Smart City Governance Research Articles

Collaboration, Organizational Capacity, and Sustainability: The Cross-Sector Governance of Smart Cities

Interactions with other organizations likely influence how local governments confront complex problems. Drawing on theories of collaborative governance, we investigate the extent to which collaboration affects U.S. local governments’ prioritization of the sustainability benefits of Smart Cities Technologies (SCT). Using data from the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) 2016 Smart Cities Survey and the U.S. Census Bureau, we find that collaboration with local, regional, and private sector partners influences the extent to which local governments prioritize the sustainability benefits of SCT. Organizational capacity is also an important predictor of perceived benefits of SCT. Our findings suggest a hidden side of boundary spanning, suggesting that collaboration can enhance opportunities for sustainability technologies.

Smart Cities, Digital Inequalities, and the Challenge of Inclusion

While cities on a global scale embrace smartness as a roadmap for efficient urban governance, disparities persist in the domain of digital accessibility, literacy, and skills, with manifestations of digital exclusion, ageism, and ableism prevalent in most digital urban experiences. Despite their commitment to bridging the digital divide, governments lack comprehensive frameworks to inform policymaking and action for inclusion in smart cities. This review paper aims to deepen the understanding of the multifaceted challenges confronting the governance of inclusion in smart cities. Drawing from a review of research encompassing digital inclusion, digital transitions, smart cities, and urban governance, we discuss who is included and excluded in the governance of smart cities; what are the necessary conditions to be met for smart cities to be considered inclusive; and how can smart city governance deliver public value and equal benefits for all. As a novel contribution, this paper outlines a reflective framework to inform citizen inclusion in the governance of smart cities. This framework is meant to act as a starting point in the design of inclusive digital urban policies, and can also be employed to assess the directions taken to date in public organizations towards more inclusive urban practices.

Smart city governance: assessing modes of active citizen engagement

ABSTRACT This paper discusses how to govern smart cities that nurture and promote citizen engagement. By reviewing the emergent literature on the topic and rooting in a pluralistic – a descriptive and normative orientation, we identify three novel governance models: embedded, blended and networked. Our review indicates that the depth of citizen engagement varies between models based on the roles played by closely aligned resourceful actors. A collaborative environment driven by, for and with citizens seeks to build smart cities embedded in local realities. Drawing on examples from smart cities across the globe, we offer policy suggestions for building futuristic citizen-engaged smart cities.

Transforming Smart City Governance for Quality of Life and Sustainable Development in Semarang City, Indonesia

Transforming Smart City Governance for Quality of Life and Sustainable Development in Semarang City, Indonesia

Road to human‐centric smart city governance in Japan: The case of Fujisawa sustainable smart town

Road to human‐centric smart city governance in Japan: The case of Fujisawa sustainable smart town

To Push Forward the Integrated Reform in An All-Round Way and Focus on Building A Strong Province in The Digital Economy

This paper, taking Dalian as a case study, delves into the strategic pathways and practical strategies for comprehensively advancing integrated reform and jointly striving to build a digital economy powerhouse province. It first analyzes the significance of the digital economy as a new engine for global economic growth, along with Dalian's foundational advantages and potential challenges in its digital transformation journey. Subsequently, from various dimensions such as policy guidance, technological innovation, industrial upgrading, and business environment optimization, the paper elaborates on how Dalian is leveraging integrated reform measures, including enhancing cross-departmental collaboration, promoting open sharing of data resources, and constructing a digital economy ecosystem, to accelerate the deep integration of digital technologies with the real economy, thereby promoting industrial structural optimization and upgrading, and enhancing regional competitiveness. The paper also emphasizes Dalian's key initiatives in nurturing and attracting talents, strengthening infrastructure support, and advancing smart city and digital government construction during its pursuit of becoming a digital economy powerhouse, and how these initiatives provide strong momentum for the high-quality development of Dalian's, and by extension, its province's, digital economy. Through case studies and practical summaries, this paper offers a series of replicable and scalable experiences and models, providing valuable insights for other regions to advance their own digital economy integration reforms.

