Composite Citizen: an Assessment Framework for Smart City Citizen Participation Management

Abstract

At this stage of urban development, citizen participation becomes a key challenge for cities that implement the Smart City concept. Despite the variety of Smart City ratings and evaluation tools, there is still little success in stakeholder engagement monitoring. There is an obvious need to expand the Smart City progress assessment system. In addition to the widely used global and national ratings, it is argued that proper assessing of citizen participation brings transparency and increases the human-centricity of the city. This paper provides a theoretical basis for assessing the involvement of citizens in the development of the city, justifies the expediency of expanding the scale of citizen involvement, and uses the concept of a “composite” citizen to monitor the effectiveness of implementing the Smart City concept. The authors argue that citizen participation and democratization of decision-making processes should be incorporated into the state digital development programs plans to implement the Smart City concept. The applied significance of the assessment tool is demonstrated; in particular, the need to include the principles of citizen involvement and democratization of decision-making processes in state digital development programs and plans for implementing the Smart City concept is proved. The recommended framework provides city managers and policymakers with recommendations on selecting indicators, structuring data, and interpreting them for efficient urban development.