Smart cities within world city networks

ABSTRACT

A substantiated definition of smart cities is urgently required. In this note, we explore the crossover between smart city and world city network literature. We argue that this crossover can contribute to the theoretical and empirical development of smart city literature. The results show that indeed, besides territorial measures, network measures, e.g. indegree and inward distance, are important in explaining the smartness of cities. Based on this, we recommend that smart cities include city network characteristics in future planning.

KEYWORDS:

• Smart cities
• world city network
• foreign direct investment
• network centrality

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• R110
• R120
• O210

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Greenfield FDI concerns investments in which new projects and employment are generated. These investments, unlike M&As, have clear measurable impact on city development.

² For more details on the technique, refer to R package ‘p2distance’ by A.J. Perez-Luque et al. (2015).

³ For a good explanation of these measures, please see Alderson A S, Beckfield J, (2004), Power and Position in the World City System, American Journal of Sociology, 109 (4) 811 – 851.