Participatory Governance of Smart Cities: Insights from e-Participation of Putrajaya and Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Modeling the moderating effect of technology anxiety on the relationship between smart city–built environment and the quality of life of citizens

Purpose

This study aims to comprehend the smart city–built environment’s (SCBE) effect on citizens’ quality of life in the smart cities of a developing country such as India. This study also sought to investigate the moderating effect of technological anxiety on the association, as mentioned earlier.

Design/methodology/approach

This study’s hypotheses were tested using data from 494 sample respondents who lived in the top five smart cities of India using partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

Findings

This study validated five dimensions of an SCBE, including smart governance, smart economy, smart people, smart transportation, smart environment and smart living, and demonstrated a favorable connection between a SCBE quality of life. This study confirmed that technology anxiety strongly moderates the relationship between the built environment of smart cities and citizens’ quality of life.

Originality/value

This study is a pioneering effort that explores the relationship between SCBE and the quality of life of its residents and the moderating effect of technology anxiety on this relationship.

How the V4 Nations Handle the Idea of Smart Cities

Smart city is a term that includes digital, information, and communication technologies that contribute to increasing the level and quality of life in individual cities. It focuses primarily on the efficient use of existing resources but also on the discovery of new ones, with the goal of lowering energy consumption while also reducing environmental impact and optimizing traffic in specific areas of the city. This concept is increasingly coming to the fore. Thus, the aim of this article was to determine the level of involvement of Slovak, Czech, Polish, and Hungarian authors in solutions for Smart cities using Web of Science data. The analysis of countries that form the Visegrad Four (V4) region reveals how the region ranks compared to other countries that are actively involved in Smart cities based on VosViewer. To map a specific region of countries, it is necessary to first understand the underlying causes of the problem worldwide. Then, the status of the authors, the number of articles and citations, and universities may be actively discussed and graphically depicted for each nation in Visegrad. Based on the discovered results, academics can identify the contributors and institutions that have solved the issue individually or in co-authorships over a long period. The findings provide data for future testing of selected dependencies and a platform for creating a scientific model to rank countries. In addition, the authorities may focus on identified clusters of key areas that are an essential part of Smart cities and provide a higher quality of life in their city for the people.

The Scandinavian Third Way as a Proposal for Sustainable Smart City Development—A Case Study of Aarhus City

The practical implementation of the goals of smart sustainable cities has different forms. This paper explores an example of the Danish smart city Aarhus, through which the so-called ‘Scandinavian third way’ of smart city development is being proposed. The foundations of the ‘third way’ are directly derived from the Scandinavian tradition of cooperation; it is supposed to be an alternative to the more commercial American model and the more centrally-controlled Asian tradition. The paper aims to identify how the Scandinavian collaborative model has influenced the process of developing the smart city Aarhus, to analyse the proposed ‘Scandinavian third way’ of smart city development, and finally to assess its applicability in other urban centres. To achieve these goals, the method of literature analysis and a case study along with qualitative analysis of existing data and individual in-depth interviews with decision makers and observers of political life were applied. As the results show, the Scandinavian tradition of governance and political decision-making present in Denmark is not without significance for the functioning form of the smart city of Aarhus. Its foundations have been adopted by the Aarhus municipality in the implementation of its smart city activities, creating a unique modern city management model.

Toward Achieving Local Sustainable Development: Market-Based Instruments (MBIs) for Localizing UN Sustainable Development Goals

In recent years, sustainable community development has gained traction for addressing local environmental, social, and economic issues. Cities worldwide are committed to implementing sustainable community plans (SCPs) in their efforts to achieve sustainable development, and more recently, to localize the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Although there are over 1000 plans in Canada, a gap exists between creating these plans and implementing them. Integrating market-based instruments (MBIs) with traditional policy tools would help to diversify revenue generation and thus mitigate these constraints. This paper presents a new and comprehensive categorization of MBIs that aligns the locally applicable ones with the environmental aims of both SCPs and SDGs. The categorization framework has been tested through focus groups with key municipal staff from two Canadian communities. The new categorization framework aligned over 50 locally applicable MBIs with 8 different environmental topics and 12 SDGs. The paper presents a useful tool for implementing SCPs and SDGs and contributes to the understanding of MBIs for enabling local progress in sustainable development.