EditorialInformation management as a dual-purpose process in the smart city: Collecting, managing and utilizing information
Introduction
The exponential increase in urbanization places the question of wellbeing in cities and urban areas at the heart of the policy debate. Advances in ICT, along with digitization, promise that new services will become available to city dwellers and that their accessibility and quality will correspond to people’s expectations and ability to use them (Visvizi et al., 2017). Against this backdrop, a vibrant field of research has emerged that explores in depth the potential of new technologies for (smart) cities/urban space (Ismagilova et al., 2019; Visvizi & Lytras, 2018; Wu et al., 2018). As the use of ICT in city space is pervasive and urbanization gathers pace, it is vital to view the smart city from a three-tiered perspective: as an analytical concept; as an artifact; and as a policymaking objective. In this reading, the smart city is a key venue in which information needs to be managed both efficiently and sustainably.
A wide variety of stakeholders are involved in the making and functioning of smart cities, and the resultant dynamics of interaction is vast. To ensure smart cities’ resilience and sustainability, as well as their citizens’ wellbeing, it is fundamental that information management is seen as a dual-purpose process aimed not only at organizing activities that collect, store and disseminate information but also at making that information available and usable to smart-city stakeholders. The premise behind this special issue, in this view, is that the key factor that conditions the emergence and sustainability of smart cities is agile dual-purpose information management. Only in this way can information management in smart cities be transformed into knowledge-focused and knowledge-generating activities (Dwivedi et al., 2020; Laurini, 2020).
In the rich and dynamic debate on smart cities, a smart city is defined as ‘a place where the traditional networks and services are made more efficient through the use of digital and telecommunication technologies, for the benefit of its inhabitants and businesses’ (European Commission, 2014). This suggests that smart-city services include not only the basics necessary for the smooth operation of transportation networks, water supply and waste management but also those enabling citizen participation in the process of interest aggregation, articulation and representation (Lytras & Visvizi, 2018; Toriz Ramos, 2019; Clarinval et al., 2020). In other words, the city, and urban space in general, requires a new generation of services to address the evolving demands of its citizens and businesses (Carroll, 2020; Alkmanash et al., 2019; Lytras et al., 2019). The good news is that advances in ICT enable us to meet effectively these expanding demands for the benefit of the citizens, the business sector and society generally.
Arguably, several factors and dynamics are at work in this multilayered context that brings together emerging technology, services, business, citizens and society and the evolving expectations and demands. Therefore, if our thinking about smart cities and their future is driven by an aim to employ emerging technology to offer a new generation of services to secure wellbeing and prosperity in cities/urban spaces, what becomes necessary is a dual-purpose style of information management. This special issue features a selection of articles suggesting how this can be achieved.
Section snippets
Content of the special issue
In response to the initial call for this special issue, many articles were submitted. After an arduous double-blind peer-review process, ten were accepted for this collection. The topics addressed cover a range of issues and the key findings are highly informative about information collection and operationalization. Specifically, this issue opens with a discussion that makes explicit how to turn end-users’ views on smart-city services into multi-item scale development, validation and
Concluding remarks
There are several definitions of the smart city. This editorial has made a case for viewing the smart city from a three-tiered perspective: as a concept; as an artifact; and as a policymaking objective. It is argued that, from this multi-scalar conceptual, empirical and policymaking perspective, the smart city emerges as the key venue for applying existing insights defining the information management debate and exploring new avenues of research. In this reading, this editorial has stressed that
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