Smart urban governance: An urgent symbiosis?

2.1E-government

First, e-government is understood as the use of ICTs such as websites, social media and mobile devises to improve public service delivery (Manoharan & Ingrams, 2018). Driven by the need for government transformation, ICT has become the core element of e-government in a short period of time (Bertot et al., 2016). The deployment of e-government has focused on technological and operational matters for a long time, focusing attention mainly on the role of ICT in transforming the internal operations of the public sector (Savoldelli et al., 2014). By integrating various ICTs into government structures, operations and processes, e-government to a large degree increases government efficiency, accountability and transparency (Janowski, 2015). Apart from changes in the internal governmental operations, e-government also aims to create new opportunities for external actors, such as private companies and non-governmental organizations, for instance in the sense of delivering information and developing new services (Mahou-Lago & Varela-Álvarez, 2016). However, relying heavily on the control from government to expand their reach, e-government has failed to build up effective mechanisms for different stakeholders to really engage in the decision-making process. Shortcomings in transforming e-government are expected to be overcome by increasing participation and engagement (Janowski, 2015; Savoldelli et al., 2014). Or, as stated by Linders (2012, p. 453), there is a need to transform e-government into “we-government, in which society place more trust in – and empowers – the public to play a far more active role in the functioning of their government”.

2.2E-governance

Second, e-governance is a broader concept which includes the utilization of ICT by government, private and civil society to encourage greater participation of non-state actors in the governance of public issues (Palvia & Sharma, 2007). Compared to e-government in which ICT usually supports one-way information publishing, in e-governance ICTs can better facilitate two-way communication between the state and non-state actors (Marche & McNiven, 2003). By empowering citizens through access to government information and policy-making processes, interactions between different groups have been largely improved in e-governance. Besides, unlike e-government, which treats citizens as consumers of services, e-governance is “more about engaging citizens and stakeholders and allowing them to co-produce public services” (Meijer, 2015, p. 199). According to Scholl and Scholl (2014), co-production in public services through the use of ICT builds the foundation for e-governance.

In fact, by conscientiously allowing open-minded participation and collaboration, e-governance manifests its transition from traditional top-down administration to flat institutional arrangements – that is, to emphasize external government transformation and improve the possibilities for citizens and businesses to participate in the policy-making process (Milakovich, 2012). Nevertheless, Johnston and Hansen (2011) note that the evolving relationships between government and non-government need not to be limited to the public sector but can also be applied to the private sector. For instance, e-governance can be used to collectively foster a common sense of community among different stakeholders and facilitate the building of self-governing communities (Paskaleva, 2013). However, Meijer (2015) argues that institutional-cultural and technological barriers, such as technological restraints, individual preferences, and resistance from government, impede innovations in e-governance; therefore, creative strategies are needed to reframe e-governance.

2.3Smart (city) governance

Third, smart governance aims to establish a new type of governance arrangement through the use of new technologies (Meijer, 2016). Smart governance goes beyond e-government/e-governance as it has escalated from the public sector to a higher and broader city level (Meijer & Bolívar, 2016). Hence, city governments are forced to “rethink, change, and improve their governing routines, procedures, and processes” (Van Dijk et al., 2017, p. 3). Currently, smart governance is elaborated from two perspectives. First, a technology-centric perspective highlights the process of information exchange between different actors by employing smart e-participation devices (Johnston & Hansen, 2011). This ICT-enablement enhances the management and functioning of a city, which is treated as the key driver of the governance of smart cities. Second, a human-centric view underlines the role of smart people as being central to smart city governance. In this view, human capital and/or human resources are the key feature of smart governance. Building on the characteristics of ‘smart’ people, smart governance relies heavily on the ideas, information, knowledge, skills, and cooperations acquired by these people that contribute to the prosperity of a smart city. Nevertheless, in practice more importance has been given to new technologies rather than empowering individuals and groups to determine agency decisions in a self-organized manner. Therefore, Ruhlandt (2018) argues that effectively integrating technology into the participatory process of urban governance mediated by context-specificities is crucial for developing a transformative form of smart city governance. This means that smart (city) governance in practice should focus more on the synergy between technical and social systems.

