City Strategies Research Articles

Managing future cities: media and information and communication technologies in the context of change

Abstract Purpose The goal of this paper is to examine the usage of information technologies and media in two European case studies – Berlin and Warsaw. Findings from the research can be used to create urban policies and media infrastructure design, based on the different strategies of two European cities. Berlin and Warsaw have taken different paths in implementing the smart city concept, adapting the idea to their economic, historical, and social realities. Media are understood here as human-machine and machine-machine communications, and also in terms of both physical and digital media infrastructure. Methodology The research aims at examining strategies and institutions (both private and public) in light of the practical implementation of smart solutions by City Hall authorities. The study combines analysis of grey literature (news reports, corporate strategies, City Hall documentation) with qualitative research: 30 semi-structured interviews conducted with local municipalities and city planners in both cities. Findings Findings are likely to provide evidence potential drivers and barriers to the implementation of smart city solutions. The results provide evidence that media and information technologies in the city are implemented due to the data policies of entities that usually implement smart city strategy independently. The task of city authorities is to guarantee access to basic infrastructure, which is the basis for creating other solutions by private entities. Practical implications The empirical research is likely to provide evidence that Berlin and Warsaw have not yet fully appreciated the solutions based on communication between machines, but there is increasing use of ‘ad hoc’ solutions. Social implications This study may be used as a source of information for smart city managers, media infrastructure, and urban strategy with a focus on residents and information and communication technologies. Findings are addressed to media and urban experts and scholars, as well as sociologists, political scientists, engineers, ICT specialists, policy-makers, city managers and citizens. Value The study shows the growing importance of mobile devices, media-like services and ICT have resulted in changes in City Hall’s development strategies and new theoretical approaches through which the cities might be analysed. This study finds that networks, platforms and media infrastructure have been used to describe new ways of communication between city authorities, citizens and machines. It has been argued that fostering an advanced media infrastructure (soft and hard) has the potential to create “The Future City”.

Residents’ valuation of ecosystem services in a Mediterranean coastal dune ecosystem: The case of the Ritoque dunes in central Chile

Coastal dunes provide a variety of cultural and ecological ecosystem services to local communities. However, most of these ecosystems are globally threatened by anthropic factors. Chile is home to important dune ecosystems such as the emblematic Ritoque coastal dunes located in the hotspot for biodiversity conservation in central Chile where there is a delicate relationship between conservation and human development interests, among local communities and authorities. Here, we performed a choice experiment study to determined willingness to implement conservation measures in the Ritoque dunes. In particular, we assessed residents’ preferences for improvements of the current state of local ecosystem services such as scenic beauty, biodiversity and archaeological sites. Residents showed preferences for improvements in Ritoque coastal dunes’ ecosystem services, and a high willingness to pay for protecting biodiversity and archeological sites, rather than for recreational infrastructure. Our study highlights the importance of place-based research that specifically addresses residents and stakeholders’ conservation priorities, which could be used to design and implement effective conservation management strategies for coastal ecosystems and coastal cities near them.

Enhancing export product quality through innovative cities: A firm-level quasi-natural experiment in China

China plays a significant role in the global product supply chain through its exports. To remain competitive, Chinese firms need to manufacture products cost-effectively. Revamping innovative cities can contribute to this goal, but empirical evidence in this area is limited. Therefore, this paper scrutinizes the innovative city pilot policy’s consequences on firms’ export performance and product quality. We employ the time-varying Difference in Difference (DID) model and harness a comprehensive firm-by-product level database to estimate the co-movement between the pilot intervention and the performance of the export product. Based on the findings, we unveil that a smart intervened city can significantly boost firms’ export product quality, which still holds after multiple robustness checks. Furthermore, innovative cities heighten the quality of the manufactured products when we consider firm-level (i.e., private, foreign, and ordinary trade enterprises), industry-level (i.e., low-polluting, capital-intensive, and technology-intensive industries), and regional (i.e., Middle, and Western regions) heterogeneities. In addition, the intervened smart city strategy impacts the efficacy of export product quality through policy and innovation-driven effects. Over and above, policymakers and experts should support state-of-the-art ideas while considering local conditions, providing guidance for decision-making in China’s innovative development strategy.