Key Challenges and Potential Solutions in Smart City Governance

Smart city governance aims to integrate advanced technologies with urban management to improve citizen engagement, policy effectiveness, and overall quality of life. However, developing countries face unique challenges in implementing smart city initiatives due to infrastructure deficiencies, budget constraints, and the digital divide. This paper explores the key obstacles and potential solutions for smart city governance in developing nations. The primary challenges include inadequate ICT infrastructure, financial limitations, knowledge-deficient citizens, and data privacy concerns. Solutions proposed involve multi-sectoral collaboration, innovative financing mechanisms, enhancing citizen education and engagement, and stringent data protection laws. Case studies from India and China illustrate these challenges and solutions in practice, highlighting the necessity for a holistic approach to achieving sustainable and equitable smart city governance.

Artificial Internet of Things, Sensor-Based Digital Twin Urban Computing Vision Algorithms, and Blockchain Cloud Networks in Sustainable Smart City Administration

The aim of this paper is to synthesize and analyze existing evidence on interconnected sensor networks and digital urban governance in data-driven smart sustainable cities. The research topic of this systematic review is whether and to what extent smart city governance can effectively integrate the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT), intelligent decision algorithms based on big data technologies, and cloud computing. This is relevant since smart cities place special emphasis on the involvement of citizens in decision-making processes and sustainable urban development. To investigate the work to date, search outcome management and systematic review screening procedures were handled by PRISMA and Shiny app flow design. A quantitative literature review was carried out in June 2024 for published original and review research between 2018 and 2024. For qualitative and quantitative data management and analysis in the research review process, data extraction tools, study screening, reference management software, evidence map visualization, machine learning classifiers, and reference management software were harnessed. Dimensions and VOSviewer were deployed to explore and visualize the bibliometric data.

A conceptual framework to explore considerations of the social implications in internet of things and smart city governance and policy: The case of Thailand

AbstractCities worldwide are increasingly turning to internet of things (IoT) and smart cities (SC) technologies to help address their needs and challenges. While many governments have developed smart city policies and plans, there is often a disproportionate focus on technological, digital, and economic aspects and a neglect for social implications like social justice, social equity, and social inclusion. Research has yet to fully explore how SC governance and policies consider these implications, and this is especially true in the Global South, where urbanization poses great challenges, but where resources are limited. Using Thailand as a case study, we created a conceptual framework to help explore the social implications of the country's IoT and SC governance and policies. Overall this exploration found that efforts to consider values such as social inclusion and social equity are generally missing from the country's national level SC governance and policies, but when looking at the local levels, we uncovered differences when SC efforts are top‐down versus bottom‐up. Our conceptual framework can be useful in other Global South contexts with emerging SC governance structures and policies.

An Investigation into the Interaction of Smart City Governance and Green Economy

Cities can be effectively transformed into smart cities (SCs) to support sustainability, green economy (GE) and sustainable development (SD). Urbanization policies are important for SCs’s effectiveness in GE and sustainability. The study aims to propose suggestion on preliminary pillars of the multi-layered conceptual model towards contribution of smart governance (SG) in SCs to GE and sustainability. Therefore, the study reviews the literature in different search engines (e.g., Web-of-Science, Scopus, Sciencedirect) with keyword combinations of SC, GE, SC governance and sustainability. The study examines SC examples and SG strategies to support GE. The findings highlight the contribution of SC and effective SG to the GE and the multi-layered nature of SC that changes strategically through a multi-actor and multi-sectoral approach. The results emphasize that sustainability interacts with the SC, creating a closed loop that supports SC governance to develop GE. Furthermore, the results provide preliminary suggestion on main pillars of the conceptual model as five aspects (technological, governance, environmental, social, economic) and five keys (ICT-led urban-growth, collaboration, integration, transparency & accountability, green performance) that can support GE because of the interactions of SG and SD. The study can be beneficial for municipalities, urban planners, and researchers in the relevant field.