2.4Urban governance

Fourth, urban governance refers to the concept of governing cities from a broad perspective (Obeng-Odoom, 2012). Land, capital, information, labor, and technology are integrated to seek sustainable development of cities. In a narrow sense, urban governance refers to multi-agent governance networks in which government, private sector, and civil society are interdependent for solving urban issues (DiGaetano & Strom, 2003). Although a lot of empirical case studies have been conducted to explore the concept of urban governance, its meaning still remains undefined (Obeng-Odoom, 2012). Aspects of definitions can either focus on various theories of power to investigate the behaviour of actors (Nicholls, 2005) or highlight a neoliberal model of urban governance (Harvey, 1989) or emphasizes the decision-making process restrained by contextual factors (Beumont & Nicholls, 2008).

Focusing on power relations, urban governance involves a complex process of political decision-making between different stakeholder groups (Stoker, 1998; Pierre, 1999). The interaction between different actors can either regain control and restore traditional structures, thus underlining bureaucracies and hierarchies, or shift to a decentralized structure centering on self-governing networks (Jessop, 1998). As a neoliberal model, urban governance is deemed as a partnership mechanism for alliances between the government and enterprises to promote local development. Then, referred as “the process of coordinating political decision making” (DiGaetano & Strom, 2003, p. 373), urban governance is largely shaped by the economic-political, cultural and agency-level factors. Therefore, new research and application possibilities for urban governance should consider the impact of the broad socio-spatial contexts on decision-makers and the decision-making process.

Although urban governance has gained much momentum, it should also be noticed that problems such as under-equipped infrastructures, tensions and social conflicts over access and/or control of the city, dysfunction of urban services, and overlapping or incoherent responsibilities between institutions have gone beyond its capacity (Devas, 2014). Van Dijk et al. (2017, p. 3) argue that “cities need to develop smart governance in order to become smart”. Despite urban governance being a mature academic field, technology and innovation should be connected to develop smarter urban governance approaches to confront the recent ‘smart urbanism’ (Meijer & Bolívar, 2016).

2.5ICT-enabled participatory planning

Finally, participatory planning is a policy-making process that includes affected stakeholders, especially non-governmental parties (Healey, 1997). In a typical participatory planning endeavor, such as a community development planning, different stakeholders will get involved in the processes of decision-making on certain issues. The purpose of participatory planning is to contribute to public awareness of local issues and to give the public opportunities to state their concerns. To facilitate participation and engagement from individuals and the local community, a large variety of instruments and tools have been developed and applied. For instance, computer-based information systems such as Decision Support Systems (DSS) and Planning Support System (PSS) are often used to support the decision-making process in ICT-enabled participatory planning (Geertman, 2015). Currently, new ICT tools such as social media, websites, crowd-sourcing and Internet-of-Things are applied by planners and governments to increasingly include private sector and citizens in planning processes (Sebastian et al., 2018). Nevertheless, fierce debates remain about the use of ICT in planning. For instance, the digital divide that restricts some residents’ access to the planning process is still very real (Crowe et al., 2016). In addition, individuals’ engagement in ICT-enabled participatory planning can be seen as skewed due to power imbalances between bureaucrats and citizens (Zhang et al., 2018). In the future, ICT-enabled participatory planning is expected to enhance its adaptiveness to consistently changing societal environments and conditions and satisfy the real needs of relevant stakeholders (Zhang et al., 2018; Pelzer, 2017; Geertman, 2015).

2.6Integration: Towards smart urban governance?

On the basis of reviewing the five most significant forerunners of our notion of ‘smart urban governance’, it can be concluded that the academic debates on contemporary smart governance and urban planning approaches mainly focus on three factors. First, technology is perceived as a key driver of developing smart governance approaches. Second, the need for restructuring public organizations reflects the interdependency and high degree of mutuality between various stakeholders, including governmental and non-governmental bodies and persons. Third, many scholars have argued that ICT-enabled governance does not operate in a vacuum but is deeply rooted in urban space, thus socio-spatial contexts of urban challenges should be taken into account explicitly. Accordingly, smart urban governance originates from, but should go beyond, these five antecedents.

Besides, the review of the five forerunners also uncovered the following main categories of the broad research relative to the governance of smart cities: 1) purpose (or outcome), 2) component, and 3) context (e.g., Jiang et al., 2019; Lin, 2018; Webster & Leleux, 2018; Ruhlandt, 2018; Bolívar & Meijer, 2016; Meijer, 2016). For our conceptualization, we refer to these three variables that in our view reflect three key dimensions of smart urban governance, that is: purpose, component and context. The purpose concerns the goals or intentions of smart urban governance to be achieved. The component constitutes the process, that facilitates the formation of smart urban governance arrangements. The context rephrases what was explained earlier about the socio-spatial context of urban challenges associated to smart cities initiating the need for smart urban governance. These three dimensions will be integrated into one holistic framework.

