Quality of Life in Smart Cities: A Research on Smart City Practices of Sakarya Metro-politan Municipality

Abstract

Purpose - This study sought to settle the question, “How can smart city strategies contribute to improving the urban quality of life?” Methodology/Approach/Design - Sakarya Metropolitan Municipa-lity (SMM) was found worthy of this single case study since it has become the very first to prepare a smart city strategy and action plan among local governments in Turkey. In addition to face-to-face in-terviews with 23 personnel holding various positions within SMM, the municipality’s strategic plan (SASEP) and official news bulletin (Gündüz-Gece) were subjected to content analysis. During this field research, the observation notes were utilized to interpret the findings of the content analysis. Findings - The findings revealed that SMM adopts a data-driven smart city strategy. It was also discovered that, thanks to this stra-tegy, SMM provided an improvement primarily in the objective qua-lity of life indicators of the city, particularly visible in smart city indi-cators such as infrastructure, transportation, environment, and go-vernance. Originality/Value - Based on the extensive literature review and empirical findings, the concept “smart city” was brought a definition as “a city management strategy that addresses the internal dynamics of the city and makes use of technological developments, various da-ta sources, and the knowledge obtained by deploying an appropriate process to improve the quality of life of its stakeholders in line with the priorities.”