The fact that more and more people live in cities brings new and complex social, environmental and technological challenges that need to be addressed in urban planning and management. The concept of smart cities, aiming at improving the quality of life of urban dwellers through modern technologies and approaches, should be the solution. Although many concepts (models, frameworks, etc.) exist, no globally and uniformly accepted definition characterises the form and functioning of such a smart city. However, there is one thing that most of these concepts have in common, and that is their techno-centric approach, which puts the implementation of modern technologies above all else. However, the problem is that they neglect the most essential component of the city, the inhabitants themselves. Therefore, this paper aims to highlight the crucial role of the inhabitants and their affective state in the city’s functioning through the so-called citizen-centric approach and using affective computing and artificial intelligence. A suitable framework for this is the Socio-ecological-technological system (SETS). We propose to enhance the SETS model by integrating affective computing into the socio-technological (S-T) domain and artificial intelligence into the technological (T) domain. Due to the close links within the SETS system, this change will affect these domains and significantly overlap with the social (S) domain, where well-being is crucial.