ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Cities
Sec. Innovation and Governance
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsc.2025.1675890
Supporting Sustainable Urban Transformation: A Feasibility Framework for Smart City Projects
Provisionally accepted
- Universitat Politecnica de Valencia - Campus de Alcoy, Alcoi, Spain
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Smart city initiatives are increasingly promoted as strategies to foster urban sustainability. However, their actual impact largely depends on the feasibility and success of individual projects through which these strategies are implemented. Despite this relevance, feasibility analyses remain scarce in the scientific literature, particularly for small and medium-sized cities, where limited resources and high opportunity costs demand careful decision-making. This study addresses this gap by proposing a comprehensive and practical framework specifically designed to evaluate the feasibility of smart city projects in resource-constrained contexts. The framework is developed through a systematic literature review and a multi-stage analysis, resulting in a structured set of 38 indicators grouped into five core subject areas: spatial-population impact, social perception, technical readiness, institutional capacity, and economic-financial viability. It comprises a descriptive component, which gathers essential project data, and an evaluative component, which applies multicriteria decision-making techniques (Analytic Hierarchy Process) to generate feasibility scores for each thematic dimension. The framework was applied to a case study of implemented projects in a small city, offering exploratory findings on its capacity to anticipate outcomes and laying the groundwork for broader empirical validation across diverse urban contexts. Spearman correlation results revealed the decisive role of social acceptance and institutional support, while showing that technical readiness, though necessary, is not sufficient on its own. Designed as a decision-support tool for policymakers and urban planners, the framework fosters more transparent and inclusive governance and aligns with international agendas such as the UN Sustainable Development Goal 11.
Keywords: Smart Cities, Urban sustainability, Sustainable urban development, Decision-support frameworks, Small and medium-sized cities, Project feasibility assessment
Received: 29 Jul 2025; Accepted: 02 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Esteban-Narro, Lo-Iacono-Ferreira and Torregrosa-López. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Rafael Esteban-Narro, raesnar@upv.edu.es
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