Smart City is a model for developing a city to create a better quality of life using Information and Communication Technology to increase awareness, intelligence, welfare, and citizen participation. Currently, many cities declare themselves as smart cities. Therefore, they invest a lot in information technology infrastructure to provide website and application-based services. However, this has not been balanced with community development by fostering participation in public life processes and outputs. This study aims to explore community involvement in the context of a smart city through a co-creation approach. This study uses a qualitative approach with library research techniques sourced from journals, proceedings, books, and official government websites that provide information relevant to the research focus. This study reveals that community participation is not difficult to find because Indonesia has social capital and is practised until now in the public life of urban communities, for example, social awareness, deliberation, and mutual cooperation. However, community participation is still limited to input, not yet reaching the process and output, whereas Information Technology is still limited to replacing the offline system with online. Based on the results and discussion, this study suggests the need to expand and increase community involvement in resolving public affairs and combining forms of community involvement in both online and offline systems.