A conceptual model of smart city development for King Hussein Business Park (KHBP), Amman, Jordan based on grounded theory

Smart city concept employs information technology (IT) in addressing challenges related to sustainable growth. The smart city considers issues of over population, infrastructure deficit, economic growth, and technology adoption, and then incorporates IT-based solutions in the urban construction, planning, and services delivery. Currently, Amman in Jordan is experiencing a speedy expansion in population with several potential threats on sustainability due to increased pollution from industries, deficit in infrastructure, and insecurity. These issues resulted in the idea of evolving KHBP into a smart city to accommodate modern development in a sustainable manner. While a number of studies assessed smart city models that are not comprehensive due to lack of engagement of all stakeholders (residents and the private sector) in the process of developing the models, the models also focused only on analysing the conceptual connotations or applications in specific domains that suffers from lack of replicability. These issues have led to significant barriers for individual smart projects especially considering the dynamic nature of regions and economic disparity. In complementing the limitations in existing models, this study incorporated several perspectives in developing a new smart city model for KHBP. The qualitative design was used for this study based on Grounded Theory methods. The participants comprised various stakeholders in KHBP including the government, private sectors, residents, and business owners/managers. Findings revealed six significant factors in the KHBP smart city model. These category included accelerating economic growth, evolving security, improving the environment, developing human capital, empowering ruling management, and strengthening infrastructure. This framework will further help to integrate the need of multiple stakeholders, including the government, private sectors, residents, and businesses. Finally, the implementation of KHBP smart city model based on this framework was discussed. The applications of this framework can effectively eliminate barriers to sustainable growth of KHBP in Jordan. It also overcomes barriers to implementing smart city models relating to data from various stakeholders, especially the private sector thus avoiding redundant financial investments.