Does activity fulfil aspiration? a contextual comparison of smart city applications in practice

Research on smart city projects and applications has been increasing in recent years (Meijer and Bolivar 2015). The smart city concept is mostly considered from a technology-oriented perspective that stresses the use of data technologies, big data and ICT to ‘smarten up’ cities. In contrast, attention to soft aspects of the smart city—namely smart governance, people and social learning—seems to be limited in both academia and practice. Moreover, what seems to be largely missing from the literature is empirical insight into the extent to which different smart city aspects are factually known of and applied in different geographical contexts. This contribution presents a contextual comparison of smart city applications based on a mainly quantitative empirical analysis. Particular emphasis is put on the knowledge that government practitioners in the Netherlands have of smart aspects and the extent to which they are willing and able to implement smart aspects in their specific local and regional contexts. The results of the analysis show that both in the Netherlands and worldwide there are great aspirations to develop and implement smart city applications, but that to some extent factual activities are lagging behind. The reasons for this are mostly related to a lack of awareness of the possibilities and a lack of financial and political priority. This especially applies to smaller cities in the Netherlands. When this is resolved, actual activities are more likely to live up to the great aspirations regarding the smart city concept.