and the relative utilities of the procurement options in meeting the criteria. The methodology of MAUA is demonstrated through a questionnaire survey and a focus group meeting involving public and private sector practitioners, and applied to 8 types of common smart city projects in Hong Kong, which is one of the metropolises earmarked to become a smart city by putting concepts into practice. Results show that not all projects are best suited to PPP and that there may be divergent views between the public and private sectors, with possibilities for a compromised decision which both sectors would accept. • Smart city projects need substantial investment to scale up to city level. • A variety of approaches may be used for procuring such projects; including PPP. • Different smart city projects need to be assessed individually due to their unique characteristics. • Multi-Attribute Utility Analysis is an objective evaluation method suiting this purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]