A Comprehensive View of the 21st Century City: Smartness as Technologies and Innovation in Urban Contexts

This chapter introduces important concepts such as smart cities, innovation, technologies, and “smartness” in government. It argues that a concept of smart city should be more than the use of information technologies in local governments. The study and analysis of cities today requires a multidimensional and multifaceted concept and, therefore, multiple components. Some of these components are (1) public services, (2) city administration and management, (3) policies and other institutional arrangements, (4) governance and collaboration, (5) human capital and creativity, (6) knowledge economy and pro-business environment, (7) built environment and city infrastructure, (8) natural environment and ecological sustainability, (9) ICT and other technologies, and (10) data and information. In addition, the authors refer to smartness as public sector innovation in urban contexts. A comprehensive view of a smart city should encompass government innovation in management and policy as well as technology and must acknowledge how the context of a city shapes the data and the technological, organizational, and policy aspects of a specific initiative. The chapter also briefly describes the content and the target audience of this book.