National Models of Smart City Development: A Multivariate Perspective on Urban Innovation and Sustainability

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The study “ National Models of Smart City Development: A Multivariate Perspective on Urban Innovation and Sustainability” investigates how smart cities demonstrate national development patterns through multivariate analysis of their structural elements.

1. The research employs data from the IMD Smart City Index 2024 to analyze 102 cities across the world through Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA). The research evaluates six dimensions of smartness which include mobility and environment and government and economy and people and living.
2. The research demonstrates that city profiles strongly match national contexts because governance structures and policy coordination and institutional capacity play a major role in shaping local smart city development. The characteristics of cities in centralized countries remain uniform but decentralized nations display diverse urban policies.
3. The research provides international smart city discussions with national urban innovation directions while helping policymakers create sustainable development goal-aligned local initiatives.
4. Areas for potential improvement prior to publication

 

The manuscript presents several new elements through its methodological approach and its empirical assessment of national smart city development models. The manuscript's novelty and its impact on the smart city literature would increase if the authors addressed the identified limitations and expanded their analysis of policy and theoretical implications.

 

Areas Where Novelty Could Be Enhanced:

 

• The manuscript identifies two main limitations which include the unbalanced distribution of participants from developed countries and the use of perception-based indicators. The novelty of the findings can be improved through direct analysis of these limitations by using robustness checks or additional research.
• The manuscript would gain more practical value and novelty if it included detailed policy implications for national governments and international organizations.
• The manuscript provides empirical evidence but its novelty and impact would increase if it expanded its theoretical analysis by connecting the findings to urban development theories and governance models and innovation frameworks.
• There also a few mistakes here and there that need to be corrected such as use of short form for the first time (correct line 16 in abstract i.e. IMD Smart City Index)
• There are numerous paragraphs in the introduction and literature review sections that need to be cited
• Minimal language revision could also benefit the paper.

Author Response

We sincerely thank Reviewer 1 for the insightful and constructive feedback, which has been extremely helpful in improving the clarity, theoretical coherence, and policy relevance of our manuscript. Below, we provide a detailed point-by-point response to each of the suggestions.

 

1. The manuscript’s novelty and impact could be enhanced by addressing the two main limitations (unbalanced distribution of cities and perception-based indicators).

Response:

We acknowledge the importance of directly addressing these limitations. In the revised manuscript, we have strengthened Section 3.1 to clarify the geographical skew of the sample toward Global North cities with higher digital maturity, and the implications for generalizability. In Section 3.4, we expand on the methodological limitations of using perception-based indicators, including the risk of cultural and normative bias. Furthermore, we note that no robustness checks were applied in the present study, but suggest in both Sections 3.4 and 5 that future research could apply alternative classification methods (e.g., Random Forest, Support Vector Machines) to test the stability and replicability of national clustering patterns under different modeling assumptions.

 

2. The manuscript would gain more practical value and novelty if it included detailed policy implications.

Response:

We fully agree. The Discussion (Section 4) and Conclusions (Section 5) now include an expanded section on policy implications for national governments and international organizations. We suggest the need for governance-sensitive national frameworks and flexible coordination mechanisms that can reconcile local experimentation with national sustainability objectives. We also provide specific recommendations for funding, benchmarking, and institutional capacity building.

 

3. The manuscript’s theoretical contribution would increase by connecting the findings to urban development theories, governance models, and innovation frameworks.

Response:

Thank you for this valuable suggestion. We have enhanced the Introduction and Literature Review (Sections 1–2) by connecting our findings to theories of urban innovation, institutional path dependency, and multi-level governance. References to urban regime theory, policy mobility literature, and institutional resilience have been integrated to anchor the empirical results in a stronger conceptual framework.

 

4. Correct the first occurrence of abbreviations (e.g., IMD).

Response:

Done. The first occurrence of “IMD” in the abstract has been replaced with the full form: “International Institute for Management Development (IMD) Smart City Index”.

 

5. Several paragraphs in the introduction and literature review need citations.

Response:

We have carefully reviewed both sections and added appropriate citations to support all general claims, especially those related to urbanization trends, national governance models, and the evolution of the smart city paradigm.

