Hacking Corporate Smart Cities Under COVID-19: Towards a Smart Governance Approach

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed huge challenges on smart cities, requiring a reimagining and transformation of their governance structures. This viewpoint argues that a smart governance approach should be applied to remodel the uniform, often technocratic and corporate-led way of coping with COVID-19 in the smart city context. There is a need to develop more technology-enabled collaborative actions across sectors and among various actors to recover better from the pandemic. A far-sighted view is also needed to build citizen-centric open governance capacities-the emergent character of mass participation in cities-for readiness, responsiveness, and long-term resilience. The need for a robust communication policy is highlighted to transmit well-timed and critical information to a range of actors interested in smart city transformation.