4.1Economic purpose: Productivity and innovation

If governance concentrates on productivity and innovation associated with the production, use and management of resources, the purpose is economic. In the field of smart city goverance, one of the main purposes found in literature is to promote economic growth. In this sense, pro-growth smart city governance treats the improvement of productivity and economic growth as an overarching goal for local economies (Hollands, 2015). According to Kumar et al. (2017, p. 1), “smart urban economies are largely the result of the influence of ICT applications on all aspects of urban economy”. Adoption of ICT-enhanced policies or governance nowadays is on top of the economic agendas for governments in most countries (Pradhan et al., 2018). For instance, the governance of smart cities in China to a large degree revolves around productivity, entrepreneurship, innovation, as well as economic competitiveness in the global market (Jiang et al., 2019).

In addition, Gil-Garcia et al. (2014) highlight the role of a creative mix of emerging technologies in facilitating the producitivity of service delivery and innovation. By promoting transparent decision-making, open information sharing use, and ICT-enabled participation and collaboration, smart initiatives will alter how people interact with each and lead to advancements in term of technological innovation (Kummitha & Crutzen, 2017). An example is Barcelona Smart City (Bakici et al., 2013). This project integrates top-down and bottom-up approaches towards urban digitalization and incorporates big data and smart sensors into everything from parkland irrigation to air quality, trash collection, parking and transportation. By effectively integrating smart technologies with smart people, Barcelona has improved its economic competitive edge.

4.2Political purpose: Human-social capital and public value

If governance is defined to emphasize the contributions of human-social capital and public value to a social life held in common, the purpose is political. In ICT-enabled governance, by offering a variety of ICT tools to citizens, it not only empowers human actors to access knowledge, information and data in an efficient and economical manner, but also enables community members to communicate with each other (Meijer, 2016; Linders, 2012). Investments in interactive learning and collaboration are essential for ICT-enabled governance to foster the capabilities of citizens and the accumulation of human and social capital dispersed in civil society (Caragliu et al., 2011). The acquisition of human and social capital often has a considerable influence upon the generating of value and the process of problem solving (Angelidou, 2015).

In smart governance literature, public value is highlighted as the main goal of smart cities (Meijer et al., 2016). Described as “a reflection of collectively expressed, politically mediated preferences consumed by the citizenry” (O’Flynn, 2007, p. 358), public value evaluates the extent to which the demands of individuals, organizations and society as a whole can be satisfied (Bozeman, 2007). In fact, public value not only generates value from the experiences provided by different stakeholders but also provides them values in return (Williams & Shearer, 2011). According to Meijer et al. (2016), three types of public value produced by smart governance can be identified: 1) efficient government organization; 2) better relationships between government and other urban actors and 3) improvements to cities. In practice, the production of public value is closely connected with learning, innovation and common pool resources. For instance, by using open data as a way to facilitate the ‘smart’ governance of Rio de Janeiro, interactions and communications between city government and citizens have been largely improved. Through becoming custodians of public data, Rio de Janeiro government demonstrates trustworthiness and enhances its skills for urban service delivery in smart city contexts (Pereira et al., 2017).

4.3Ecological purpose: Spatial capital and habitability

If governance strives to contribute spatial capital and habitability across the intersection between social and natural realms, the purpose is ecological. In this, spatial capital is the information and resources accumulated by cities and communities that enable different actors to exploit the spatial dimension of a society (Roche, 2016). According to Roche (2017), the acquirement of spatial capital is closely linked with digital technology, especially geo-technology. For instance, emerging technologies such as social media, electronic maps, Internet-of-Things, and peer-to-peer sharing applications have enhanced citizens’ access to geography-related information and data. However, critiques also show that the current urban infrastructure upgrading and many smart city initiatives are mainly controlled by high-tech companies, which demonstrates a sense of privatizing public space (Kummitha & Crutzen, 2017). In reality, improved quality of life for its citizens might not be produced best through a well-planned urban system.

