The Smart City is landing! On the geography of policy mobility

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide a geographical urban policy perspective on the strategy of Smart Cities in the specific context of Czechia. Considering that the implementation of the Smart Cities (SC) concept is still relatively young in Czechia, it is highly relevant to examine the time-space diffusion of this concept in Czechia in the geographical lens: where the first initiative to build a smart city started, when the process was started and by whom; in other words, to provide basic empirical evidence of understanding the policy mobility and implementation of smart city policy into the urban development strategies. In the first of our approach, we evaluate the implementation of the term “smart city” in strategic city documents. The next step is the analysis of the strategic urban (city) and smart city documents by distinguishing conceptually distinct pillars of the SC concept and an overview of actors and policy-makers who initiate and support individual pillars of the concept of SC in Czechia. The results of the analysis highlight the differences between the implemented SC topics into city strategies which are caused by fragmented policy mobility, its modifications and influence of key actors who have found the opportunity to participate in policy-making processes at the certain spatial level.

Policy diffusion, policy transfer, and policy mobilities revisited: A call for more interdisciplinary approaches in human geography

“…As with policy diffusion and policy transfer, the areas of application for policy mobilities are quite diverse. Of certain central importance are processes of financialisation (Baker et al., 2016; Chang, 2022; Robin & Brill, 2018; Ward, 2018), such that literature on policy mobility has been much concerned with dissemination of ideas on business improvement districts (McCann & Ward, 2014; Michel, 2013; Michel & Stein, 2015; Peyroux et al., 2012; Stein et al., 2017), smart cities (Crivello, 2015; Hýllová & Slach, 2018; Levenda, 2019; Rossi, 2016; Vanolo, 2014) or also housing and gentrification (Baker & Temenos, 2015; Lees, 2012). In recent years, however, consideration has increasingly been given to further topics such as education policy (Ball, 2016; Gulson et al., 2017; Williamson et al., 2019), social innovation (Coenen & Morgan, 2020; Füg & Ibert, 2020), urban infrastructures (Chang, 2022; Levenda, 2019), urban resilience (Coppola et al., 2021; Webber et al., 2021), and climate policy (Fisher, 2014; Haupt, 2021; Mattissek & Sturm, 2017).…”

Városfejlesztési szakpolitikák terjedése: elméleti megközelítések

“…A városfejlesztési szakpolitika-mobilitás ("urban policy mobilities") egy igencsak új vizsgálati terület a földrajztudományban, 27 A nemzetközi szakirodalomban a szerzők általában többes számú alakban ("urban policy mobilities") hivatkoznak a koncepcióra, míg az egyes számú forma ("urban policy mobility"), kevésbé elterjedt (lásd például Clarke 2012; Hýllová, Slach 2018;Robinson 2015). A többes szám használata utal a kutatási tématerület és a megközelítések sokféleségére (McCann, Ward 2015), illetve arra, hogy nem kötődik egy meghatározott paradigmához (Baker, Temenos 2015).…”

Application of the smart city concept in process of urban recycling - case study of Špitálka in Brno, Czech Republic

“…The issues related to the smart cities are discussed with the different perspectives both in the non-European countries (e.g., Lu, de Jong, & ten Heuvelhof, 2018;Praharaj & Han, 2019;Lam & Yang, 2020) and also in European countries (e.g. Fernandez-Anez, Fernández-Güell, & Klusáček, P., Konečný, O., Zgodová, A., Navrátil, J. Giffinger, 2018;Nick, Pongrácz & Radács, 2018;Akande et al, 2019;Hýllová & Slach, 2019;Simonofski et al, 2019).…”