Spatial-temporal impacts of landscape metrics and uses of land reclamation on coastal water conditions: The case of Macao

Land reclamation is a common strategy for coastal cities to expand their land territories. Although the marine environment degradation caused by land reclamation has been investigated in numerous studies, further exploration in terms of the spatial–temporal impacts of patterns and uses of reclaimed lands on the coastal environment is required to generate detailed policies for urban planning. Two-thirds of Macao’s territorial space has come from the ocean since the middle of the 19th century. Taking the land reclamation history in Macao from 1975 to 2018 as the empirical case, this study quantifies landscape metrics and uses of reclaimed lands through time, and further explores their impact on coastal water conditions by Granger causality tests, stepwise regression and land use regression across different spatial scales. Results show that landscape metrics have instant effects on the coastal water flow velocity and storm tide fluctuation, while various land uses are related to the coastal water turbidity and quality with a time lag length of two to three years after the land reclamation projects are completed. The strength of the relationship between land uses and coastal water conditions also depends upon spatial scales. The reclaimed land patterns with natural-like shorelines and ecological solutions in proximity to intensive coastal development are recommended to mitigate negative effects on coastal water conditions. Reasonable suggestions for efficient planning and management are provided in the findings that contribute to the environmentally friendly coastal development.

Recent Transformations in the Morphology of Spanish Medium-Sized Cities: From the Compact City to the Urban Area

Over the last few decades, within the framework of remarkable urban expansion accompanying a real-estate boom in Spain, it has been medium-sized cities that have registered the most drastic changes in morphology. Currently, about 50% of urbanised land was developed after 1980. Historically compact and dense urban structures have been transformed, with new urbanised spaces expanding into the outskirts. High land consumption has created sprawling, fragmented and scattered urban areas. These are new, more complex and multifunctional urban structures, and there has been a change in the scale of urbanisation, in the forms and in the resulting urban landscape. However, the growth model which has caused these transformations is defined by hardly sustainable land-use patterns. The number of medium-sized cities has increased by around 50%, while the number of houses built has grown by 109% and developed land by 87% between 1981 and 2021. This paper analyses these recent dynamics through the statistical treatment of growth patterns and their cartographic analysis using GIS technology. The significant modification of urban forms at this scale in the Spanish urban system is confirmed. The paper also reflects on the lack of sustainability in the prevailing model with respect to the 2030 city strategy.

Smartphone, startup, laboratory - What ambitions and visions do local government officials express by their smart city stories? Case study of Polish cities

The article is based on empirical research and presents a typology of five narratives in which the ‘smart city’ label is showed as metaphors: “smartphone”, “startup”, “laboratory”, “organism” and “agora”. The research covers the examples of three Polish cities: Gdansk, Warsaw and Wroclaw. We checked how this concept is explained and narrowed down to the framework of the city's strategy and legitimized by city makers. Each of the stories expounds the vision of the city, ways of achieving goals and the approach to residents as users. That might give weight to the nuanced idea and translate into the real urban policy.The conclusions of the study suggest that the smart city concept does not fundamentally change urban policies, but is rather inscribed in the adopted directions and vision, e.g. the city which was wanted to be perceived as academic, identifies “smart” with cooperation with the science sector etc. The results also show that smaller cities that use new technologies more modestly must look for other ways to refer to smart cities for strategic purposes.The empirical basis was the implementation of individual in-depth interviews with city officials, which was supplemented by an analysis of planning, strategic and reporting documents.

Evaluating future habitat quality responding to land use change under different city compaction scenarios in Southern China

Rapid urban expansion, accompanied by intense landscape changes, significantly affects natural habitats. Promoting sustainable urban development, such as the compact city strategy, is essential to balance ecosystem conservation and socio-economic development. Previous studies have generally focused on exploring the ecosystem impact of urban expansion concerning the future projections of climate, population, and economic development. Less attention has been paid to how different urban forms modify the landscape and affect habitats at a fine resolution. This study has built a framework to demonstrate future land use change under various city compaction scenarios using a bottom-up Cellular Automata (CA) model and a top-down Markov model. Then the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Trade-offs (InVEST) model was incorporated to evaluate the resultant habitat quality. By taking the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) as the study area, three future compact city scenarios in 2040 and 2060 were proposed to examine the accumulative effect of urban growth. The results show that by 2040, the high-compact scenario will cause the highest habitat quality degradation among all scenarios due to marked cropland displacement induced by urban edge expansion. By 2060, intensified medium or low-compact scenarios tend to create new urban clusters outside the existing urban areas, resulting in severe habitat isolation and fragmentation. The GBA presents significant spatial heterogeneity in habitat quality variation because of the uneven development between the core and key node cities. Our results suggest that a collaborative strategy should be promoted to motivate the unique advantages of each city. This could include maintaining the amount and connectivity of open space under city integration processes and reserving high-quality cropland, such as fish-pod-based agriculture, to mitigate habitat quality degradation. This study can provide insights for developing long-term land use management when applying compact city strategies to balance ecological conservation and urban development needs.

