Governing the smart city: a review of the literature on smart urban governance
| Author | Manuel Pedro Rodríguez Bolívar,Albert Meijer |
| Date | 01 June 2016 |
| Published date | 01 June 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852314564308 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
International Review of
Administrative Sciences
2016, Vol. 82(2) 392–408
!The Author(s) 2015
Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0020852314564308
ras.sagepub.com
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Article
Governing the smart city: a review
of the literature on smart urban
governance
Albert Meijer
Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Manuel Pedro Rodrı
´guez Bolı
´var
University of Granada, Spain
Abstract
Academic attention to smart cities and their governance is growing rapidly, but the
fragmentation in approaches makes for a confusing debate. This article brings some
structure to the debate by analyzing a corpus of 51 publications and mapping their
variation. The analysis shows that publications differ in their emphasis on (1) smart
technology, smart people or smart collaboration as the defining features of smart cities,
(2) a transformative or incremental perspective on changes in urban governance, (3)
better outcomes or a more open process as the legitimacy claim for smart city govern-
ance. We argue for a comprehensive perspective: smart city governance is about craft-
ing new forms of human collaboration through the use of ICTs to obtain better
outcomes and more open governance processes. Research into smart city governance
could benefit from previous studies into success and failure factors for e-government
and build upon sophisticated theories of socio-technical change. This article highlights
that smart city governance is not a technological issue: we should study smart city
governance as a complex process of institutional change and acknowledge the political
nature of appealing visions of socio-technical governance.
Points for practitioners
The study provides practitioners with an in-depth understanding of current debates
about smart city governance. The article highlights that governing a smart city is about
crafting new forms of human collaboration through the use of information and com-
munication technologies. City managers should realize that technology by itself will not
make a city smarter: building a smart city requires a political understanding of technol-
ogy, a process approach to manage the emerging smart city and a focus on both
economic gains and other public values.
Corresponding author:
Albert Meijer, Utrecht University – School of Governance, Bijlhouwerstraat 6, NL-3511 ZC Utrecht, The
Netherlands.
Email: A.J.Meijer@uu.nl
Keywords
collaborative governance, e-government, smart city, urban governance
Smart cities as an emerging domain of study
More than 50 percent of the world population lives in cities (UN, 2011) and city
governments face a wide range of challenges: they need to produce wealth and
innovation but also health and sustainability. Cities are to be green and safe but
also culturally vibrant (Landry, 2006). On top of this, cities need to be able to
integrate growing populations from different (ethnic, religious, socioeconomic)
backgrounds. Recently, Barber (2013) has argued that city government is crucial
to solving global problems and states that ‘mayors rule the world’. The current
administrative emphasis on cities as governance centers has been paralleled by
academic attention. Urban governance has developed into a mature academic
field (Pierre, 1999, 2011) but, more recently, this discipline is being connected to
disciplines that focus on technology and innovation. E-government and innovation
studies are being connected to urban governance to develop approaches that can
make cities smarter (Nam and Pardo, 2011).
While Richard Florida’s (2002) work about creative cities emphasizes the global
competition between cities, Charles Landry (2006) highlights that local politicians
and city managers should not strive to be the best city in the world but for the
world. Making cities smarter is something that nobody can be opposed to if it
results in more effective solutions to a broad range of societal problems. Smart
technologies, smart collaboration, a highly educated population and effective insti-
tutions are argued to be needed to face the challenges of modern cities. This
discourse about smart cities is rapidly spreading around the world. The idea that
cities are the nucleus of economic development is widespread and, for governing
the city, this means that city politicians and administrators should not aim to solve
all the problems in the city but rather they should strengthen the capacity of urban
systems to tackle a wide variety of problems and produce a wide range of public
values (Landry, 2006).
An example of the current emphasis in urban governance on making the city
smarter is Amsterdam Smart City (amsterdamsmartcity.com). This is ‘a unique
partnership between businesses, authorities, research institutions and the people of
Amsterdam’ with the objective of developing the Amsterdam Metropolitan Area
into a smart city with a focus on the themes living, working, mobility, public facilities
and open data. The city presents itself as an ‘urban living lab’ that allows businesses
to both test and demonstrate innovative products and services. This partnership
creates an infrastructure for knowledge exchange and learning between all these
actors and results in concrete projects focusing on sustainable energy, innovative
health solutions, better transport and more (digital) citizen participation.
This example highlights that cities are becoming smart not only in terms of the
way they can automate routine functions serving individual persons, buildings, and
Meijer and Bolı
´var 393
To continue reading
Request your trial