Assessing and Ranking EU Cities Based on the Development Phase of the Smart City Concept

Abstract

Policymakers face numerous challenges in benchmarking and assessing cities’ current development states. This study extends the understandings of previous research to provide a new perspective about how to rank smart cities’ developments by comparing the existing initiatives with city population density (as a proxy of socio-demographic characteristics) and the respective smart city phase. Quantitative analysis was performed to cluster the European Union cities according to the number of existing projects in the literature organized by smart city categories. Furthermore, to allow for the assessment of the city’s state, a composite indicator was developed that takes into consideration the different category weights to ultimately provide a smart city ranking. By clustering the categories using a Principal Component Analysis (PCA), it was possible to relate them with a specific smart city phase. In addition, for a reasonable benchmark, the city’s population density was considered. Moreover, this paper ranks the cities of the European Union and provides insightful information about the development phase of the smart city concept of each territory. The results show that on a normalized scale of 0 to 1000, the largest cities or the ones with most initiatives do not rank first. Furthermore, it shows that in similar socio-demographic contexts, there are variations in the smart city stage. Therefore, applying the contribution and findings of this research can help identify these differences and establish a set of best practices for improving the design and effectiveness of smart city strategies.