Agent-based simulation model of cyclists and pedestrians at a regional scale

Abstract. Mobility data of cyclists and pedestrians are fundamental for design and planning strategies of sustainable smart cities. However, adequate data is commonly scarce, expensive to acquire, or hardly accessible. For overcoming this shortcoming and providing support in planning processes, we propose an agent-based model that simulates bicycle and pedestrian traffic flows at a regional scale over one day. The bottom-up approach allows to set individual behaviour that generates system-level patterns. The uncertainty analysis of model results shows moderate and strong correlations with the observational data in terms of spatial and temporal distribution of traffic volumes. The model produces traffic flows at a high spatial (road segment) and temporal (minute) resolution. The model can be used as a scenario-based solution for simulating traffic in different conditions of a physical environment and travel behaviour.

Healthcare Service Efficiency: An Empirical Study on Healthcare Capacity in Various Counties and Cities in Taiwan.

As human lifespan increases and the need for elderly care grows, the demand for healthcare services and its associated costs have surged, causing a decline in the operational efficiency of universal healthcare. This has created an imbalance in medical services across different regions, posing a long-standing challenge for the public. To address this issue, strategies to enhance the capacity, efficiency, and quality of healthcare services in various regions must be developed. The appropriate allocation of medical resources is a fundamental requirement for countries to establish a robust healthcare system. This empirical study utilized data envelopment analysis (DEA) to evaluate the efficiency of medical service capacity and identify potential improvement strategies for counties and cities in Taiwan during the period from 2015 to 2020. The results of this study show that (1) the annual average efficiency of medical service capacity in Taiwan is approximately 90%, indicating that there is still room for a 10% improvement; (2) among the six municipalities, only Taipei City has sufficient healthcare capacity, whereas the efficiency of the remaining municipalities needs improvement; and (3) most counties and cities demonstrated increasing returns to scale, indicating a need to scale up the capacity of medical services as appropriate. Based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that medical personnel be increased accordingly to balance the workload, a favorable working environment be provided to stabilize the medical workforce, and urban-rural medical disparities be balanced to improve service quality and reduce cross-regional health services. These recommendations are expected to provide a reference for society as a whole to promote and enhance public health policies, leading to a continual improvement of the quality of medical services.

Circular City Tourism: Defining Local Policies for Sustainable Tourism in Cities

Circular Economy is gaining momentum as a new economic paradigm able to couple economic development and environmental preservation. It reconceptualises the traditional take-make-waste production chain closing the loop to reduce a consumption of virgin raw materials and waste production and pollution. At the territorial level, cities are especially involved in the shifting from the linear to the circular paradigm, supporting the transition towards a circular economy. In defining their circular strategies, cities should consider the tourism sector and define ad hoc policies and tools to facilitate the transition towards circular tourism. Circular tourism is an emerging topic; at present, few scientific papers are available addressing this topic. Even fewer papers are available in the scientific literature about the circular city tourism, that is, the implementation of circular tourism in cities as part of a larger circular urban strategy. The present paper investigates the evolution of the circular tourism topic, considering the implementation of circular tourism local strategies at the urban level. Crossing scientific papers from three research fields – circular economy, circular city, and circular tourism –, the paper defines a framework for analysing urban policies for circular tourism integrated in larger circular city strategies.

