Municipal Statecraft For The Smart City: Retooling The Smart Entrepreneurial City?

2021 ◽  
pp. 0308518X2110279
Author(s):  
Pauline McGuirk ◽  
Robyn Dowling ◽  
Pratichi Chatterjee
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
The State ◽  
Entrepreneurial City ◽  
City Governance

Urban scholarship has begun to trouble the neat alignment of smart city governance with urban entrepreneurialism. Starting from the proposition that states remain central in smart city governance and that unfolding the smart city involves crafting new performances of the state, this paper revisits evolving theorisations of urban governance through the lens of urban entrepreneurialism to examine how municipal state roles and practices are being refashioned and reoriented. Utilising empirical research on smart city governance across Australia's two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, we identify and tease out the active roles and the constitutive and experimental practices of entrepreneurial municipal statecraft involved in smart city governance. We frame these as ‘extrospective’ or ‘beyond-the-state’ in which new forms of partnerships are forged, and ‘introspective’ in which the dispositions, capabilities and competences of the municipal state itself are reformed. The paper enriches entrepreneurial accounts of smart cities and the situated and contextually-articulated agenda pursued in the name of governing ‘the smart city’. It highlights plural municipal state agenda and the reworking of practices and performances of the municipal state that these entail. It remains imperative, the paper concludes, to attend critically to the ways that smart co-constitutes the state in unpredictable ways.

scholarly journals Actually existing smart citizens: expertise and (non)participation in the making of the smart city

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor Shelton ◽  
Thomas Lodato
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Top Down ◽  
The World ◽  
Number Of Individuals

In response to the mounting criticism of emerging ‘smart cities’ strategies around the world, a number of individuals and institutions have attempted to pivot from discussions of smart cities towards a focus on ‘smart citizens’. While the smart citizen is most often seen as a kind of foil for those more stereotypically top-down, neoliberal, and repressive visions of the smart city that have been widely critiqued within the literature, this paper argues for an attention to the ‘actually existing smart citizen’, which plays a much messier and more ambivalent role in practice. This paper proposes the dual figures of ‘the general citizen’ and ‘the absent citizen’ as a heuristic for thinking about how the lines of inclusion and exclusion are drawn for citizens, both discursively and materially, in the actual making of the smart city. These figures are meant to highlight how the universal and unspecified figure of ‘the citizen’ is discursively deployed to justify smart city policies, while at the same time, actual citizens remain largely excluded from such decision and policy-making processes. Using a case study of Atlanta, Georgia and its ongoing smart cities initiatives, we argue that while the participation of citizens is crucial to any truly democratic mode of urban governance, the emerging discourse around the promise of smart citizenship fails to capture the realities of how citizens are actually discussed and enrolled in the making of these policies.

Smart City: An Approach from the View of Smart Urban Governance

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hung Viet NGO ◽  
◽  
Quan LE ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Effective Governance ◽  
Global Trend ◽  
Government Work ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
Urban Issues ◽  
The City

The world’s population is forecasted of having 68% to be urban residents by 2050 while urbanization in the world continues to grow. Along with that phenomenon, there is a global trend towards the creation of smart cities in many countries. Looking at the overview of studies and reports on smart cities, it can be seen that the concept of “smart city” is not clearly defined. Information and communication technology have often been being recognized by the vast majority of agencies, authorities and people when thinking about smart city but the meaning of smart city goes beyond that. Smart city concept should come with the emphasizing on the role of social resources and smart urban governance in the management of urban issues. Therefore, the "smart city" label should refer to the capacity of smart people and smart officials who create smart urban governance solutions for urban problems. The autonomy in smart cities allows its members (whether individuals or the community in general) of the city to participate in governance and management of the city and become active users and that is the picture of e-democracy. E-democracy makes it easier for stakeholders to become more involved in government work and fosters effective governance by using the IT platform of smart city. This approach will be discussed more in this paper.