In this context, Leydesdorff and Deakin (2013:53) declare that the increasing growth of ICT should facilitate the interactions between “the intellectual capital of universities, the industry of wealth creation and their participation in the democratic government of civil society”. In this sense, smartness is not merely about the deployment of technologies but more related to how to cultivate a technology-based ecological and habitable surrounding – a place of vibrant life and livelihoods that everyone can efficiently get involved and gain access to things that are wanted or required. An example of this kind of smart city governance is the Smart Nation Singapore project, which strongly encourages the private sector and civil society to smarten their living surroundings with their own creative ideas, knowledges and technologies. It is worth noting that the integration of technology into the daily life of the Singaporean has contributed to the creation of new forms of techno-cultures and habitable environments. For smart urban governance, more attention should be transferred to the intersection between the social and natural realms, since here spatial capital is concentrated and habitability is fostered.

4.4Cultural purpose: Psychological capital and well-being

Finally, if goverance centers on psychological capital and well-being of social meaning of a life held in common, the purpose is cultural. Psychological capital is conceptualized as the positive and developmental state of an individual as characterized by high hopes, self-efficacy, optimism, and resiliencey (Luthans & Youssef, 2004). Well-being is the satisfaction of objective needs (e.g., food) or subjective needs (e.g., respect) (Oswald & Wu, 2010). In smart governance, participation through empowerment is the main enabler of improving stakeholders’ psychological capital and well-being (e.g., mutual trust, shared understanding) (Webster & Leleux, 2018). Empowered participation in governance processes allows actors to gain mastery and control over their own affairs, which help them to build a sense of accountability for their communities (Granier & Kudo, 2016). For instance, the Amsterdam Smart City project organizes smart collaboration between citizens, enterprises, knowledge institutions and municipalities which effectively fosters social inclusion among society (Lin, 2018).

Long-term continued engagement and collaboration assists actors to cultivate a supportive sense of belonging and membership. In smart cities projects, ICT creates more space and opportunities for different actors to get involved in debates about their living surroundings (Bolívar & Meijer, 2016). Social media, websites, and living labs are widely utilized to encourage collaborative policy-making. Characteristics of both the objective and subjective factors that improve health and quality of life have been identified in multiple ICT-enabled governance initiatives (Battarra et al., 2018; Ojo et al., 2013). For instance, by developing long-term cooperation among business firms, citizen, knowledge insitutions, and municipal agencies, the Smart Aarhus project in Denmark has built a strong psychological sense of community among its citizens (Snow et al., 2016). For smart urban governance to be considered successful in the eye of local people, more human-oriented configurations will enable ordinary people to become contributing members of the city.

Figure 2.

Key ‘component’ terms of smart urban governance.

5.1Institutional component: Governance theories

From the perpective of public administration, governance theory encapsulates eleven key terms illustrated in Fig. 2. Three aspects of governance can be identified: governance as as an analytical framework; as a set of norms and rules; and as a decentralized process rather than government control (Nuissl & Heinrichs, 2011). In ICT-enabled governance, this is conceptualized as a way to promote participation and collaboration from non-governmental actors to deal with collectively concerned issues via ICT (Caragliu et al., 2011). In this process, political actors or stakeholders are both the subject and object of governance (Rhodes, 1997). By using ICT, different political actors and stakeholders can get engaged and empowered in the decision-making process (Misuraca & Viscusi, 2015). Giving authority to the ‘have-not citizens’ through ICT enhances the abilities of communities, groups and/or individuals to participate. Governance also contains the formulation of strategies and visions, which are usually deemed as legal or regulatory objectives that indicate the way to implementing decision-making or policies. According to Hufty (2011, p. 405), “the processes of interaction and decision-making among the actors involved in a collective problem” finally “leads to the creation, reinforcement, or reproduction of social norms and institutions”. Accordingly, governance entails the way different norms, rationalities and actions are structured, arranged, formed and sustained.

Although a rapidly growing number of ICT-enabled governance literature focuses on the concept of governance at different descriptive and analytical levels, this paper conceptualizes governance as an institutional arrangement aimed at steering and coordinating interdependent actors to deal with collective concerned issues. As governance theory provides an angle to understand the various aspects of ICT-enabled governance (e.g., political actors and stakeholders, participaton and collaboration, power and empowerment, decision-making, management and organization, and so on), it is designated as the institutional component of smart urban governance.

5.2Technological component: Smart tools

The second component of smart urban governance is technology, mainly composed of smart tools. Zook (2017) highlights that the appropriate integration of ICT into governance is necessary because of the ability of ICT to innovatively adapt to contextual environments. In practice, the incorporation of ICT into governance can technically promote the smartness of governance (Scholl H & Scholl M, 2014). For instance, new technologies such as sensors or sensor networks used in smart city governance help government to collect different kinds of data. These data enhance the rationality and effectiveness of government’s decision-making (Walravens, 2012).