ЕКОЛОГО-ЕНЕРГЕТИЧНЕ ОБҐРУНТУВАННЯ ПОТРЕБИ В СІЛЬСЬКОГОСПОДАРСЬКИХ ПЛОЩАХ ДЛЯ ЗАБЕЗПЕЧЕННЯ ПРОДОВОЛЬЧОЇ БЕЗПЕКИ УКРАЇНИ

The article examines the energy equivalent of the needs in cultivated areas to ensure food security of Ukraine. It was determined that integration into WFE-strategies of food policy requires a comprehensive assessment of the energy component of agricultural production relative to the area of arable land, which will include the productivity of the main crops in the aspect of converting solar energy into food calories. A methodology was created and the efficiency of converting solar energy into the commodity energy value of the products of the grocery basket was calculated: 0.15-0.8% for cereals and vegetables, 0.042-0.054% for meat, 0.015-0.035% for drinks and spices, 0.12 % for dairy products, 0.37-0.93% for eggs. The overall efficiency of human consumption of solar energy through the food chain is 0.22%. To meet these needs, 1,831.3 m2 is needed, which receives 545.8 MW of solar energy during the growing season. It was determined that the yield fluctuations of the main crops are sinusoidal and their use in modeling the need for sowing areas will in the future allow to develop a dynamic model of management of benefits and quotas to stimulate the coverage of a possible shortage of certain main products. Also estimated is the amount of energy that can be used without affecting the yield by renewable energy when using a mobile configuration of its placement (or, on the contrary, directed to artificial lighting of the crop under stationary systems). As a result, basic indicators were obtained, which can be relied upon when developing a food security strategy for cities, and it was also determined that a standard household plot of 0.25 hectares fully covers the needs of one person with a surplus.

(D)evolving smartness: exploring the changing modalities of smart city making in Africa

ABSTRACT The paper identifies an under-researched mode of smart city-making in Africa characterized by municipal deployments of ICT-driven innovations. This departs from typical framings that view African smart city development as nationally driven, master planned new city developments. An in-depth analysis of the City of Cape Town’s Digital City Strategy provides insights into the mechanisms and processes grounding smart city concepts in African municipalities. Thus, situating Africa’s municipal ICT-driven strategies in the context of a global discourse of smart urbanism and local (and continental) processes of decentralized governance reform. In Cape Town, these global and local forces converge to drive ICT-inspired urbanism that reinforce market-oriented logics of urban governance, largely at the expense of transformative and contextually sensitive ICT deployments. By highlighting the multi-scalar production of smart cities inspired by global discourse yet subjected to local dynamics, the findings offer insights into the political realities of municipal ICT deployments in Africa.

Polycentric structure and urban thermal environment: A large-scale study from multi-perspectives

Polycentric development is a widespread tendency, and urban thermal environment is unavoidably changed in this context. Using data from 265 Chinese cities, we explore urban thermal environment under polycentric development from three perspectives. First, we analyze the correlation between three metrics describing polycentricity and surface urban heat islands (SUHI) at the urban scale, taking into account diurnal and seasonal differences. Second, we examine the surface temperature difference between the main center and subcenter(s) as well as its possible influencing factors. Third, we use structural equation modeling to quantitatively confirm the mechanism behind the relationship between polycentric structure and SUHI. The results show that: (1) There is a significant positive correlation between polycentricity and daytime SHUI, regardless of the season. However, the relationship is insignificant during summer nighttime, and it even becomes negative during winter nighttime. (2) The majority of the main centers experience more severe thermal challenges. (3) Climate, urban size, vegetation, and industry are the mediators of the relationship between SUHI and polycentric structure during summer daytime. Our findings provide valuable insights for understanding thermal environment under polycentric development and can be used as a reference for proposing thermal mitigation strategies for cities that are or are becoming polycentric.

Data driven approaches for smart city planning and design: a case scenario on urban data management

PurposeBecause of the use of digital technologies in smart cities, municipalities are increasingly facing issues related to urban data management and are seeking ways to exploit these huge amounts of data for the actualization of data driven services. However, only few studies discuss challenges related to data driven strategies in smart cities. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to present data driven approaches (architecture and model), for urban data management needed to improve smart city planning and design. The developed approaches depict how data can underpin sustainable urban development.Design/methodology/approachDesign science research is adopted following a qualitative method to evaluate the architecture developed based on top-level design using a case data from workshops and interviews with experts involved in a smart city project.FindingsThe findings of this study from the evaluations indicate that the identified enablers are useful to support data driven services in smart cities and the developed architecture can be used to promote urban data management. More importantly, findings from this study provide guidelines to municipalities to improve data driven services for smart city planning and design.Research limitations/implicationsFeedback as qualitative data from practitioners provided evidence on how data driven strategies can be achieved in smart cities. However, the model is not validated. Hence, quantitative data is needed to further validate the enablers that influence data driven services in smart city planning and design.Practical implicationsFindings from this study offer practical insights and real-life evidence to define data driven enablers in smart cities and suggest research propositions for future studies. Additionally, this study develops a real conceptualization of data driven method for municipalities to foster open data and digital service innovation for smart city development.Social implicationsThe main findings of this study suggest that data governance, interoperability, data security and risk assessment influence data driven services in smart cities. This study derives propositions based on the developed model that identifies enablers for actualization of data driven services for smart cities planning and design.Originality/valueThis study explores the enablers of data driven strategies in smart city and further developed an architecture and model that can be adopted by municipalities to structure their urban data initiatives for improving data driven services to make cities smarter. The developed model supports municipalities to manage data used from different sources to support the design of data driven services provided by different enterprises that collaborate in urban environment.