Citizens in the Smart City

2022 ◽  
pp. 126-143
Author(s):  
Zsuzsanna Tomor
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
European City ◽  
Citizen Empowerment ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The City

While the role of citizens in smart cities is hotly debated, there is a dearth of empirical research on the subject. This in-depth study of a European city, selected for its typical smart city ambitions, explores the roles that citizens actually play in smart city projects. The study examines twelve initiatives in the City of Utrecht (NL) using a framework that differentiates between types of citizen participation. The findings show that technology-enabled citizen participation in Utrecht is highly diverse and embraces all types of participation rather than simply taking the form of either “citizen empowerment” (as the advocates argue) or “citizen subjugation' (as the critics stress). The diversity found in the study highlights the need to conceptualize the role of the smart citizen at the micro (project) level rather than at the level of the city as a whole. The study shows that citizen participation in the smart city should not be understood as a technological utopia or dystopia but as an evolving, technologically mediated practice that is shaped by a variety of factors.

scholarly journals Could a Smart City Ameliorate Urban Traffic Congestion? A Quasi-Natural Experiment Based on a Smart City Pilot Program in China

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 2291
Author(s):  
Yuhui Guo ◽  
Zhiwei Tang ◽  
Jie Guo
Keyword(s):  
Traffic Congestion ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Dynamic Effect ◽  
Urban Traffic ◽  
Marginal Effect ◽  
Positive Role ◽  
Rapid Urbanization ◽  
City Construction

More countries and regions are joining the bandwagon of smart city construction, which is an important strategy and innovative urban governance concept to solve the problem of rapid urbanization. This paper examines whether smart city innovation is able to ameliorate the traffic congestion faced by a large number of cities. Using panel data for 187 prefecture-level cities in China from 2008 to 2017, this paper tests the effect of implementation of a smart city on urban traffic congestion with the difference-in-difference method. The results show that, firstly, the construction of smart cities have significantly reduced the degree of urban traffic congestion and improved the quality and capacity of public transport. Secondly, information technology and urban innovation are the main mechanisms for smart city implementation to improve urban traffic problems. Thirdly, the improvement effect of smart city implementation on traffic management shows an increasing marginal effect over time. By overcoming the estimation bias in previous studies, this study accurately analyzes the positive role and dynamic effect of smart city construction on traffic improvement. It augments the literature of program evaluation and assessment of smart city implementation. By examining how to improve traffic congestion, it offers some insights that could inspire governments to build smarter cities with better traffic.

scholarly journals Reviewing the State-of-the-Art of Smart Cities in Portugal: Evidence Based on Content Analysis of a Portuguese Magazine

Publications ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Diogo Correia ◽  
Leonor Teixeira ◽  
João Lourenço Marques
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
The State ◽  
Role Of Government ◽  
Quantitative Analyses ◽  
Subject Areas ◽  
The Subject

The lack of examples of smart-city initiatives and the sharing of best practices in Portugal confirm the gap in the transference of empirical knowledge to the scientific literature in this area. The smart-city concept has passed through three stages. However, its evolution has not been noted equally throughout countries and their territories. The literature only provides information about specific projects implemented in a few cities. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to study the state-of-the-art of smart cities in Portugal by analyzing 25 editions of the most relevant national-wide smart-cities magazine. First, the objective of analyzing the magazine was to study each Portuguese city in terms of the subject areas and types of existing initiatives in order, ultimately, to frame cities within their respective smart-city phases, as per the literature. Second, the aim of the paper was also to provide information about the evolution of the concept through analyses of embedded experts’ quotes. The results of the first are complemented with the analysis of interviews with policymakers to provide information about the existing challenges to implementing a smart city and to understand the role of government therein. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed on the case study. The findings suggest that the three smart-city phases are perceived in slightly different ways in Portugal and heterogeneity within the country can be noted from the lack of strategies and a standard framework.

scholarly journals Bringing back the national to the study of globally circulating policy ideas: ‘Actually existing smart urbanism’ in Hungary and the Netherlands

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krisztina Varró ◽  
Damion J Bunders
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
National Scale ◽  
Policy Ideas ◽  
Policy Mobilities ◽  
Smart Urbanism ◽  
Strategy Making

