GLOBAL SMART CITIES AND THE CONDITIONS FOR URBAN ATTRACTIVENESS

Smart cities have been conquering more space into debates about city management and have been treated as attractive cities to talents, tourists, visitors, and investors due to the alliance between innovation, environmental quality, and social and cultural inclusion, in a context of open governance and connectivity to the global economy, aiming to provide a better quality of life to citizens. Therefore, it can be understood that smart cities are connected to urban attractiveness. Given this context, this study aimed to verify the relation between the degree of intelligence and the level of urban attractiveness in global smart cities in the rankings Cities in Motion (IESE), Global 150 Cities Index (AIRINC), and Destinations (Euromonitor). Knowing that the levels of urban attractiveness may have different perspectives and can be measured in many ways, we chose to relate the degree of cities’ intelligence to their lifestyle and consumption and then the level of cities’ intelligence to the flow of people. This is a quantitative and descriptive study since it used descriptive statistics through least-squares partial regression. Our findings showed a strong positive correlation between the cities’ levels of intelligence, lifestyle, and consumption. Nonetheless, the relation between the level of intelligence and the flow of people was not confirmed in these cities. It can be observed that such flow can create challenges to a smart city, such as the disordered occupation of spaces, practices of land misuse, consumption patterns, among others.