Digitization and urban governance: The city as a reflection of its data infrastructure

Abstract

This article introduces the ‘House Model’, an integrated framework consisting of four data governance modes, based on the urban and smart city vision, context, and big data technologies. The model stems from engaged scholarship, synthesizing and extending the academic debates and evidence from existing smart city initiatives. It provides a means for comparing cities in terms of their digitization efforts, helps the planning of more effective urban data infrastructures and guides future empirical research in this area. The article contributes to the literature examining the issue of big data and its governance in local government and smart cities. Points for practitioners Data is a vital part of smart city initiatives. Where the data comes from, who owns it and how it is used are all important questions. Data governance is therefore important and has consequences for the overall governance of the city. The House Model presented in this article provides a means for organizing data governance. It relates questions of data governance to the history and vision of smart city initiatives, and provides a typology organizing these initiatives.

Developing Capabilities in Smart City Ecosystems: A multi-level approach

“…Contributing to this line of research, we show the importance of city-level capabilities in generating city-level outcomes. Our specific case of the city ecosystem is particularly well suited to support urban development outcomes at the geographical scale of the city in contrast to a platform-centric view on smart cities (Bayat & Kawalek, 2023; Visnjic et al, 2016). Specifically, London’s case shows that tackling city-level goals such as urban transport or energy system sustainability requires city-wide mobilisation of data provisioning and data insights capabilities.…”

“…Contributing to this line of research, we show the importance of city-level capabilities in generating city-level outcomes. Our specific case of the city-ecosystem is particularly well suited to support urban development outcomes at the geographical scale of the city in contrast to a platform centric view on smart cities (Bayat & Kawalek, 2021;Visnjic et al, 2016).…”

Digitalization of public administration in EU member states in times of crisis: the contributions of the national recovery and resilience plans

“…Transparency, connectivity, access, provision and use of public services stand in relation to the infrastructure for digital connectivity and digital education (Bayat and Kawalek, 2023;Lynn et al, 2022;Matheus et al, 2020;Scholta et al, 2019). In the digital age, the scale of costs and the reluctance of government institutions towards a complete "reset" of the mode of operation have limited the use of new technologies as tools to diversify services and public management (Lips, 2020: 5).…”