Creative citizenship: the new wave for collaborative environments in smart cities

Abstract

Purpose This paper is framed under the relevance of collaborative governance models in smart cities that are members of the EUROCITIES network and are involved in a working group about “creative citizenship” and seeks to analyse the use of new technologies by city governments in smart cities with the aim at improving e-participation of the citizenry in the public arena. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach This research is based on two data collection methods. First, this paper performs an e-survey sent to leading European smart cities about the relevance of collaborative governance in strategies of cities, about the main pillars and outcomes of smart governance and about the model of participation in developing a smart city. Second, an examination of 47 local governments of smart cities included in the working group of “creative citizenship” in the EUROCITIES network is performed during March 2017 with the specific purpose of collecting data about smart technologies used for e-participation. Findings Sample smart cities believe that collaborative governance is necessary to be implemented in public sector management under the smart environment but less than 50 per cent of them have created citizen participation platforms to promote citizen involvement in public affairs and only a few of them promote online public consultations, discussions and petitions. Also, there are differences in perceptions and in e-participation tools used by sample smart cities in accordance with the administrative culture of the country in which these cities are located. Originality/value This paper contributes to fill the gap in the analysis of the relevance of collaborative governance models in smart cities and the use in these cities of transparency websites, open data projects or e-participation platforms to promote citizen involvement in the public affairs of the city.

In the search for the ‘Smart’ Source of the Perception of Quality of Life in European Smart Cities

“…This finding confirms recent research in which, paradoxically, smart governance was the factor that university students less associated with QLF [51]. Therefore, our findings have not been able to demonstrate that although collaborative and participative models of governance are the preferred models of governance for practitioners [53,43,44], these new models can have a positive impact on citizen's perception of QLF.…”

Technological and Human Development of Smart Cities: An Empirical Characterization of EUROCITIES Case Studies

“…On another hand, the fact that INS is equally distributed among all sample SCs seems to indicate that the specific outcomes of the SC movement are not only for the introduction of e-government services or accountability and transparency purposes, which were reached by the e-government phenomenon, but the introduction of new and more participative governance models to improve the interaction between city governments and citizenry [31], perhaps with the ultimate aim at increasing the citizens' quality of life [32].…”

“…An administrative context can be understood as the set of idiosyncratic features that define an administrative system [31] [14]. According to Rodríguez Bolívar [31], the administrative contexts can influence the way governments implement new initiatives.…”

“…An administrative context can be understood as the set of idiosyncratic features that define an administrative system [31] [14]. According to Rodríguez Bolívar [31], the administrative contexts can influence the way governments implement new initiatives. In this sense, due to historical reasons, the European Union can be divided into regions (sets of countries) with substantial differences according to the way in which issues related to the administrative systems are developed.…”

Regional Smart City Development Focus: The South Korean National Strategic Smart City Program

“…These are studies of the elements of technology and unit spaces utilized in a smart city. Furthermore, this kind of research deals with such subjects as computer science, big data, governance [37]- [40] key performance indicators [41], [42], virtual reality [43], [44], education [45], resilience [46], sharing economies [47], environment [48], tourism [49], development [50], security [51], food supply [52], transportation systems [53], [54], wireless sensors [55], data and services [56], [57], ecosystems [58], energy management [59]- [63], the Internet of Things (IoT) [64], and water management [65]. This is the case with studies that demonstrate how smart city technology is applied to almost all city components.…”