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Purpose - This study sought to settle the question, “How can smart city strategies contribute to improving the urban quality of life?” Methodology/Approach/Design - Sakarya Metropolitan Municipa-lity (SMM) was found worthy of this single case study since it has become the very first to prepare a smart city strategy and action plan among local governments in Turkey. In addition to face-to-face in-terviews with 23 personnel holding various positions within SMM, the municipality’s strategic plan (SASEP) and official news bulletin (Gündüz-Gece) were subjected to content analysis. During this field research, the observation notes were utilized to interpret the findings of the content analysis. Findings - The findings revealed that SMM adopts a data-driven smart city strategy. It was also discovered that, thanks to this stra-tegy, SMM provided an improvement primarily in the objective qua-lity of life indicators of the city, particularly visible in smart city indi-cators such as infrastructure, transportation, environment, and go-vernance. Originality/Value - Based on the extensive literature review and empirical findings, the concept “smart city” was brought a definition as “a city management strategy that addresses the internal dynamics of the city and makes use of technological developments, various da-ta sources, and the knowledge obtained by deploying an appropriate process to improve the quality of life of its stakeholders in line with the priorities.”

The present study sought an answer to the question, “What kind of challenges do local governments in Turkey confront while implementing data- and knowledge-driven smart city strategies?”. It seems noteworthy to explore tacit links between such implementation challenges through a field study employing an exploratory design. Thanks to the original theoretical framework enriched with empirical findings, this research is expected to bring practical and theoretical contributions to the smart city literature. The data were gathered through face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with 23 personnel of Sakarya Metropolitan Municipality (SMM), which has become the very first local government in Turkey to have introduced a smart city strategy and action plan. In this field research employing a single case, the content analysis technique was utilized to interpret the findings. Accordingly, SMM is faced with basically data-driven difficulties such as data security, poor technological and physical infrastructure, insufficient budget and high costs, dubious legal regulations and bureaucracy, resistance to change, lack of human resources and high turnover, and digital divide while implementing its smart city strategy.