Convergence and Divergence Between Municipalities and Citizens about Smart City Actions’ Priorities

Abstract

Most of smart city research focuses on the ‘supply-side’, and only limited research has been conducted about the ‘demand-side’ of smart cities: the smart city actions that are perceived by citizens as having higher usefulness, value and therefore priority; also limited research has been conducted for the comparison between the supply-side and the demand-side of smart cities. This paper contributes to filling these important research gaps. It investigates and compares smart city actions’ priorities of the municipalities with the ones of the citizens, in order to identify points of convergence as well as of divergence. A novel methodology has been constructed for this purpose, which includes as a first step the development of a detailed taxonomy of possible smart city actions, based on previous relevant literature. This taxonomy is then used for collecting assessment data from municipalities as well as from citizens concerning these possible smart city actions. Furthermore, our methodology includes three layers of processing of the above assessment data, which identify: a) the priorities of these two important stakeholders concerning smart city actions; and b) points of convergence as well as points of divergence between them. This methodology has been applied in the context of the Greek local government. Assessment data concerning the importance of the smart city actions of the above taxonomy were collected from 144 Greek municipalities and 500 citizens; their processing has revealed an important divergence between these two important smart city stakeholders.