Scholl H and Scholl M (2014, p. 163) argue that “the actionable and omnipresent ICT are substantial prerequisites and backbones for developing (various) models of smart (democratic) governance”. The applications of ICT for the development of innovative and smart governance contribute to enhancing communication and collaboration between different stakeholders within communities and cities. By mining various resources and expertise distributed among different actors in the cities, ICT-enablement will support “to maximize the socio-economic and ecological performance of cities, and to cope with negative externalities and historically grown path dependencies” (Kourtit et al., 2012). However, Hollands (2015, p. 61) criticizes that the great facilitating role of ICT does not imply technological determinism. Instead, research should be designed to investigate the creation of smart tools that cater for the particularities of specific working groups and organizations (Pelzer, 2017). In sum, smart tools are driving the technology component of smart urban governance.

5.3Spatial component: Urban space

The third component of smart urban governance is the spatial component, reflected in urban space. In accordance with Lefebvre (1991), urban space can be perceived as a set of social relationships. In governance literature, socialized urban space is closely linked with urban governance. As an object of urban governance, it delineates the content to which a specified governance action is directed. As a spatial characteristic, it brings about situational influences on the structure of urban goverance. However, this treatment of urban space is seldom considered in ICT-enabled governance. For instance, spatial scale is often postulated as a hierarchical model of scales, in which the portraying of actor constellations and power relations is limited within these nested and linear scales (Smith, 2010).

Distinctive from previous conceptualization of urban space as an analytical tool, this paper focuses on the social process of urban space – urban space as a category of practice – as Moore (2008) advocates. This means that concepts of urban space (such as scale and place) are no longer grasped as an instrument to analyze the decision-making process; instead, it is regarded as a spatial variable that interacts with the other components (institutions and technology) under specific socio-spatial contexts. As such, urban space is socially structured, formed, constructed and altered. Yigitcanlar et al. (2018) argue that urban space also drives the development of technology-based smart cities. Consequently, urban space’ interaction with the smart city process should be conceptualized as a crucial element in defining the meaning of smart city governance. Based on this, this paper highlights that it is the spatially-enabled practice (such as ideas, claims, assumptions, and actions with regard to urban space), along with the institutional and technological components that construct and define the meaning of smart urban governance.

6.1Social context

Social context includes factors that relate to the way people live together (Fig. 3). These include first, financial/economic barriers that have limited the development of structural forms of citizen engagement in ICT-governance innovation (Meijer, 2015). Second, the accessibility or availability of technologies enable governments to collect, connect and analyze data and initiate policies (Alathur et al., 2016). Normally, a higher level of technology development enriches people who would like to participate in the governance of smart cities (Anttiroiko, 2016). Third, the political system and institutions influence the degree of uncertainty regarding strategic decisions, power relations, interdependence, etc. (Nielsen & Pedersen, 2014). For instance, Lin (2018) identifies that different institutions in China and Europe have largely affected their smart governance strategies, arrangements and outcomes. Fourth, culture and customs, deemed as a set of informal rules or norms embedded in people’s daily life, influence the behaviors of particular political actors (DiGaetano & Strom, 2003). Meijer (2015, p. 199) claims that e-government under bureaucratic cultures tends to “preserve the traditional ways of interacting with citizens”. Finally, governance often fails when personal preferences and rationality of different political actors are not fully considered (Healey et al., 2017). According to Hollands (2015), constructive inclusive communication between different stakeholders in smart city governance can facilitate engaging with multiple perspectives.

6.2Spatial context

Distinctive from the spatial component, which is closely related to social practice and produced by human activities, spatial context refers to the spatial characteristics related to urban issues – geographic particularity, resource contraints and the nature of urban problems. Geographic particularity refers to the geographical attributes of an area such as place, space or scale (Gupta et al., 2015). Resource constraints represent the limitation and enrichment of spatial resources (e.g. facilities and utilities) to be utilized in dealing with social and urban issues. The availability of relevant resources for different locations, places, communities and countries influences the willingness and the governing capability to tackle a common-concerned problem (Howlett, 2009). Sufficient resources allow actors and cities to perform a thorough analysis of the alternatives while a lack of resources can be detrimental to the whole city governing system, causing city operations with elevated amounts of errors, transport delays and high stress levels (Sorensen, 2018). The nature of urban problems is about the challenges related to industrialization and urbanization. According to Meijer (2016, p. 75), the nature of urban problems in smart city governance portrays the conditioning of a problem that “interacts with a series of political, administrative, and technological choices regarding the use of new technologies for urban governance”.

