Current Context of Urban Development in China: Collaborative Innovation for Smart Cities

Smart cities haves been a prevailing topic under the global trend of sustainable development over the past decade in relation to Sustainable Cities and Communities Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) No. 13, a goal of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. China has deployed its initial plan of developing smart cities in pilot regions since 2012 and has boosted its development in recent years while under pressure from the COVID-19 pandemic. This chapter focuses on applying cutting-edge artificial intelligence technologies to smart transportation. This is an essential part of the smart city concept, especially the integration of data analysis, electric vehicles, and green energies. China has established the overall layout of its system and related classification of cities. In general, the majority of leading metropolises have been upgraded from technical means to collaborative innovation that integrates a variety of emerging technologies. In this chapter, the authors analyze policy incentives in pilot regions. Then, application results and recent achievements of the pilot regions have then been investigated accordingly. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic has created a major challenge in the midst of smart cities development in China. Some cities have demonstrated sound implementation of smart city construction, leveraging on the Internet, big data, artificial intelligence, and other information technologies. These technologies have fundamentally improved the level of refinement and intelligence of urban governance and management, thus enhancing epidemic control. The chapter concludes with a summary and discussion of future industrial development for smart cities in China in relation to sustainable development.