Multi-facets of Smart Cities Governance Models

A smart city governance model encompasses strategies and frameworks used by cities to efficiently manage resources and services by integrating technology, data, and communication systems with the aim of improving residents’ quality of life, sustainability, and urban operations. Smart governance is identified as one of six dimensions crucial to smart city development, along with smart economy, people, mobility, environment, and living. Understanding the main factors of smart city governance is important at a macro level. Cities have the leverage to affect major societal issues such as environmental sustainability, citizen well-being, industry viability, and climate change. But this leverage goes both ways: a city can be more efficient and effective, or it can be inefficient and ineffective; it can help or hinder; it can create positive or negative effects. Hence, the consideration of not just macro-factors, but also meso and micro factors in governance takes on critical importance. Through a literature review, this chapter identifies and explores seven facets of governance that occur at the meso and micro levels in smart cities. These facets comprise an important extension and broadening of the more macro levels of smart city governance that are typically found in the literature.