 

6. Minor linguistic and stylistic issues.

Response:

A light language and copy-editing revision has been performed across the manuscript to improve clarity and consistency. Abstract and section headings have also been slightly refined to ensure a more formal academic tone.

 

 

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article is a significant addition to the literature on smart cities and urban governance. It presents an innovative application of LDA to evaluate national models of smart development and bolsters the assertion that urban innovation is profoundly rooted in institutional frameworks.

 

Title and Abstract
• The title is clear and accurately describes what the research is about, and the abstract provides a favorable summary of the study's goals, methods, and main results.

 • The abstract needs some modification to clarify the novelty of the new Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and to briefly mention the main problem, such as sample bias toward the Global North.

Introduction and Review of the Literature
  It gives a full picture of the smart city literature, and it clearly states the gap that the study aims to fill and the necessity for empirical validation of national coherence in smart city development.

• The literature review is a bit too long and too dense in some places.

Methodology

 - The use of Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) is new and fits the research question, and also the use of the six smart city dimensions is widely accepted and well justified.

- I do not understand why we have different sample sizes in different countries, and this might skew the results. I believe that future research should explore nonlinear classification techniques or longitudinal frameworks.

Results and Analysis

• -The results are statistically strong: 98% accuracy in classification, high canonical correlations, and strong separation between groups of countries.

 • IThe number of cities in each country may have affected the results, but it is unclear how; for example,Italy has 15 cities, while Austria has only one.
- The results narrative mentions Table 1, but it doesn't go into much detail about it (city-by-city patterns could be looked at in more detail).
• More visualizations could help people understand the differences between groups better.

Discussion:

-The discussion fits perfectly with institutional theory and SDG 11.

-Some claims, like "institutional coherence leads to better outcomes," are not directly measured in the data and should be worded more carefully.

Author Response

We sincerely thank the reviewer for their thoughtful and constructive feedback. We are pleased that the contribution has been recognized as a significant addition to the literature on smart cities and urban governance. Below, we address each point raised and indicate the corresponding modifications made in the revised manuscript.

Title and Abstract

The abstract needs some modification to clarify the novelty of the new Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and to briefly mention the main problem, such as sample bias toward the Global North.

Response: Thank you for this suggestion. We have revised the abstract to better emphasize the methodological novelty of applying Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) to classify national smart city models. We have also included a sentence acknowledging the sample’s bias toward cities in the Global North, which may limit generalizability.

 

Introduction and Review of the Literature

The literature review is a bit too long and too dense in some places.

Response: We appreciate this observation. We have streamlined the literature review section by removing redundancies and consolidating overlapping references, while preserving key theoretical and empirical foundations needed to justify our research design and analytical framework.

 

Methodology

I do not understand why we have different sample sizes in different countries, and this might skew the results.

Response: We have added a paragraph in the Methodology section (Section 3.1 and 3.4) clarifying that the variation in sample sizes stems from the composition of the IMD Smart City Index 2024, which reflects different levels of participation in the survey. We acknowledge that this heterogeneity may influence the stability of country centroids and have explicitly listed it as a limitation.

 

I believe that future research should explore nonlinear classification techniques or longitudinal frameworks.

Response: We fully agree. In the revised Discussion and Conclusion sections, we have included recommendations for future research using nonlinear techniques such as Support Vector Machines or Random Forests, and for longitudinal extensions that assess the temporal stability of national smartness profiles.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Through multivariate analyses of the IMD Smart Cities Index 2024, this article explores whether smart cities reflect country-level development convergence and the institutional, political and cultural factors behind it. The article is detailed, and the data analysis is basically clear and complete. It is recommended to further improve the logical framework of the results and discussion section, so that the content can be closely related to the research topic and relevant data, and increase the scientific validity.

Line 30: "Governance" as a keyword is too broad. It is recommended to be more specific and narrow the scope of the reference.

Line 112: The introductory part is informative, but there are still some expression problems that should be improved:

(1) There are too many paragraphs in the introduction, which makes the content rather scattered, and it is suggested to streamline the structure of paragraphs.

