Conceptually Related Smart Cities Services from the Perspectives of Governance and Sociotechnical Systems in Europe

Abstract

The absence of a comprehensive smart city governance model has prompted research into the characteristics of the relationships among cities, services, and stakeholders. This study aims to identify, from the perspectives of governance and sociotechnical systems, the characteristics of conceptually related smart city service implementations based on stakeholder partnerships. Social network analysis was utilized based on existing research datasets. Stakeholders, services, and representative European sustainable smart cities were included in the dataset in relation to this study’s operational definition. The first finding is that the initial conceptually related smart city services are reflected in the accumulated and current characteristics of the smart city services. These depend on stakeholder partnerships, while the network foundation differs between the initial and latter services. The second finding clarifies how different development services depend on stakeholder partnerships and how multiple stakeholders, including local entities, are vital to deal with current challenges in massive urbanizations. The third finding demonstrates the emerging roles of private sectors and some intermediate services in the global network of cities. This study contributes to the management of smart cities by identifying how service development occurs based on stakeholder partnerships and contributes to their theoretical basis by empirically demonstrating the importance of multi-stakeholder partnerships to address current urbanization challenges.