Readiness for smart sustainable urban development in Iraq using environmental, economic, and social indicators

Assessments of smart city preparedness usually compare cities against predefined indicators at a single point in time and do not account for how urban development changes over time. This study takes a longitudinal view of readiness for smart, sustainable urban development in Iraq, focusing on Baghdad, the capital and main urban core. Sixteen World Bank indicators for Iraq (1960–2024) were grouped into economic, environmental, and social dimensions following the United for Smart Sustainable Cities (U4SSC) framework. We examined trends using stationarity tests, principal component analysis, and forecasting models, comparing them with a simple no-change forecast. Fewer than half of the yearly values were recorded, so the analysis focuses on 2000–2024, when the records are most complete. Access to safe water, sanitation, electricity, and mobile and internet services improved steadily and together, largely as a shared trend over time. Environmental indicators such as air pollution, water stress, and renewable energy followed their own paths and did not improve alongside these services. The forecasting models rarely did better than assuming that the latest value would continue. Readiness is therefore uneven across dimensions, and a single combined score would hide the gap between improving services and lagging environmental conditions. The findings are relevant to smart urban design in other resource-constrained cities and point to the need for city-level data for Baghdad.