This paper focuses on the smart governance of urban data. Recently, the idea of an intelligent city has gained increased attention among technologists, urban scientists, stakeholders, companies and policy makers in the last decades. The new paradigm of the cities in the 21st century and what it entails is seen by everyone, including the authors of this article, as a viable response to the unprecedented rate of urbanization most nations are experiencing. Advanced smart cities are beginning to go beyond infrastructure and to use big data. The whole idea behind smart cities is to harness intelligent technologies and data-driven contextual governance models to mitigate and prevent the challenges that arise when an estimated 2 billion people move to urban areas. This is why collecting and analysing urban data becomes a key priority in this field. The development of Big Data analysis using the Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes the domain of urban governments and stakeholders. This research contemplates over these issues and provides many examples from around smart cities around the world that can be used as reference points or inspiration for the policy-makers engaged in the smart city governance and urban planning.