Human-Centric, Sustainable and Resilient Smart Cities in Industry 5.0

Human-Centric, Sustainable and Resilient Smart Cities in Industry 5.0: History

Please note this is an old version of this entry, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Contributor: Athanasios Tsipis , Vasileios Komianos , Georgios Tsoumanis

The concept of “human-centric, sustainable and resilient smart cities” in Industry 5.0 (I5.0) refers to urban socio-technical ecosystems in which digital infrastructures and services are explicitly oriented toward human well-being, ecological stewardship, and systemic resilience rather than purely technological optimization or automation. Grounded in the I5.0 framework, which promotes human-centricity, sustainability, and resilience as equally important pillars, this paradigm repositions smart cities as value-driven environments that integrate enabling technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), Extended Reality (XR), and related digital infrastructures within participatory, transparent, ethical, and accountable governance structures. From this perspective, technologies function as means through which cities develop higher-order capabilities for sensing, decision support, coordination, interaction, and adaptive service delivery. At the same time, they address digital divides and include measures that promote and protect inclusion, trust, and long-term socio-environmental viability. This entry synthesizes the conceptual foundations, technological enablers, capability-oriented architecture, governance implications, and emerging challenges that influence the transformation of smart cities into human-centric, sustainable, and resilient innovation systems in the I5.0 era.

Industry 5.0
smart cities
human-centricity
sustainability
resilience
human–machine collaboration
quality of life
disruptive technologies
Smart City 2.0
Society 5.0

Smart cities ^[1] constitute one of the most influential and contested paradigms of contemporary urban transformation. Across policy, research, and practice, the term has been used to describe initiatives leveraging digital technologies to support urban services, governance, and everyday life. While early approaches emphasized efficiency, optimization, and technological modernization, recent scholarship reframes smart cities as socio-technical ecosystems whose outcomes depend on governance, institutional capacity, and value alignment ^[2]^[3].

This evolution aligns with the emergence of Industry 5.0 (I5.0) ^[4], which reorients digital transformation around human-centricity, sustainability, and resilience, positioning technology as a means for societal well-being ^[5]. These principles extend to smart cities, where digital infrastructures increasingly mediate services, experiences, and responses to long-term risks.

Despite this convergence, a persistent analytical gap remains. The existing literature typically examines either technological enablers (e.g., Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), Extended Reality (XR)) or normative dimensions such as participation, ethics, and sustainability, often in isolation. Consequently, the relationship between technological configurations and the ways cities generate public value remains insufficiently articulated ^[6], limiting comparability across contexts and complicating governance and evaluation.

To address this limitation, this entry adopts a capability-oriented perspective. Different from past work that treats technologies as determinants of transformation, the focus here is on the capabilities cities develop through their configuration and governance. These capabilities, such as sensing, anticipatory decision-making, coordination, participatory interaction, and secure operation, mediate between technological infrastructures and societal outcomes. This perspective provides an analytical layer that enables synthesis across technologies and clarifies how digital systems translate into policy-relevant urban functions.

The contribution of this entry, therefore, lies in structuring this perspective into a coherent framework that connects I5.0 principles, technological enablers, and urban capabilities, moving beyond technology-centric inventories and purely normative discussions. The objective is not to propose new technologies or empirical models, but to provide a conceptual structure for understanding how smart cities can be interpreted, governed, and evaluated under the I5.0 paradigm. By organizing technological enablers through a capability taxonomy and linking them to human-centric, sustainable, and resilient outcomes, the entry supports both academic synthesis and policy-oriented analysis.

The remainder of the entry is structured as follows. Section 2 outlines the conceptual and policy background of smart cities. Section 3 elaborates the three core values of I5.0. Section 4 reviews the main technological enablers underpinning contemporary and emerging smart cities. Section 5 introduces the capability-oriented taxonomy and its integrated framework. Section 6 discusses governance, policy, and evaluation implications, while Section 7 presents open challenges and future directions. Section 8 concludes the entry.

This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/encyclopedia6040087

References

Kondepudi, S.N. Smart Sustainable Cities: An Analysis of Definitions; Technical Report; International Telecommunication Union: Geneva, Switzerland, 2014; Available online: https://www.itu.int/en/itu-t/focusgroups/ssc/documents/approved_deliverables/tr-definitions.docx (accessed on 17 March 2026).
Trencher, G. Towards the smart city 2.0: Empirical evidence of using smartness as a tool for tackling social challenges. Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change 2019, 142, 117–128.
Del-Real, C.; Ward, C.; Sartipi, M. What do people want in a smart city? Exploring the stakeholders’ opinions, priorities and perceived barriers in a medium-sized city in the United States. Int. J. Urban Sci. 2023, 27, 50–74.
European Commission and Directorate-General for Research and Innovation. Industry 5.0, a Transformative Vision for Europe–Governing Systemic Transformations Towards a Sustainable Industry; Publications Office of the European Union: Luxembourg, Luxembourg, 2021.
European Commission: Directorate-General for Research and Innovation. Industry 5.0–Towards a Sustainable, Human-Centric and Resilient European Industry; Publications Office of the European Union: Luxembourg, Luxembourg, 2021.
Mishra, P.; Thakur, P.; Singh, G. Sustainable Smart City to Society 5.0: State-of-the-Art and Research Challenges. SAIEE Afr. Res. J. 2022, 113, 152–164.

© Text is available under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.