Research on Urban Governance Models and Innovativeness under the Vision of Smart City

In recent years, with the rise and development of smart cities, people have gradually shifted their attention to how to conduct urban governance. Through the use of urban governance model, Internet technology and smart city governance concept, the city is carried out fine governance, search for a more efficient and scientific model of governance, which will replace the old model of government leadership. This article analyses the status quo of city governance in the context of Intelligent city, and puts forward innovative governance modes: multi-department collaborative innovative governance mode, subdivision multi-subject participation innovative governance mode, people-oriented innovative governance mode, and scientific evaluation mode of smart city governance.

How Do Institutional and Technological Innovations Influence the Smart City Governance? Focused on Stakeholder Satisfaction and Crime Rate

Effective institutional and technological development are key to governance in smart cities. This study investigates the fundamental complexities of institutional and technological innovations in smart cities. A city’s innovation capabilities depend significantly on its technology and implementation capacity. This study suggests that institutional and technological innovation serve a role that moderates the relationships between smart city governance, stakeholder satisfaction, and crime rate. Multiple regression models were developed by surveying 496 Pakistani citizens with a questionnaire. Using stakeholders and innovation theories, analyzing the relationships between smart governance, stakeholder satisfaction, and city crime rates reveals a moderating role of institutional and technological innovation. The findings showed that institutional and technological innovations have strengthened the stakeholder satisfaction level while weakening the crime rate in a smart city.

SMART SUSTAINABLE URBAN DEVELOPMENT FOR THE NEW CAPITAL CITY OF INDONESIA

It is critical to do research on the concept of Smart Sustainable Urban Development and its implementation. This is primarily important to support the urban future and urban governance in Nusantara Capital City, Indonesia, and the relation to the concept of urban sustainability and smart city. This research is aimed to analyse the implementation of the smart sustainable urban development concept to support the urban future through the New Urban Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals and urban governance in Nusantara Capital City. The data were obtained by conducting in-depth interviews and Focus Group Discussions (FGD) with the policy stakeholders and agencies relevant to the development plan for Nusantara Capital City and field surveys in the form of observations as well. The results show that the urban future from the national government is envisaged through six domain services encapsulating the sustainability and smart city elements. In the regional and local level, challenges are met including the environmental and social impact but through government collaboration and devising Information and Communication Technology, the authority has been able to design the solution. Sustainability, ICT, smart city, and urban governance constitute critical elements in the process of urban development, especially for the development of a new capital city.

Smart Cities and International Trade Law

AbstractA ‘smart city’ is a buzz term and concept. The ‘smart city’ has mainly been discussed in the scholarly literature on urban planning, architecture, and geography. While the ‘smart city’ has been under-analyzed in international trade law, the term ‘smart city’ is commonly used in Asian trade policies. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) established the ‘ASEAN Smart Cities Network’ and the ‘smart city’ is now an important market opportunity for exporting smart technologies and services to ASEAN. Against this backdrop, this article addresses how smart cities can be regulated and governed by international trade law. The trade law perspective facilitates a broader understanding of smart city governance, which includes under-explored ‘global’ regulatory dimensions concerning the interaction between local governments and foreign firms. This article selects three relevant trade areas for discussions: (1) Internet of Things in the context of trade in goods and services; (2) international standard-setting activities; and (3) data governance. It further considers what kinds of regulatory issues international smart city projects can add to the current digital trade discourse. Drawing on the smart city literature, the article points out additional problems concerning security and privacy that have not yet been acknowledged in digital trade.

