New approaches to assessing well-being in smart cities

A series of recent socio-economic crises has increased the attention of researchers and politicians to the topic of well-being. Relevance. Caused by the emergence of new challenges associated with rapid development of technological and digital environment of world cities, which carries both new opportunities and risks for humans. On the one hand, digitalization makes it possible to increase the accessibility, quality and volume of municipal services for citizens and, accordingly, has a positive effect on the level of well-being of citizens. Information and communication technologies tools allow adapting quickly and flexibly urban environment to the changing needs of the most active part of the urban population as the driver of territory development, monitoring and adjusting the level of human well-being in urban environment. On the other hand, the problem of growing digital development, technological vulnerability, especially in conditions of growing external competition and sanctions, lack of digital competencies among some social categories of citizens, psychological problems of social frustration, isolation, disunity, weakening of social contacts, including intra-family, etc. Aim. Review of existing approaches to assessing urban development and substantiation of the need to develop a new approach to assessing well-being in the digital environment of smart cities. Methods. The comparison method is used as the main one. The concepts of “smart city”, “smart nation”, “smart society” are analyzed. The experience and prospects for developing approaches to assessing well-being in the urban environment, including existing global and national indices and ratings (UN Urban Prosperity Index, City Life Index, City IQ Index, Regions and Cities Sustainability Ratings, Smart City Index, City in motion Index, Quality of Life Index based on the value structure of the city/citizens, Urban Success Index, Urban Cultural Capital Index, Global Cities Innovation Index etc.) are analyzed. Results. The results obtained allow us to draw conclusions about the predominant attention to the technological component
and insufficient attention to the social and psychological aspects of increasing urbanization and digitalization
and the transition from the smart city to the smart municipal governance is preferable. The need to combine approaches related to the use of human-saving and digital technologies was emphasized, especially in the context of overcoming the experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is concluded that an integrated approach to assessing human well-being in the digital environment of smart cities has yet to be developed and cooperation within the EAEU and BRICS as a promising direction for further development of approaches to assessing well-being in cities with the prospect of localizing the developed ratings and indices. The work of the inter-university consortium “Human Well-Being in the Digital Environment of Smart Cities” will be aimed at solving this problem.