Many studies on ICT-enabled governance have recognized the role of socio-spatial transformations in offering effective and meaningful directions for governance research. However, so far, few papers in the governance of smart cities have discussed, theorised or investigated the usefulness of this socio-spatial context. According to Ruhlandt (2018), the influence of contextual factors on the transformative governance of smart cities still remains concealed. Contextual factors are argued to influence the governance of smart cities, at least in part, but a lack of empirical evidence has weakened this connection. Besides, governance approaches from public administration often give prominence to social contexts (e.g. political system, institutions, and culture), while urban govenance and planning literature centers on spatial contexts without treating the social factors in an earnest manner (Healey, 1997). As a consequence, an effective smart urban governance approach should study a wide range of socio-spatial transformations in reality, since these contextual factors are not mutually exclusive, but are complementary and reciprocally beneficial to understand smart urban governance practices.

7.1A case illustration for the smart urban governance framework

Helsinki is confronted with fierce competition from other cities globally. At the local level, the city faces the challenges of urban economic renewal. Devoted to dealing with these challenges and improving residents’ quality of life, the project City-as-a-Platform was proposed by taking a broader contextual view.22

First, to make full use of Finland’s democratic tradition and citizens’ strong sense of participation in the city affair, the smart city discourse and practices in Helsinki provided a sense of democratizing innovation, i.e., cooperation and aggregation of ideas and knowledge of public sector, academia, business and citizens. One example is the Smart Kalasatama program, which built a network of actors in which innovations were created and tested. By initiating numerous activities that brought business and civil society together, this platform had a special role in Helsinki’s smart city-inspired development (e.g., open access to public data, smart city services testing and growth companies services). Another example is the Climate Street Project. Focusing on environmental protection, firms, real estate owners, universities and residents were invited to contribute their ideas and knowledge of energy saving and carbon emission reduction. A range of positive results have been achieved such as using shared spaces more efficiently, the provision of climate friendly products and trust building between stakeholders.

Second, although user-driven platforms in Helsinki to some extent enhance the interdependence of different stakeholders, but its ability to reinforce the interconnected ecosystems for urban innovation is weakened by a lack of mechanisms that can intensify collaboration between the key institutional actors and mobilize innovation potential of the city. Thus, Helsinki government intervention, strongly influenced by its welfarism, involved in extending user-driven platforms or living labs into the city level. By making a clear strategic plan, the Helsinki Strategy Program 2013–2016, Helsinki government integrated open participation and custromership, open data and interfaces, and open innovation platforms into a comprehensive city platform. The best example of this integration is the Forum Virium Helsinki. By aggregating most of the platforms in one place, this project succeeded in applying the platform thinking to Helsinki and reshaping interaction potential in urban communities.

Third, it should be noticed that the dynamics of Helsinki’s City-as-a-Platform did not stand alone but revolved around Helsinki’s technological ability to strengthen social behaviors and practices. As an important center for knowledge economy and innovation in Europe, Helsinki is capable of providing hardware and software solutions for extracting meaningful intelligence and smartening city operations. The user-driven online/offline platforms created in Helsinki provided technological intelligence to organize and process data and information that were dispersed and distributed amongst individuals. This ICT-enabled platformatization not only restructured Helsinki’s urban infrastructure, but also provided collaborative supports for economic development and urban services innovation.

Influenced by Finland’s democratic tradition and technological basis, it shows that both firms and individuals in Helsinki tend to share their innovations with others, creating more open innovation processes. Then, facilitated by government intervention, these user-driven platforms or living labs had contributed to Helsinki’s City-as-a-Platform, characterized by enhanced connectivity, better access to products and services and user-innovation communities. As a result, urban space is no longer a physical entity but an interconnected system in which people can obtain and exchange information and knowledge in a timely manner. Within this system, tensions between pro-growth and anti-growth coalitions had been effectively eased by participatory processes and the enhanced quality of life.

In this case, smart urban governance is about integrating technologies into a city and building participatory and collaborative spaces to inspire Helsinki’s urban innovativeness and improve its global competition. Taken together, the case well demonstrates the linkages between socio-spatial contexts, interactions between technology, institution and urban space, and the desired outcomes. It also reveals that socio-spatial contexts of urban challenges associated to smart cities, if properly considered, can maximize the potentials of interactions between technology, institution and urban space and produced smart urban governance.