Is smart urban governance possible in developing countries? Constraints, resources, innovative tools and strategies

Abstract

Until recently, we were talking about urban management, local management and territorial management. We are now talking about smart city or intelligent city, terms that have become fashionable in specialized literature and even in everyday language to such an extent that those who ignore them could consider themselves overtaken by the passage of time. But what does the term "smart city" actually mean? Smart city is a city equipped with the tools enabling it to observe, learn and react from the data collected. To observe itself, the smart city needs a large set of various sensors and materials. To this definition, some prefer to oppose another, which would define the smart city as a city that is more liveable, less polluting and in which the user is given a place. This definition obviously does not exclude neither the fact of the connection and the acquisition of essential information necessarily multiple and numerous, nor the complexity of the internal system of analysis and automated decision-making oriented towards the comfort of the user. Some see the smart city as a process and an approach and not as an end. So what about in developing countries where society is undergoing profound and rapid change? Can we adapt the concept in the implementation of a new governance of the city? Answering these questions is not easy. To get around the difficulty, we will instead offer the concept of a sustainable city where the management of essential information can be made less complex. In this article we will successively deal with the theoretical foundations of the "transition to the smart city" and sustainability, the need for the establishment of a new vision of urban governance and smart governance tools. To illustrate our point, we will present a few simple and didactic examples for the Algerian city of medium importance. Keywords: smart city, sustainability, local governance