Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
8-2025
Abstract
Crucial urbanists’ placement of smart city initiatives in Western Europe or North America mostly on the “low” rungs of participatory ladders or scaffolds does not mean that smart urban development necessarily connotes democracy-eroding neoliberalization everywhere. This article offers a more globally variegated and dynamic understanding of the relationship between citizens and smart cities. We apply an institutional logics framework to the citizen-smart city nexus in seven cities spanning three world regions, considering the interplay of citizen-centric logics with techno-innovation-oriented and bureaucratic/managerial logics. Appreciating contextually specific institutional orders helps to explain why similar initiatives and intentions yield different outcomes across time and space. However, the interplay of competing logics also enables a reworking of prevailing orders and creates possibilities for change. Bringing multiple cases and their associated dynamics into a comparative conversation reveals similarities and differences that would not have been expected from a priori classifications based on geographical region or mode of governance. This approach allows for the cross-case conceptualization of civil servant “proxy citizenship” and “palimpsests” of social scripts. The article provides empirical, methodological, and conceptual resources not only for understanding how prevailing institutional logics enable or foreclose citizen action in smart city development but also for building contextually grounded propositional agendas for change.
Keywords
Citizen-centrism, comparative urbanism, institutional logics, proxy citizens, public participation, smart cities
Discipline
Urban Studies and Planning
Publication
Urban Geography
First Page
1
Last Page
26
ISSN
0272-3638
Identifier
10.1080/02723638.2025.2551135
Publisher
Taylor and Francis
Citation
BUNNELL, Tim; SPICER, Zachary; MILLER, Byron; ABBRUZZESE, Teresa; CARDULLO, Paolo; CHANG, I-Chun Catherine; CHARNOCK, Greig; CHUNG, Ming-Kuang; HEO, Kwon; JOU, Sue-Ching; KARVONEN, Andrew; KORDAS, Olga; Kong, Lily; RIBERA-FUMAZ, Ramon; SHIN, HaeRan; and Orlando WOODS.
The citizen and the smart city: A global comparison of institutional logics. (2025). Urban Geography. 1-26.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cis_research/377
Copyright Owner and License
Authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2025.2551135