Livable City: Broadening the Smart City Paradigm, Insights from Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Quality of life, or Livability, is one of the most important objectives for any community worldwide. Over decades, people have recognized that some features can make places more or less livable. Whereas urbanism is the transformation of rural society into an urban one, the smart city is a paradigm that aims at employing technology to improve, in essence, Livability through sustainable integration of technology, the natural environment, and people’s needs. In line with the Saudi Vision 2030 objectives, which aim to take its cities to a level of sustainable urbanization that improves the Quality of Life, the Saudi Green initiative was announced early in 2021 to be the solid foundation for livable cities. This paper examines these developments and, against this backdrop, introduces a new feature to the smart cities paradigm, i.e., Livability.