Sustainable-Smart-Healthy Development Framework for Future Urban Imaginary: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Sustainable-smart-healthy (SSH) development is a popular yet challenging development trend globally. The value of sustainable urbanisation has been redefined by UN-Habitat, which, in addition to including three main aspects, namely economic, social, and environmental, sustainability also needs to be evaluated in terms of intangible and cultural values such as established institutions and cultural diversity. The holistic framework of creating such sustainable urbanisation still lacks evidence to answer the question of how to integrate the sustainable urbanisation components in building sustainable-smart-healthy social spaces. Therefore, this paper aims to propose a holistic SSH framework for urban imaginary – a sustainable-smart-healthy social space where people can live a prosperous and healthy urban lifestyle that benefits future generations. Through the systematic literature review methodology from the WoS and Scopus databases, important themes were constructed, i.e., the integration of intangible and cultural values, urban cyber-physical ecosystems, and smart instruments. Findings reveal that cultural heritage significantly influences urban identity and community engagement, while urban cyber-physical ecosystems enhance resource management and resilience. Additionally, smart instruments facilitate data-driven decision-making, optimising urban services and improving health outcomes. The proposed SSH framework provides a holistic approach to sustainable urban development, addressing the shortcomings of previous sustainable development frameworks that focused primarily on economic, social, and environmental dimensions. The critical debate also opines both the pros and cons on the impact of integrating these elements, thereby accentuating the need for proper participatory governance frameworks that strike a delicate balance between smart technology development and healthy cultural preservation. Study limitations include possible biases in the selected literature and the exclusion of non-English sources, which may restrict the comprehensiveness of the findings. This study has contributed to the existing sustainable development body of knowledge in conceptualising the sustainable-smart-healthy nexus by integrating intangible and cultural values, smart instruments, participatory governance and healthy-cultural sensitivity in developing sustainable future urban environments.