Recently proliferating ‘smart city’ building efforts have lent themselves well to interpretations through the lens of the policy mobilities literature. Applying this perspective, studies have insightfully shown how policymaking centred around smart cities is at once a messy, networked process stretching across scales, while also manifesting itself in concrete practices shaped by territorial–regulatory contexts. Informed by empirical research on smart city policies in Hungary and the Netherlands, this paper argues that the policy mobilities approach tends to overemphasize the global and the local. Notwithstanding the transnational circulation of smart city ideas, the national scale continues being reproduced by these ideas as a relevant scale of urban regulation, discursive framing and strategy-making under globalization. To acknowledge this, and to move towards a more decidedly multiscalar perspective on actually existing smart urbanisms, it is suggested that we incorporate the national scale, understood as a relational set of practices and discourses, more explicitly into our analysis. Insights from the Hungarian and Dutch case studies are used to illustrate the manifold ways in which the local embedding of the globally mobile smart city concept is shaped by the national scale, as well as how the national itself is being renegotiated in this process.

State of the Art of Smart Technologies

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-33
Keyword(s):  
Service Provider ◽  
Smart City ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
The State ◽  
Smart Devices ◽  
Software Applications ◽  
Industrial Setting ◽  
Smart Service ◽  
Smart Technologies

Smart cities rely on smart technologies in all their possible forms; hence, this chapter is focusing on the state of the art of smart technologies. It describes these smart devices in all their ways and forms. In addition, techniques of software applications that are embedded in these smart devices are described along with their capabilities to adapt automatically and modify behavior to fit a user's environment. A smart city paradigm is also presented that focuses on sensors, smart devices, smart service provider subsystems, and smart sector infrastructure. A broader model of smart cities is discussed, and the chapter provides concrete goals, infrastructure, domains, and constituents. The chapter concludes by examining operation features such as the industrial setting, ubiquity, throughput, channels, and interoperability.

scholarly journals Open Smart Cities in Canada: Assessment Report

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracey P. Lauriault ◽  
Rachel Bloom ◽  
Jean-Noé Landry
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
The State ◽  
Additional Case ◽  
Smart Meter ◽  
Electricity Grid ◽  
Assessment Report

This assessment report communicates the state of smart city initiatives in four cities in Canada (Edmonton, Guelph, Montréal, and Ottawa) by reporting on how these cities are developing and rolling out their smart city plans. In order to capture the complexity of inter-jurisdictional processes and coordination related to smart cities in Canada, we have provided an additional case study about the governance and management of Ontario’s electricity grid and smart meter data.

scholarly journals The Right to the City in the Platform Age: Child-Friendly City and Smart City Premises in Contention

Information ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shenja van der Graaf
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Critical Account ◽  
Child Friendly ◽  
Outcomes For Children ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

This article sought to develop a critical account of the ever-increasing role of ICTs in cities and urban governance discourses, captured by a growing interest to ‘smarten up’ our cities, for their inclusiveness of citizens more broadly, and that of children, in particular. In revisiting rights-based approaches, it gives particular attention to the (political) premises of two urban concepts, that is, child-friendly cities and smart cities. The focus here is on how these current concepts encompass and direct the make-up of children′s relationship to the city, which brings the question to the fore of ‘whose version is it?’ A predominant provider′s perspective and a normative discourse are revealed which seem to overlook emergent logics of children′s social needs and experiences in the city. It is therefore proposed to revisit and revise our existing ideas, thus critiquing the current potential of the emerging ‘rights-based’ agendas in improving outcomes for children by urging cities to become child-friendly in their smart city ideals.

Between authoritarian governance and urban citizenship: Tree-felling protests in Hanoi

Urban Studies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (5) ◽  
pp. 977-991 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Gillespie ◽  
Quang Hung Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Space ◽  
Urban Citizenship ◽  
The Right

Little is known about how claims for urban citizenship in transitional states influence urban governance. Advancing the literature, this article draws on empirical research about a tree-felling dispute in Hanoi. It argues that social media are transforming how citizens project power over city officials. Interviews showed how a combination of street protests and criticism on social media disrupted state expectations about how citizens should behave. This opened political space that enabled citizens to voice their concerns. Although officials reacted emotionally to moral coercion, they refused to engage with deliberative claims for urban citizenship and the right to participate in governance. The article concludes that social media provide a space where urban citizenship can evolve, disseminate and eventually influence the state.

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