Running Head: Building Smart Urbanization 1

Building Smart Urbanization: A Rhetorical Analysis of “Internet of Things for Smart Cities” by
Andrea Zanella, Nicola Bui, Angelo Castellani, Lorenzo Vangelista, and Michele Zorzi

Anh Nguyen

Northeastern University

ENGW 3315 Sec. 09 Spring 2018

Interdisciplinary Advanced Writing

Dr. M. Pearson

February 15th, 2018

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Abstract
The following paper is an analysis on the usage of rhetorical arrangement in a scholarly engineering
article. This paper attempts to scrutinize the motivations, presentation, and effects of the layout of ideas,
reasoning, and evidences that the authors of the article have chosen to convey their concepts of “smart
cities”. The rhetorical element of ​arrangement​ in the article is studied to reveal the implications of the
authors’ choices of the organization of their ideas, evidences, and arguments, which are formulaically
progressive and laced with real-life examples in explaining their concept of “smart cities” for the wider
audience base, while reserving a separate section providing technical evidences to persuade more
specialized readers.
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Building Smart Urbanization: A Rhetorical Analysis of “Internet of Things for Smart Cities” by
Andrea Zanella, Nicola Bui, Angelo Castellani, Lorenzo Vangelista, and Michele Zorzi

Introduction

In the smart, computer-integrated, and connection-reliant society of the 21​st​ century, the field of computer
engineering has come to revolve around satisfying and improving on ways users live, work, and
communicate. However, as developers advance into different products and services trying to fulfill
discrete purposes, this market fragments into disconnected networks of applications and products. These
separate networks’ un-interoperable data are rarely useful outside of their own independent platforms.
Thus, the concept of a cohesive systematic data-driven environment is embraced with an aim to
streamline life processes into seamless interactions not only among people, but also between them and
their environments. Assessing this idea of “Internet of Things” (IoT), and its possible framework has
principal implications to realizing a highly feasible solution of smart communities, which are particularly
important in dense dynamic urban areas of high productivity, robust cultures, and inter-connected
lifestyles.

The engineering team of Zanella, Bui, Castellani, Vangelista, and Zorzi (2014) attempted to approach this
question with their framework of “smart cities”, where various layers of data-driven services,
application-controlled infrastructures, and network-connected users are at work simultaneously. The
development, utilization, and optimization of such a large-scale concept is evidently complex but highly
impactful in its transforming the city landscape into a connect system of monitorable technology. The
authors, therefore, at their best interests as engineers striving to realize the potential of this idea, have
made a conscious rhetorical decision to present their argument with a top-down approach to appeal to the
general audience on the project’s potentials and inform more well-versed adepts of its structure. As the
rhetorical canon of ​arrangement​ is, described by Covino and Jolliffe (1995), as “the art of ordering the
material text so that it is most appropriate for the needs of the audience and the purpose of the text is
designed to accomplish” (p. 341), the use of this expanding layout is examined in the scope of its
contribution towards the effectiveness of argument, in ways that it is able to “first capture the audience’s
attention, second to offer background information, third to improve the text’s thesis or central idea, fourth
to anticipate a countertheses, and finally to appeal to the audience’s emotion” (Covino, Jolliffe, 1995, p.
341).

Summary

In their paper named “Internet of Things for Smart Cities” published in the ​Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers​ ​Internet of Things Journal​ in the year of 2014, the authors, Andrea Zanella, Nicola
Bui, Angelo Castellani, Lorenzo Vangelista, and Michele Zorzi, presents a framework of urban planning
where the concept of IoT would play a major role in the potential of multiple industries and networks
ranging from industrial computerization and public traffic management to medical system optimization
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and home automation (Zanella et al, 2014 p. 22). Their study analyzes a technical framework for the
concept of smart urbanization, then deconstructs it down into the layers of services and characteristics of
urban IoT with the related technologies behind its possible realization, and finally exhibits an example
experiment of the “Padova Smart City” project as a prototype deployment. Their discussion on the
technical solutions for urban IoT generally argues towards feasibility of a network of interconnected
urban infrastructure and inter-communicable resources in the same protocol how smart mobile devices are
connected to the Internet at the current time, with in-depth technical analysis of the technology involved
and the architecture underneath such technology, including web-based approach general system design,
connection protocols, and nodal devices.

