Smart and Sustainable Cities Through Short Supply Chains of Food

The world in general and cities in particular face tremendous challenges at the environmental, social, economic and institutional levels. Currently, cities need to be sustainable and smart. As our better knowledge, most of the literature explores the concept of smart cities from the point of view of information and communications technology unless the connection with the social and sustainability aspects remains unsolved. This paper tries to overcome this gap in the literature. The main aim is to analyse the contribution of short supply chains of foods in terms of the sustainability of smart cities. The methods include a scoping revision of the literature. Information and data also come from the preliminary results from the SGDsCONSUM project. The results confirm the positive impacts of short supply chains of food in urban areas towards smart and sustainable cities. The conclusions of this paper will be helpful for scholars and public decisionmakers to implement their policies accordingly.

Smart and sustainable cities in the Mediterranean region: The contribution of short supply chains of food

The cities around the world in general, and in the Mediterranean area in particular, are facing tremendous challenges at the environmental, social, economic, and institutional levels, due to the urbanization trend, environmental climatic changes and challenges due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, cities need to be sustainable and smart in the future. An economically important and innovative sector in urban areas is food security. Nowadays, most of the literature explores the concept of smart cities from the point of view of information and communications technology, indeed, the connection with the sustainability aspects of the food supply chain and the ways to operationalize that, remains unsolved. This paper tries to overcome this gap in the literature. The main aim is to analyze the contribution of the short supply chain of food in terms of sustainability in smart cities, regarding current urban trends in cities in general and in Mediterranean areas in particular. The methodology was based on a literature review and includes quantitative and qualitative analysis. The results confirm the existence of positive impacts in the short supply chains of food in urban areas in terms of sustainability. Despite the existence of a considerable number of papers about smart cities and ICT-related topics, the benefits from society of short supply chains of food, and the linkage among the topics and subjects, remain unreferred to or with a limited knowledge exchange. The conclusions of this paper will be helpful for public decision makers to implement policies in order to promote the sustainability of Mediterranean cities. © 2021 by the author(s).