Smart Cities and the Internet

Abstract

This chapter challenges recent mode 2 accounts of smart cities and in particular, the idea they are an index of the future internet. Adopting the triple helix model of knowledge production, it studies smart cities, not as the emergent technologies of economic transactions, but in terms of civil society's support for the integration of Web2.0-based information and communication platforms into their regional innovation systems. This reveals that no matter how technologically advanced such an internet-driven reinvention of cities may appear, being smart is something which reaches beyond this. Beyond this and towards policies, leadership qualities and corporate strategies that not only serve the knowledge economy, but which are also smart in allowing cities to cultivate the creativity of the internet as the information and communication technologies of regional innovation systems.