QUANTUM TECHNOLOGIES FOR SMART CITIES: A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW AND ANALYSIS

Conventional smart city technologies are based on typical von Neumann architectures in which single units of data are coded in the form of either “0” or “1.” Novel urban quantum technologies, on the other hand, are based on the fundamental principles of quantum physics and, thus, transcend the conventions of classic computer architectures. Although having substantial technological potential and managerial relevance for smart cities of the near future, they are still rarely investigated in smart city literature and, in general, as a breakthrough business model. Moreover, no scholarly articles exist on the potential contributions of quantum technologies to different facets of conventional smart city technologies, for example, cloud computing, AI, and blockchain. This article aims to bridge the ontological gap between the two types of urban technology. Accordingly, we perform a detailed thematic synthesis of two types of quantum technologies having the highest implementation potential within different urban infrastructures and, more generally, for thriving urban techno-systems: quantum computing and quantum communication. This is achieved through a semi-systematic literature review of 80 scholarly documents on the topic within the domain of social sciences. Then, we establish a comprehensive taxonomy of conventional (non-quantum) smart city technologies based on a lexical analysis of over 500 abstracts of scholarly documents on different technological aspects of smart cities. Finally, we relate the two classes of technologies—conventional smart city technologies, and urban quantum technologies—through quantitative content analysis of 80 papers identified and retrieved for the prior thematic synthesis. For this goal, principal component analysis is performed, complemented by agglomerative hierarchical clustering.