Smart City Gnosys

Smart city article details

Title	Smart Cities As Hybrid Spaces Of Governance: Beyond The Hard/Soft Dichotomy In Cyber-Urbanization
ID_Doc	49493
Authors	Golubchikov O.; Thornbush M.J.
Year	2022
Published	Sustainability (Switzerland), 14, 16
DOI	http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su141610080
Abstract	This paper problematizes the dichotomy of hard (technocratic) and soft (societal) approaches to the smart city. Smart cities are reviewed as hybrid spaces that transcend the sum of the social and the technical. By providing platforms for enabling, monitoring, digitalizing, formalizing, and amassing information about collective and personal experiences and behaviors, smart cities accelerate the customization of existing urban services and establish new spaces of socialization, accumulation and regulation, including in hitherto hard-to-reach realms of everyday and personal life. These experiences signify the emergence of cyber-physical-social spaces, featuring the hybridization of the digital, governance, and sociocultural domains. The production of such hybrid spaces of governance is reviewed through 50 urban-level strategies for smart cities in different countries across the world. The analysis confirms the tendencies towards a hard/soft fusion and the ever-deepening interpenetration of the digital, physical, and social elements in smart cities. This suggests epistemological problems of separating the hard and soft domains. However, this integration still creates political and analytical tensions that are arguably evident in the early stages of the digital transition.
Author Keywords	city strategies; digital governance; digital spaces; smart city

Similar Articles

Id	Similarity	Authors	Title	Published
14957	0.911	Zhilin S.; Klievink B.; de Jong M.	Community Self-Governance In The Smart City: Towards A Typology	Public Administration and Information Technology, 34 (2019)
28719	0.908	Senatore, G; Sessa, M	Hard And Soft Smart Cities: An Integrated Approach	SOCIETAMUTAMENTOPOLITICA-RIVISTA ITALIANA DI SOCIOLOGIA, 14, 28 (2023)
59003	0.901	Han, ZY; Ja'afar, NH; Abd Malek, MI; Lyu, Y	Trends, Obstacles, And Opportunities For Smart Cities In Urban Space: A Systematic Literature Review	TOWN AND REGIONAL PLANNING, 86 (2025)
49886	0.899	Visvizi A.; Godlewska-Majkowska H.	Smart Cities: Lock-In, Path-Dependence And Non-Linearity Of Digitalization And Smartification	Smart Cities: Lock-in, Path-dependence and Non-linearity of Digitalization and Smartification (2024)
28179	0.898	Meijer, A; Bolívar, MPR	Governing The Smart City: A Review Of The Literature On Smart Urban Governance	INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCES, 82, 2 (2016)
57815	0.897	Krivy, M	Towards A Critique Of Cybernetic Urbanism: The Smart City And The Society Of Control	PLANNING THEORY, 17, 1 (2018)
52055	0.896	Rasoulzadeh Aghdam S.; Bababei Morad B.; Ghasemzadeh B.; Irani M.; Huovila A.	Social Smart City Research: Interconnections Between Participatory Governance, Data Privacy, Artificial Intelligence And Ethical Sustainable Development	Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, 6 (2024)
7283	0.896	Vadiati N.	Alternatives To Smart Cities: A Call For Consideration Of Grassroots Digital Urbanism	Digital Geography and Society, 3 (2022)
20333	0.895	Nochta T.; Lemanski C.; Wan L.; Parlikad A.K.; Schooling J.M.; Jin Y.	Digitalisation For Smarter Cities: Moving From A Static To A Dynamic View	Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers: Smart Infrastructure and Construction, 171, 4 (2019)
8639	0.895	Esashika, D; Masiero, G; Mauger, Y	An Investigation Into The Elusive Concept Of Smart Cities: A Systematic Review And Meta-Synthesis	TECHNOLOGY ANALYSIS & STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT, 33, 8 (2021)