  Effective management of public shared spaces such as car parking space, is
one challenging transformational aspect for many cities, especially in the
developing World. By leveraging sensing technologies, cloud computing, and
Artificial Intelligence, Cities are increasingly being managed smartly. Smart
Cities not only bring convenience to City dwellers, but also improve their
quality of life as advocated for by United Nations in the 2030 Sustainable
Development Goal on Sustainable Cities and Communities. Through integration of
Internet of Things and Cloud Computing, this paper presents a successful
proof-of-concept implementation of a framework for managing public car parking
spaces. Reservation of parking slots is done through a cloud-hosted
application, while access to and out of the parking slot is enabled through
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology which in real-time,
accordingly triggers update of the parking slot availability in the
cloud-hosted database. This framework could bring considerable convenience to
City dwellers since motorists only have to drive to a parking space when sure
of a vacant parking slot, an important stride towards realization of
sustainable smart cities and communities.