CLUSTER ORGANIZATION AS A PROSPECTIVE WAY OF REVITALIZATION OF INDUSTRIAL TERRITORIES IN POLTAVA

Abandoned industrial territories are a significant problem for the spatial organization of Ukrainian cities and their economy. such industrial zones occupy a significant area in cities - from 12-18% to 23-27%. The planning of industrial districts took place in accordance with the industrial policy of the past. such large-scale productions in terms of types and structure are no longer needed. Empty industrial buildings and infrastructure facilities become burdensome for the city's economy, and also significantly affect the aesthetic and ecological component of the city. Poltava faced the fact that in terms of urban planning, the decline of industrial areas has led to the fact that industrial areas are in deep stagnation or operate semi-legally and unsystematically without taking into account the needs of the city and the community. 
 The most advanced approach is to change the functional purpose, but this process is bureaucratic and not always effective for attracting investments. The revitalization of production and the creation of new jobs is important, which makes it possible to envisage the revitalization of degraded industrial areas in the spatial development strategies of cities and use them for the development of cities, including the creation of innovative structures (high-tech clusters, industrial parks, technology parks).
 So far, there are no normative legal acts in Ukraine that sometimes regulate the organization of such clusters. The closest functional content is the concept of "innovation structure", the creation of which is regulated by the Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine dated May 22, 1996. No. 549 "On the approval of the Regulation on the procedure for the creation and operation of technology parks and innovative structures of other types" 
 Possibilities of renovating inactive industrial enterprises within cities and their integration into the city system without changing their purpose are considered. Modern trends in the revitalization of industrial areas and prospects for ecological stabilization in cities are analyzed. 
 The prospect of further research is the identification and implementation of principles and methods of spatial organization of the revitalization of industrial territories.

Changes in the size of domestic tourists in mainland China under the impact of COVID-19

目的本文旨在探寻疫情影响下中国大陆城市游客规模演化规律, 具体而言, 疫情影响下, 全国及七大地理分区的国内游客量规模变化如何？七大地理地区的变化有何差异？以及疫情影响下, 全国国内游客空间规模的热点区域和空间集聚程度有何变化？研究设计与方法利用2018-2021年中国大陆337各城市的国内游客量数据, 借助极差、标准差、变异系数、赫芬达尔指等指标分析全国及七大地理分区国内游客规模的绝对差异和相对差异; 借助核密度分析、空间自相关分析等ArcGIS分析工具, 探寻疫情影响下全国国内游客空间规模的热点区域和空间集聚程度的变化情况。研究发现①绝对差异方面, 七大地理分区的绝对差异均持续增大。西南地区的游客量的绝对差异巨大, 国内游发展极不均衡。西北地区、东北地区绝对差异相对较小, 在吸引国内游客方面发展较为均衡。②相对差异方面, 西南地区的国内游发展相对差异较大, 发展不均衡趋势明显; 东北地区、西北地区、华东地区的国内游发展相对差异较小, 发展较为均衡。③热点区域变化方面, 京津冀地区、长三角地区的国内旅游热度持续下降, 在2021年有所回升; 内陆西南地区在2021年成为新的国内游热点区域。④2018年至2021年城市国内游客量规模均呈现出显著的空间正相关的关系, 存在着空间集聚现象, 但部分区域集聚类型在2018到2021年间发生变化。研究价值①理论意义：明晰了疫情对中国国内旅游人次的数量规模和空间规模的影响, 弥补了当前疫情前后国内旅游业变化对比的研究; 阐明了疫情前后中国城市国内游客空间格局的变化, 拓展了研究情景, 丰富了中国旅游业时空变化的相关研究。②实践意义：明晰了疫后不同地区国内旅游人次的数量规模和空间规模变化情况, 以及国内旅游市场热点变化和游客空间偏好变化, 有利于各地区城市对症下药, 制定符合各省份实际情况的国内旅游业振兴策略, 促进中国旅游业内循环。

