Smart Governance For Sustainable Cities: Findings from a Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic review of the literature on smart governance, defined as technology-enabled collaboration between citizens and local governments to advance sustainable development. The lack of empirical evidence on the positive outcomes of smart cities/smart governance motivated us to conduct this study. Our findings show that empirical evidence for the alleged sustainability benefits is sparse. In addition, the emerging picture is ambiguous in that it reports both positive and negative effects in respect to the sustainability achievements of smart governance. The study identifies contextual conditions of smart governance as crucial to understanding these mixed outcomes. Our paper points up the need for more empirical work and develops an agenda for researching the relationship between smart governance and sustainability outcomes.