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

Abstract

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.