A decade of nature: Evolving approaches to Melbourne’s ‘nature in the city’

Cities have important roles in biodiversity restoration and management. Local municipalities, as key land managers, play critical roles since some species are restricted to small patches of urban habitat, and some are considered threatened. Evolving approaches to urban nature policy, strategy and implementation demonstrate increasing sophistication and complexity, with approaches transitioning towards the adoption of more complex objectives, that address a wider range of urban nature forms, species and ecosystems. These objectives are increasingly underpinned by urban ecology research, citizen science participation and political championing. This paper adopts a ‘dialogue’-adapted research approach to examine the evolution of the City of Melbourne’s urban nature policies and actions across the decade from 2010 to 2020. We identify the key factors that enabled the endorsement and implementation of this capital city’s Nature in the City strategy, analysing the science-policy interface and governance aspects that underpinned this significant policy transition. Through interviews and workshops with a range of actors involved in the implementation of the City of Melbourne’s urban nature policies and activities over the last 10 years, we identify lessons learned that can be applied in other cities by urban land managers. In doing so, we argue that Melbourne’s focus on biodiversity conservation and opportunities for restoration of species and ecological processes constitute important innovations in urban landscape policy.

Treatment Strategy for Parking Problems in Large Cities

With the development of urbanization, the number of motor vehicles has increased rapidly, and the problem of parking difficulty has become the main problem on the way to the healthy development of urban traffic. Especially in the central areas of large cities, the contradiction between supply and demand is prominent due to the dense population and the lagging construction of parking facilities. Such problems are rapidly emerging in large and medium-sized cities, which have a negative impact on the social and economic development of cities. This paper mainly analyzes and studies the physical mechanism of parking, the contradiction between supply and demand, parking management and other aspects, and puts forward solutions. Taking Ningbo as an example, this paper proposes a parking governance strategy for large cities, clarifies the goal orientation of the governance strategy, proposes supporting policies, regulations, and management systems, and proposes three governance strategies: parking supply strategy, parking demand management strategy, and parking management strategy, providing new ideas for large cities to create a new pattern of urban parking management featuring joint construction, governance, and sharing.

Groundwater pricing strategies for Indian cities - a case of Kanpur

ABSTRACT In the cities of the Indo-Gangetic basin, over the years, urban residents have been relying on groundwater due to its universal availability and reliability clubbed with inadequate municipal water supply. The study aims at using groundwater pricing as a tool for groundwater management in Indian cities giving due importance to the spatial dynamics of groundwater resources. It focuses on Kanpur city, where half the city depends directly on groundwater resources for meeting their requirements, making the aquifers susceptible to low yield and facing the risk of irreversible over-exploitation in the coming future. Spatial analysis using Geographical Information System (GIS) has been carried out for economic evaluation of the resource by assessing the criticality of groundwater resources. This is further incorporated into a differential pricing structure with an aim to curb over-exploitation. We have also proposed specific pricing strategies that are better suited and easily implementable in Kanpur city.

Toward the Smart City Ecosystem Model

This study aims to present the processes and mechanisms of creating smart city ecosystems by examining the complex strategic choices and interactions among stakeholders operating at different levels of governance and engagement. Based on the literature review and in-depth analyses of a case study (Lublin, Eastern Poland), we demonstrate that the implementation of tailored strategic thinking using adaptation to global trends, exploitation of development potentials and niches, and stakeholders’ involvement allows for coordination and mobilization of development processes leading to the creation of effective smart city ecosystems. In line with the defined smart city challenges, with the application of a three-stage research program, we create an implementable Smart City Ecosystem Model (SCEM). The contributions of the study are as follows: (1) it provides new insights into smart governance, leadership in creating a sustainable and human smart city; (2) it analyzes strategic choices in the creation of a stakeholder ecosystem and competitive business ecosystems based on smart specializations, providing new opportunities for the design and implementation of smart city strategies. Therefore, this study provides a new multidimensional policy framework for smart cities at both strategic and operational levels that can improve the holistic management of smart and sustainable cities and communities.