Citizen-Centric Smart City Practices of Local Governments During COVID-19: Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Case

Smart cities are based on the idea of creating more liveable and sustainable cities through the information and communication technologies (ICT) for their services. The ultimate goal of a smart city is to make cities healthier and sustainable for its residents, remove bureaucratic barriers before access to public services, introduce innovative solutions to city-related problems, and consider citizens’ wishes and expectations. Smart cities that involve citizens in the service delivery process and implement many participatory principles and institutional mechanisms for this can be defined as citizen-centric smart cities. In this chapter, citizen-centric smart city practices of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality during the time of COVID-19 are addressed, and these practices are categorized under six groups. These are smart transportation, e-municipality practices, voluntary participation, crowdfunding, open government data, and free internet access - support for distance learning. This chapter concludes that it is essential for local communities to develop collective behavior to cope with a pandemic, and as technology users citizens roles are critical. Further developing digital healthcare practices and distance education and channelizing resources toward these practices become a prominent field in the post-pandemic stage.