Collection

Special Issue on "Smart cities, Smart governance models for future cities"

Submission status
Closed

This collection focuses on new, innovative approaches to smart governance models for future cities that may improve existing processes and models of governance and will change/improve the interaction and communication between citizens and representatives of the public sector. As of 2010 half of the world population lived in urban areas and 150 metropolitan urban regions across the world generated almost 50% of the global GDP. In other words, from then on, cities became more and more the places, where a process of deep societal and economic reform should start from, where global issues may be addressed locally, where smart technology may be discussed. Definitively, cities have a sufficient critical mass in both demographic and economic terms to ignite a planetary revolution.

The concept of a smart city is understood as the specific use of advanced information and communication technologies for a sustainable, social, ecological and economic development of urban space. The focus of a smart city is on the access, processing and use of information to improve existing urban processes. The acquisition, collection and analysis of urban (real-time) data and the coordination of data use with Internet- and web-based services has opened up new possibilities for increasing economic, social, natural and infrastructural resource efficiency and improving the quality of life.

However, the technology-focused perspective excludes two essential aspects that are of high importance for a ""future city"": Preservation of knowledge and involvement of the citizens in the design process. Solutions (e.g., digital platforms, civic (tech) events) designed by and with citizens promote transparent and participatory collaboration that enables the development of a smart living environment. In this respect, it is important that civil society is willing to cooperate and that public administrations take these efforts seriously. With regards to aspects of the socio-technical approach, it is important that technical and human factors have equal weight in the design process of new smart city models. This citizen-centered approach makes it possible to develop new socio-economic and participatory models that promote, for example, solidarity, social inclusion and communities. This becomes particularly relevant in the field of governance (D’Onofrio et al. 2019).

With this in mind, this collection intends to help cities better understand the strengths and weaknesses of the governance of their infrastructures.

Editors

  • Ilja Nastjuk Ilja Nastjuk , 

    Ilja Nastjuk

    University of Göttingen, Germany

  • Simon Trang Simon Trang  &

    Simon Trang

    University of Göttingen, Germany strang@uni-goettingen.de

  • Elpiniki I. Papageorgiou Elpiniki I. Papageorgiou

    Elpiniki I. Papageorgiou

    University of Thessaly, Greece elpinikipapageorgiou@uth.gr

Articles (5 in this collection)