Providing a conceptual framework for urban metaverse development in smart cities: Analyzing the role of technological drivers

Saeidi Aghdam, Mehran; Salehi Kamamardekhi, Seyyed Kamil; Haj Nasrallahi, Massoud; Mahioun, Seyed Ali

doi:10.22034/jtd.2025.2062824.2008

Providing a conceptual framework for urban metaverse development in smart cities: Analyzing the role of technological drivers

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Mehran saeidi aghdam ¹

Seyyed Kamil Salehi Kamamardekhi ²

Massoud Haj Nasrallahi ³

seyed ali mahioun ⁴

¹ Entrepreneurship Department, Qazvin Branch, Islamic Azad University, Qazvin, Iran

² Assistant Professor, Department of Public Administration and Urban Management, Allameh Tabatabaei University, Tehran, Iran

³ Department of Business Administration, Qazvin Branch, Islamic Azad University, Qazvin, Iran

⁴ Department of Financial Management, Zanjan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Zanjan, Iran

10.22034/jtd.2025.2062824.2008

Abstract

The emergence of the metaverse, a combination of virtual and augmented realities, provides extensive possibilities for social interaction, economic transactions, and digital innovation. In fact, the metaverse promises an inclusive and unrestricted environment and has broad development and application prospects. The present study aims to provide a conceptual framework for the development of the urban metaverse in the context of smart cities. Given the technological developments and the emergence of immersive virtual environments, the metaverse has been proposed as one of the new perspectives in the future of urban management and life. This study attempts to identify and analyze the factors affecting the development of the urban metaverse by focusing on three key dimensions, including technological drivers such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, blockchain, the Internet of Things, and 5G networks, organizational and governance dimensions (such as transparent policymaking, digital leadership, and data governance), and the environmental and socio-cultural dimension (including cultural acceptance, digital literacy, and digital justice).
The research method of this study is applied in terms of purpose and survey in terms of implementation. The results of testing the hypotheses showed that all three technological, organizational, and environmental dimensions have a significant effect on the development of urban metaverse. In particular, the technological dimension with a high impact coefficient plays the role of the main driver. Finally, the proposed conceptual model had a good fit and is capable of explaining the structures affecting the development of urban metaverse.

Keywords

Urban metaverse

smart city

technological drivers

digital governance

digital literacy and justice

Subjects

technological capability

Allam, Z., Sharifi, A., Bibri, S. E., Jones, D. S., & Krogstie, J. (2022). The metaverse as a virtual form of smart cities: Opportunities and challenges for environmental, economic, and social sustainability in urban futures. Smart Cities, 5(3), 771-801.

Aurigi Alessandro (2022), Smart cities, metaverses, and the relevance of place IET Smart Cities, https:// doi.org/ 10. 1049/ smc2. 12030

Bibri, S. E. (2022). The social shaping of the metaverse as an alternative to the imaginaries of data-driven smart Cities: A study in science, technology, and society. Smart Cities, 5(3), 832-874.

Bibri, S. E., & Krogstie, J. (2020b). The emerging data–driven Smart City and its innovative applied solutions for sustainability: the cases of London and Barcelona. Energy Informatics, 3(1), 5. https:// doi.org/ 10. 1186/ s42162- 020- 00108-6

Bibri, S. E., & Zaheer, Allam. (2022). The Metaverse as a Virtual Form of Data- Driven Smart Urbanism: On Post-Pandemic Governance through the Prism of the Logic of Surveillance Capitalism. Smart Cities, 5(2), 715–727.

Bosworth, A., & Nick, C. (2022). Building the Metaverse Responsibly https://about. fb.com/news/2021/09/building-the-metaverse-responsibly.

Bosworth, Andrew and Clegg Nick 202, Building the Metaverse Responsibly https:// about. fb.com/ news/ 2021/ 09/ build ing- the- metav erse- respo nsibly/ Accessed 23/02/2022

Bridge, G. (2009). Urbanism. In R. Kitchin & N. Thrift (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (pp. 106–111). Elsevier.

Calvo, P. (2020). The ethics of Smart City (EoSC): Moral implications of hyperconnectivity, algorithmization and the datafication of urban digital society. Ethics and Information Technology, 22(2), 141–149. https:// doi.org/ 10. 1007/ s10676- 019- 09523-0

Criollo-C, S., Govea, J., J´ativa, W., Pierrottet, J., Guerrero-Arias, A., Jaramillo- Alc´azar, ´A., & Luj´an-Mora, S. (2023). Towards the Integration of Emerging Technologies as Support for the Teaching and Learning Model in Higher Education. Sustainability (Switzerland), 15(7).

De Giovanni, P. (2023). Sustainability of the Metaverse: A Transition to Industry 5.0. Sustainability (Switzerland), 15(7).

Higginbotham, G. (2021). Virtual Connections: Improving Global Neurosurgery through Immersive Technologies [Perspective]. Frontiers in Surgery, 8. https://doi.org/ 10.3389/fsurg.2021.629963

Johri, A., Joshi, P., Kumar, S., & Joshi, G. (2024). Metaverse for Sustainable Development in a bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 435, Article 140610.https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jclepro.2024.140610

Kitchin, R. (2016). The ethics of smart cities and urban science. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society a: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 374(2083), 1–15. https:// doi.org/ 10. 1098/ rsta. 2016. 0115

Lee, L.H., Braud, T., Zhou, P., Wang, L., Xu, D., Lin, Z., Kumar, A., Bermejo, C., Hui, P. (2024). All one needs to know about metaverse: A complete survey on technological singularity, virtual ecosystem, and research agenda. arXiv, 2110.05352.

Marvin, S., Luque-Ayala, A., & McFarlane, C. (Eds.). (2016). Smart urbanism: Utopian vision or false dawn? London: Routledge.

McFarlane, C., & Soderstrom, O. (2017). On alternative smart cities: from a technology-intensive to a knowledge-intensive smart urbanism. City, 21, 312–328. https:// doi.org/ 10. 1080/ 13604 813. 2017. 13271 66.

Monaco, S., & Sacchi, G. (2023). Travelling the Metaverse: Potential Benefits and Main Challenges for Tourism Sectors and Research Applications. Sustainability (Switzerland), 15(4).

Pellegrino, A., Wang, R., & Stasi, A. (2023). Exploring the intersection of sustainable consumption and the Metaverse: A review of current literature and future research directions. Heliyon, 9(9), Article e19190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023. e19190

Rajguru, K., & Brüggemann, P. (2024). Sustainability meets metaverse: A conceptual framework of sustainable dimensions of the metaverse. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 23(5), 2720–2729.

Sharifi, A., Khavarian-Garmsir, A. R., & Kummitha, R. K. R. (2021). Contributions of smart city solutions and technologies to resilience against the COVID-19 pandemic: A literature review. Sustainability, 13(14), 8018.

Stephenson, N. (2003). Snow Crash: A Novel. Random House Publishing Group.

Taylor, S., & Soneji, S. (2022). Bioinformatics and the metaverse: are we ready?. Frontiers in bioinformatics, 2, 863676.

Verrest, H., & Pfeffer, K. (2019). Elaborating the urbanism in smart urbanism: Distilling relevant dimensions for a comprehensive analysis of Smart City approaches. Information, Communication & Society, 22(9), 1328–1342. https:// doi.org/ 10. 1080/ 13691 18X. 2018. 14249 21