Visualising and calculating the smart city: a dialogue perspective

Abstract

PurposeThis study addresses the implications of smart city development paths (techno-centric and human-centric) by investigating the evolution of a city strategy, focusing on how different actors in a dialogue centred on strategic planning documents for Saint Petersburg, Russia, visualised the smart city and then made it calculable.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a case study based on a documentary analysis supported by ethnographic elements relying on the smart city conceptual proposals, the approved city strategy and the artifacts of expert discussions leading to the strategy implementation plan.FindingsThrough the lens of dialogue theory, the authors show how government and non-government actors in different organisational settings devised techno-centric smart city calculations, which arose despite an initial human-centric vision.Research limitations/implicationsWhile the case study allowed the study to illustrate the depth and richness of the context of the authoritarian Russian state where the role of citizens in public decision-making is rather limited, different and even contrasting results could be produced in other contexts.Practical implicationsThere is a gap between a smart city vision and its grounding in calculations. Thus, the human-centric elements require special attention, and the organisation of the dialogue on smart city strategy must enable plurality of voices besides those of government actors.Originality/valueThe case suggests viewing the human-centric and techno-centric perspectives not as dichotomous, but rather emerging consecutively throughout the journey from an initial strategic vision to its implementation in the city's calculations.

Global development in the Arctic: international cooperation for the future

“…The key idea for smart city development was 'sharing knowledge and experience of city development' and creating a 'common sustainable future' for Arctic cities via dialogue between international, national, regional, and local parties with different ideas and visions as well as considering companies' and citizens' perspectives (Khodachek et al, 2022). Local Arctic actors represented by city administrations and universities emphasized the importance of democratic and humancentric initiatives in smart city development, enthusiasm, and creativity (Trunova et al, 2022).…”

Searching for dialogue in public sector budgeting research: the case study of the JPBAFM

“…The dialogue perspective has been previously used in the accounting field, but with a different approach to interpret whether and how specific practices are developed as a form of dialogic accounting, i.e formation of accounts for pluralism, democracy and dialogue evaluation (e.g. Grossi et al, 2021;Lorson and Haustein, 2020;Trunova et al, 2022). While we acknowledge this stream of the literature, in this study, the dialogue perspective is used to reflect on the formation and development of public budgeting research via general reading of dialogue theory (Bakhtin, 1981(Bakhtin, , 1984Capizzo, 2018;Freire, 1970).…”

“…The dialogue perspective has been previously used in the accounting field, but with a different approach to interpret whether and how specific practices are developed as a form of dialogic accounting, i.e formation of accounts for pluralism, democracy and dialogue evaluation (e.g. Grossi et al ., 2021; Lorson and Haustein, 2020; Trunova et al. , 2022).…”

Glocalizing sustainability: how accounting begins for sustainable development goals in city administration

“…There are existing cases in the literature that explore the integration of novel ideas and the influence of social structures, actors and processes on local government "strategizing," explaining how it can happen through visualizing and calculating stages (Trunova et al, 2022) or thinking infrastructures (Tr€ askman, 2022). These examples suggest that the integration of new ideas, such as sustainability or SDGs, into the interpretive scheme of a local government organization is not as straightforward or clear as Guarini et al (2022) imply JPBAFM i.e.…”