Long-Term Strategy for Smart Cities Governance Projects across Europe

Long-Term Strategy for Smart Cities Governance Projects across Europe

Governance Analysis in Driving Smart City Policy in Aceh

This study wants to analyze the implementation of smart city which is a concept of city development based on technology. The smart city concept consists of several aspects including smart governance, smart society, smart living, smart economy, smart environment, and smart branding. Aceh is one of the Indonesian provinces that initiated the smart city concept for the development of each regency/city. The research aims to analyze governance in encouraging smart city policies in Aceh. This research method uses a mixed method approach, which is a combination of quantitative approaches used to see facts that occur based on government system data that has been carried out; and qualitative method in building a narrative on the Aceh governance system based on smart city indicators which is on target or not. The results of this study show that there are several regencies/cities in Aceh that have implemented smart city-based governance. One of which is Banda Aceh City. This study recommends that the Government of Aceh should further socialize smart city-based governance so that the government of each regency/city in Aceh implements smart city governance to actualize a prosperous, harmonious, and simpler bureaucratic society.
 Keywords: smart city, governance, government

DTSSN: A Distributed Trustworthy Sensor Service Network Architecture for Smart City

The smart city is an increasingly popular concept when it comes to urban development. In a smart city, numerous sensor services are generated by IoT sensors in a distributed manner, requiring proper management and effective interaction to guarantee the connectivity of different regions. However, the sensitive nature of sensor data raises concerns over joining public cloud centers or edge servers, despite assurances of their reliability from providers. Local deployment and maintenance of sensor services may cause these service providers to become ”data isolated islands”, hindering the construction process of smart city. This paper proposes a distributed trustworthy sensor service network architecture named DTSSN to support the building of a fully distributed sensor service network. The proposed network architecture operates through the collaboration of two core devices, the sensor service switch and router, to effectively enable the registration, discovery, invocation, transaction, and monitoring of cross-region sensor services. Then, a lightweight trustworthy transaction mechanism based on blockchain is proposed to realize SLA-based automatic service transaction while reducing potential risks in the service network. Comparative analysis and simulation experiments validate the effectiveness of the DTSSN architecture in terms of scalability, availability, and trustworthiness, underscoring its potential in advancing smart city development and governance.

Smart cities at the intersection of public governance paradigms for sustainability

As a research domain, the smart city keeps growing, despite the remaining contradictions and ambiguity related to its conceptual aspects. We propose to dig deeper into the complex socio-technical nature of the smart city and examine the concept through the lens of different public governance paradigms, therefore aligning it with the sustainability outcomes. Embracing interrelated dimensions of humans, technologies and organisations, the smart city can be viewed through the intersection of public governance paradigms (digital governance, collaborative governance and networks). The case of the smart city initiative of Tampere in Finland serves as an empirical illustration of how the proposed conceptual model might be applied in practice. Providing a novel approach to the smart city from a public management perspective, this model would allow policymakers to acquire a more comprehensive understanding of smart city governance and its multi-dimensional outcomes, in terms of social, environmental and economic sustainability. This approach enables the unlocking of the potential to generate multiple values for each group of actors and ensure more effective integration of smart initiatives, policies and projects, based on the public governance paradigms.

Research on Antecedent Configuration of Smart City Governance Path: Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Fuzzy Sets Based on 30 Cities in China

This study focuses on 30 typical cases of smart cities in China, constructing an analytical framework that includes seven explanatory factors: information infrastructure, administrative pressure, government attention, public service level, financial support, technical talent, and government-enterprise cooperation. Utilizing the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method, the study conducts configuration analysis of the influencing factors for the efficient construction of smart cities. The research reveals that government-enterprise cooperation and the public service level are crucial factors for achieving high construction efficiency in smart cities. These are collectively categorized into three construction models: "service innovation type driven by pressure," "multi-factor-induced type driven by technology," and "proactive follow-up type under fiscal incentives." The results of the study provide reference points for the construction of smart cities in different regions of China. Urban governments should undertake strategic and combinational construction actions based on their unique characteristics and resource endowments.

Smart Cities and data governance models

Smart Cities and data governance models