(Re)Considering Smart City Approach in Smart Economy Perspective: Evaluation of Konya Case

Abstract

It is aimed with this paper to put smart city into smart economy perspective by conceptual framework and analysis. The relation of smart economy components with local economic development have been discussed. Therefore, this study has three key parts. The first part highlights the smart city and smart economy literature. Smart city approach has been discussing in terms of institutional based, environment based and economic based. Smart economy is a new economic approach reflection of smart city approach. Smart economy as one of the component of smart city enables to increase attractiveness of current economic sectors like finance, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), service and cultural. It enables to occur new economic sectors (sharing economy and clean/green economy). Therefore, the second part investigates the effectiveness of smart economic approach in Turkey with case specific method. Konya in Turkey was selected for testing of smart city inquiry by using municipality’ website & TURKSTAT data with LQ analysis. According to these findings, Konya may not be seen as a real smart city in smart economy perspective due to two reasons. The first reason is current economic sectors under the entrepreneurship have not developed sufficiently according to LQ analysis results. The second reason why Konya may not be a smart city that sharing and cluster based economy have not become popular adequately and production of data about these issues is underestimated. Therefore, third part includes opportunities and limits determined to be smart city especially in economic perspective in the future.