Increasing urbanization cannot be avoided and occurs throughout the world, including in Indonesia. Population growth in urban areas has various impacts in almost all dimensions of life. One of the innovative efforts made by the government to overcome these problems is to develop and implement the concept of a smart city, by utilizing information and communication technology (ICT) to provide services to improve the quality of life of the community and maintain the sustainability of the urban environment. This study discusses a literature review on environmental quality degradation which occurs in urban Indonesia as well as initiatives in one of the dimensions of a smart city, namely the smart environment, which can be applied to overcome these environmental problems. The literature review shows that the application of IoT by using sensors and RFID, data cloud, and Twitter has been proven successful in overcoming some environmental problems. © The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2020.