(2) There are some repetitions, for example, the discussion of "national system affects the development of smart cities" is described in the previous and following paragraphs, so it is recommended to be streamlined and compressed.

(3) The functions of the last two paragraphs overlap, so it is suggested to merge them into one paragraph.

Cheaper 3: It is recommended to add a description of the software tools or technology platforms for practicing LDA analysis. Add a description of the way the model is set up and the data preprocessed, such as whether standardisation is performed. Make this section more rigorous.

Line 214: It is recommended to add references to sources of information.

Chapter 5: The data in the results section are basically complete, but the presentation is fragmented and lacks overall organisation and summary. Chapter headings are inconsistent in style, with some adopting a very technical, statistical style of presentation, and others including the results statement directly in the headings. The paper uses mathematical modelling as a tool to study urban issues rather than being purely theoretical, and it is suggested that the chapter titles should highlight the relevance to the research topic more than just presenting the data itself. In addition, there are multiple chapters that essentially argue for the validity of the modelling approach from different perspectives, and it is recommended that these be consolidated into a single chapter and discussed in internal paragraphs to enhance logic and structural clarity.

Table 1: (1) Eigenvalue data has two decimal points, is there a formatting error. (2) "p-value = 0.00" is incorrectly stated, please revise.

Chapter 4: The discussion section is informative and highly professional. However, the overall presentation is slightly conceptualised, and some of the ideas lack concrete data and empirical content in the results chapter. It is suggested that the echo relationship between the conclusion and the discussion chapter should be enhanced to increase persuasiveness and logic.

Line 395: "The convergence of city profiles ......" In this sentence, "institutional resilience" is a more abstract term. " in this sentence is a more abstract term, and further clarification is recommended.

Author Response

We thank Reviewer 2 for the careful and thorough reading of our manuscript and for the valuable recommendations, which have greatly improved the structure, clarity, and analytical rigor of the paper. Below we respond point by point.

 

1. The keyword “Governance” is too broad. A more specific term is recommended.

Response:

We have replaced the keyword “Governance” with the more specific term “Urban Governance Models”, to better reflect the content of the paper and align with the manuscript’s focus on national institutional frameworks and city-level development patterns.

 

2. Introduction: too many paragraphs and some repetition (e.g., national systems and smart city development); merge the last two paragraphs.

Response:

We have restructured the Introduction (Section 1) to streamline the content. Redundant discussions on national governance systems have been merged and reformulated for clarity. The last two paragraphs have been combined into a coherent statement of research objectives and methodological innovation.

 

3. Methodology: Add description of software used for LDA; clarify model setup and data preprocessing.

Response:

As suggested, we have added a sentence in Section 3.3 (Methodological Framework) specifying that all LDA computations were performed using JMP Pro (SAS Institute Inc.), and that normalization and scaling of the six smartness dimensions were conducted to ensure comparability across countries.

 

4. Line 214: Add references to data sources.

Response:

We have clarified and properly cited the IMD Smart City Index 2024 as the primary data source in Section 3.1, and included the full bibliographic entry in the reference list.

 

5. Chapter 5 (Results): Fragmented presentation and inconsistent headings. Recommend consolidation and improved structure.

Response:

We have restructured the Results section (Section 4) and revised the headings for consistency. Redundant sub-sections focused on technical output have been merged, and titles now emphasize their relevance to the research question. We also added summary paragraphs at the end of key sections to improve flow and coherence.

 

6. Table 1: Formatting issues (e.g., p-value = 0.00).

Response:

Corrected. All p-values have been revised to standard notation (“p < 0.001” where appropriate), and table formatting has been reviewed to ensure clarity and consistency.

 

7. Discussion: Some arguments are too abstract; clarify links to results.

Response:

We have edited Section 4 (Discussion) to more clearly echo the results and provide specific examples from the data (e.g., Sydney’s misclassification, convergence in Finland/Italy). Abstract terms like “institutional resilience” have been clarified with context and linked to empirical findings.