Smart Cities, Smart Government, and Smart Governance Minitrack

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The concept of smartness in government and governance has been investigated for more than a decade. Prominently, much research has been directed towards the concept of Smart City, for which so far no standard definition has been adopted either in theoretical research nor in empirical studies. Different definitions have been offered. However, all definitions seem to agree that a smart city refers to an urban environment, in which citizens’ daily life (work, school, safety, and leisure) improves over previous standards facilitated by modern information technologies. These improvements pertain to social, political, economic, governmental, and other dimensions.

Although smart cities are based on ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies), people (with their knowledge, habits, experiences, culture and behavior) remain the main actors and instigators of change and progress in the direction of smartness.

Finally, the concept of smart city refers to and translates into the broader and separate topics of smart government and smart governance, which are topics of interest in their own right. This minitrack aims at exploring (1) what a smart city is, how it evolves, and what the theoretical understanding of a smart city is; and (2) how the larger concepts of smart government and smart governance can be better understood and integrated.

Topics and research areas include, but are not limited to:

  • Smart city definition
  • Conceptual frameworks of smart cities
  • Conceptual frameworks of smart government
  • Conceptual frameworks of smart governance
  • Smart city case studies
  • e-Government in the urban space (smart government)
  • Smart city and emerging technologies (big data, open data, social media & networks,...)
  • Smart city and decision-making
  • Smart city and security
  • Smart city and knowledge management
  • Smart city evaluation & performance measurement
  • Smart cities’ critical success factors
  • Smart city and open innovation
  • Managing the smart city
  • New vulnerabilities in smart infrastructures
  • Smart grids and their implications (traffic, utilities, communications)
  • Smart grids and the Internet of Things (infrastructure, transportation, education, governance, environment, health care, safety, security, and energy)
  • Smart partnerships (triple/quadruple helix, public-private partnerships, citizen participation)
  • Collective intelligence for cities and regions
  • New cybersecurity risks and vulnerabilities in smart technologies

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Elsa Negre (Primary Contact)
Università Paris-Dauphine
Email: elsa.negre@dauphine.fr

Camille Rosenthal-Sabroux
Università Paris-Dauphine
Email: Camille.Rosenthal-Sabroux@dauphine.fr

Mila Gascó-Hernández
Institute of Public Governance and Management ESADE – Ramon Llull University
Email: mila.gasco@esade.edu

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Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Towards Smarter Cities: Linking Human Mobility and Energy Use Fluctuations across Building Types
    ( 2017-01-04) Mohammadi, Neda ; Taylor, John ; Wang, Yan
    Urban areas consume up to 80 percent of the world's total energy production and are growing in size and complexity. At present, urban building energy consumption is largely considered solely in terms of individual building types, neglecting the effects of residents’ location-based activities that influence patterns in energy supply and demand. Here, we examine the spatial fluctuations of these effects. A spatial regression analysis of 3,613,360 positional records containing human mobility and energy consumption data across 983 areas in Greater London and 801 areas in the City of Chicago in residential and commercial buildings over the course of one month revealed spatial dependencies for both residential and commercial buildings’ energy consumption on human mobility. This dependency represents a strong connection with residential buildings’ energy consumption, with a spatial spillover effect. Future energy efficiency strategies should thus reflect the spatial dependencies, creating new ways for residential buildings to play a major role in energy related strategies.
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    Informational Urbanism. A Conceptual Framework of Smart Cities
    ( 2017-01-04) Barth, Julia ; Fietkiewicz, Kaja ; Gremm, Julia ; Hartmann, Sarah ; Ilhan, Aylin ; Mainka, Agnes ; Meschede, Christine ; Stock, Wolfgang
    Contemporary and future cities are often labeled as “smart cities,” “digital cities” or “ubiquitous cities,” “knowledge cities,” and “creative cities.” Informational urbanism includes all aspects of information and (tacit as well as explicit) knowledge with regard to urban regions. “Informational city” (or “smart city” in a broader sense) is an umbrella term uniting the divergent trends of information-related city research. Informational urbanism is an interdisciplinary endeavor incorporating on the one side computer science and information science as well as on the other side urban studies, city planning, architecture, city economics, and city sociology. In this article, we present both, a conceptual framework for research on smart cities as well as results from our empirical studies on smart cities all over the world. The framework consists of seven building blocks, namely information and knowledge related infrastructures, economy, politics (e-governance) and administration (e-government), spaces (spaces of flows and spaces of places), location factors, the people’s information behavior, and problem areas. \ \
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    Big Data and Evidence-Driven Decision-Making: Analyzing the Practices of Large and Mid-Sized U.S. Cities
    ( 2017-01-04) Ho, Alfred
    With the growing ease of collecting, transmitting, storing, processing, and analyzing massive amounts of data, Big Data has caught the attention of local officials in recent years. Based on a multi-layered institutional theories and an extensive analysis of the 30 largest cities and 35 selected mid-sized cities in the U.S, this study examines how U.S. cities are using mobile phone apps, sensors, data analytics, and open data portals to pursue Big Data opportunities, and what institutional factors influence their choices. The results show three distinct clusters of data practices among the selected 65 cities. Socio-demographics, cultural institutions, professional networks, and an internal data-driven culture as indicated by the use of performance budgeting are significantly associated with more extensive Big Data initiatives. The paper concludes by discussing the implications for Big Data practices and the theoretical development of e-government research.
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    Introduction to Smart Cities, Smart Government, and Smart Governance Minitrack
    ( 2017-01-04) Negre, Elsa ; Rosenthal-Sabroux, Camille ; Gascó-Hernández, Mila