Body
Introduction:

The paper begins its introduction with basics of the Internet of Things, displays its dominant features, and
reveals the current difficulties of its heterogeneous nature. Zanella et al (2014) move to establish the
fundamental elements offered by ​urban IoT​ to as a point of interest to solve these problems. This
exposition of a problem-solution relationship provides the author’s exigence, or purpose, of presenting
this study: to realize a high-tech revolution in the context of large city-wide communities. They assert
their aims as to “make a better use of the public resources, increasing the quality of the services offered to
the citizens, while reducing the operational costs of the public administrations” (Zanella et al, 2014, p.
22). Similar to the way Keith Grant-Davie (1997) describes exigence as an answer to the questions of
“what the discourse is about, why it is needed, and what it should accomplish” (p. 266), this study’s
exigence takes form as the argument presents the problem, notes its impacts, and sketches an outline of
the rest of the study dedicated to analyzing and fortifying the framework of “Smart City”. At this point,
the introduction has invited the audience into the conversation using the writers’ clear presentation of
their purposes, completing the first step of an effective argumentative arrangement, as described by
Covino and Jolliffe (1995) “first capture the audience’s attention” (p.341).

General Concept Analysis:

The study reserves the first functional segment for an overview of the underlying layers commonly
associated with the abstract of smart urbanization. Here the authors backed the general idea of “Smart
City” with a careful concept breakdown, where the evidences presented are mostly qualitative and highly
comprehensible without technical background, complying with the second order of an effective
arrangement ​to “provide background information” (Covino, Jolliffe, 1995, p. 341). This overview serves
as a foundation for the audience before transitioning to a deeper level of the engineering architecture. The
authors’ rhetorical moves, at this point, demonstrate an inclusive view of their audience base, not only of
the technically inclined but also of those who are interested in this impactful topic. More importantly,
prior to shifting into the more complex technological framework, this approach reveals the intentions of
the writers to appeal to the community encapsulated by this discourse, including the people within the
discipline involved with the innovation and the people in the community potentially affected by its
implementation.
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Technical Sections & Subheadings:

The authors then transition to a more in-depth analysis with a focus for those educated in the field of
computer engineering. In order to support the structural elements delineated by the overview in previous
section, Zanella et al (2014) deconstructs the architecture of “Smart City” into smaller subsections
concerning the three main elements of smart urbanization: “Web Service Approach for IoT Service
Architecture,” “Link Layer Technologies,” and “Devices,” which respectively showcases the model of the
system, the communication between the system’s agents, and these agents themselves. Under each
section, subheadings are provided to further clarify the layers of the architecture. Following the rhetorical
arrangement​’s third and crucial purpose of substantiating the text’s central idea, these section names and
their subheadings indicate the level of relative relevance to which each of the technologies described in
the subsections contribute to the section’s main focus. For example, the subheadings of “Backend
Servers,” “Gateways,” “IoT Peripheral Nodes” under the last section of “Devices” move the focus from
the center of the system, where the servers are centralized around, to the connection from such server, and
ultimately to the end-device situating on the boundaries of the system.

Proof-of-concept Example:

Due to its high complexity and large-scale implementation of the system previously presented, the
exhibition of the experimental study on the “Padova Smart City” appears to be highly deliberate in the
order of providing a proof-of-concept example in anticipation of potential concerns. Necessarily, this
real-life implementation of the idea, regardless of its smaller size and experimental nature, gives answers
to potential questions over the practicality of the project, the timeliness of such approach, and the
usefulness of the results. The discussion of this study effectively follows the fourth order of ​arrangement​,
where one attempts to anticipate a countertheses.

Conclusion

In their study named “Internet of Things for Smart City” (2014), Zanella et al’s approach to present their
argument exemplifies the effectiveness of mindful arrangement in the context of presenting, analyzing,
and arguing a scientific study. The strategy utilized by the authors appears to be closely modeled after the
Covino & Jolliffe’s description of ​arrangement​. Indeed, gradual breakdown progression of this article
strives to widen the breadth of its reader base while still supplying the technical information commonly
expected of a research study. While the analysis of the study’s content organization reveals the limitations
of a formulaic scientific paper in the purpose of appealing to the audience’s emotions, further analysis and
comparison of different element of rhetorics and different article within the same topic could further
exhibit the effects of ​arrangement​. On the other hand, the discussion raised by the paper suggests realistic
implications for the widely impactful concept of smart urbanization and its potential within the near
future.
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References

Covino, W. and Jolliffe, D. (1995). “What is Rhetoric?” in Writing about Writing: A College

Reader. Eds. Elizabeth Wardle & Douglas Downs. 2nd ed. Boston: Bedford St. Martin.

pp. 327-345.

Grant-Davie, K. (1997). “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents.” ​Rhetoric Review​. vol. 15

No. 2 Spring. (pp. 264-279).

Zanella, A., Bui, N., Castellani, A., Vangelista L., & Zorzi, M. (2014). “Internet of Things for Smart

Cities.” ​IEEE Internet of Things Journal​. Vol. 1, No. 1 (pp. 22-32).