Stakeholders' stake and relation to smartness in smart city development: Insights from a Swedish city planning project

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2018.09.001Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • A city planning project is studied using observations and document studies.

  • Stakeholders involved in the planning process are identified.

  • Stakeholders' stake and relation to smartness in process and outcome are defined.

  • A framework is developed which pinpoints each stakeholder's relation to smartness.

  • The need for a new type of governance in the smart city planning process is found.

Abstract

Many of today's city planning projects aim to realize smart city ambitions. In order to plan and build a smart city district, where ICT is integrated in critical infrastructure and used to control and govern city functions in innovative ways, new ways of working in city planning are needed. The purpose of this article is to develop a framework that takes into account stakeholders and smartness dimensions in city planning. We have studied a city district development in Sweden where a new planning approach was implemented. The developed framework was used to analyze the complexity of this city planning process. By defining which smartness dimension each stakeholder primarily focus on and analyzing the consequences of this, the framework pinpoints each stakeholder's contribution and/or hindrance to the process and outcome. A recommendation from this study is that new stakeholder groups are important to involve in smart city planning, but this also adds complexity that must be acknowledged when setting up this kind of projects. The developed framework can be useful when organizing and staffing city planning processes as well as when evaluating project outcomes.

Keywords

City planning
Smart city
Stakeholder theory
Smartness

Cited by (0)

Karin Axelsson, PhD, is professor in Information Systems at the Department of Management and Engineering, Linköping University, Sweden. Her research interests cover both smart city and e-government applications. She has conducted research in private and public organizations from an inter-organizational perspective for many years. She has written over 90 research papers, published in journals and refereed conference proceedings. She has led several research projects about public e-services and smart cities.

Malin Granath, PhD, is senior lecturer in Information Systems at the Department of Management and Engineering, Linköping University, Sweden. Her research interests cover smart city development with focus on digitalization and sustainability issues. She has conducted research mainly in public organizations from an inter-organizational and stakeholder perspective.

This study has been financially supported by the Swedish Energy Agency. This funding source has not been involved in any part of the research project.