Smart Cities, Innovation, and Multi-Dimensionality

Dear Colleagues,

In spite of global recognition of the need for, and increasing investments in, making cities smarter, we continue to see a lack of clarity and consensus around what defines a smart city. Some labels are very familiar, representing the “smart city” and related phenomena—among them, digital city, urban innovation, intelligent city, creative city, knowledge city, and information city, to mention a few. Recently, we have also begun to see new labels, such as “living city” and “innovation city”, emerge. Whether old or new, some labels draw attention to the technological aspects, while others to the development of human capital or physical infrastructure, among other aspects. For a number of years, scholars and practitioners have recognized that smart cities are not built simply through harnessing the potential of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Nam and Pardo (2014)[1], for example, argue that technology needs to be understood as a means to enable social, environmental, economic, and cultural progress in cities. Hollands (2008)[2] also calls for a conceptualization of the idea of a “smart city” to include most of the important aspects, beyond technology, and all their conceptual amplitude. These scholars, and others, call for a more comprehensive view—a view that is not label-based but derived from a deep understanding of how cities and communities are creating value through context-specific innovations in policy, management, technology, and governance.

Scholars and practitioners need a better understanding of the contemporary array of phenomena now being referred to as “smartness” in cities and other communities. To understand such contemporary phenomena in terms of innovation through “smarter” technologies, through smarter uses of technology, and through smarter decisions based on new technologies and the uses we make of them, we must take a multidimensional view of innovation and change. Such a multidimensional view affords researchers and practitioners the opportunity to consider dimensions such as technology, policy, management, and, increasingly, governance and enables critical considerations of the interdependencies of those dimensions and the impact of their interdependencies on the efforts of cities and other communities to become smarter. In fact, recent research argues that it is very important to identify the main components of smartness and that they include technology and data, but also other important aspects related to the physical environment, the society as a whole, and the government settings (Gil-Garcia, Pardo, and Nam, 2015).[3]

This Special Issue of Future Internet, “Smart Cities, Innovation, and Multidimensionality”, invites original, novel, and high-quality papers that advance our current understanding of the multidimensional nature of smart cities and the role of innovation in efforts to make cities smarter. It takes a comprehensive perspective and attempts to bridge the gap between sound research and practice expertise in the area of smarter cities and innovation in policy, management, technology, and data aspects. We welcome manuscripts encompassing conceptual approaches, theoretical frameworks, empirical research, and case studies of cities from all around the globe.

The Special Issue focuses on topics that include but are not limited to:

• Multidimensional frameworks to understand smart cities;
• Theories and analytical frameworks to study smart cities;
• Fundamental concepts underlying smart city initiatives;
• Rigorous empirical studies about smart cities;
• Case studies of smart city initiatives;
• Emergent technologies and their implications for smart cities;
• Research-based practical recommendations for making cities smarter;
• Evaluation tools and strategies for smart cities initiatives;
• Public value assessment models for smart city initiatives;
• Governance models for smart cities;
• Managerial implications of smart city initiatives;
• Implementation of smart city initiatives.

[1] Nam, T. & Pardo, T.A. (2014). The changing face of a city government: A case study of Philly311. Government Information Quarterly, 31 (S1): S1-S9.

[2] Hollands, R. G. (2008). Will the real smart city please stand up? Intelligent, progressive or entrepreneurial. City, 12 (3), 303–320.

[3] Gil-Garcia, J. Ramon, Theresa A. Pardo and Taewoo Nam. (2015). What Makes a City Smart? Identifying Core Components and Proposing an Integrative and Comprehensive Conceptualization. Information Polity, 20 (1): 61–87.

Dr. Theresa A. Pardo
Dr. J. Ramon Gil-Garcia
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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