A sociotechnical framework for smart urban governance: Urban technological innovation and urban governance in the realm of smart cities

Abstract

Over the past decade, the dominant entrepreneurial form of urban governance has seriously hindered the transformation of cities by neglecting the role of urban contexts in shaping governance structures and outcomes. To promote alternatives, this article presents a sociotechnical framework for smart urban governance. This framework explicitly examines the impacts of urban contexts on the sociotechnical interaction between urban technological innovation and urban governance in the realm of smart cities. Three real-world cases were used to demonstrate how the framework can be applied in different urban contexts. The results show that the alleged smartness in smart urban governance by no means implies the simple acceptance, adoption, and use of technology; instead, it needs to be conditionate. For successful smart urban governance, urban technological innovation should be effectively attuned to the wider urban actors and preexisting urban challenges (i.e., the urban governance process), with a special focus on the urban context.