Edinburgh Napier University

  Many in the academic community find claims made about the virtuous nature of smart cities dumbfounding. In that sense left not only bewildered by the claims which academics make about the virtues of smart cities, but the audacious nature of the expectations advocates of them as developments based on the future internet also harbour. In surveying the foundations of smart cities as developments based on the future internet, this paper shall address the bewilderment over the claims made about the virtues of smart cities by academics and audacious nature of the expectations the IEA, IRENA, UN, WB and WHO now also harbour of them as developments based on the future internet. In rendering both the virtues of smart cities and audacious nature of them as future internet-based developments, the paper shall reveal how cities can be smart in developing the future internet as a basis to meet the social challenge adapting to climate change poses. This shall go some way to close a gap that has opened in the past decade over the foundations of smart cities by reporting on the results of a case-study into the metrics of future internet-based developments. Those metrics that provide smart cities with a system of measurements which link the informatics of digital technologies to data management platforms and connect the infrastructures of future internet-based developments to the management of natural resources. To the management of natural resources as environments that in turn relate the energetic of climate change adaptation strategies to a metabolic which serves to green the intellectual capital of urban and regional innovation systems. Green the intellectual capital of urban and regional innovation systems and qualify whether in meeting the social challenge SDG7 poses this keeps 1.5 alive.