Smart city initiatives: A comparative study of American and Chinese cities

ABSTRACT

Taking a comparative approach, this study conducted text-mining and content analysis of smart city initiatives to evaluate the status and progress of smart city development in China and the United States. Despite sharing similarities in developing and applying technology to improve  public services and promote economies, these cities have taken different approaches to building smart cities. The American cities adopted a participatory governance structure whereas the Chinese cities demonstrated a hierarchical model that highlighted a proactive role of government and lacked systematic mechanisms for stakeholder engagement. The American smart city initiatives emphasized the improvement of public services to attract businesses and the use of a collaborative approach to building digital infrastructure. With a higher level of policy support and funding support from the central government, local Chinese governments have assumed a leading role in nurturing and developing the smart technology industry, protecting the environment, and building intelligent infrastructures.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the guest editors—Dr. Jiannan Wu, Dr. Kevin Desouza, and Dr. Naim Kapucu—for organizing a special issue on “Smart Governance across Cities in the Contemporary Era.” We would also express our gratitude to Dr. Xuefei Ren and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented by Dr. Yueping Zheng at the 2017 Global Cities Forum at Shanghai in China.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Qian Hu

Qian Hu is an associate professor in the School of Public Administration at the University of Central Florida. Her research interests include big data and policy informatics, smart governance, collaborative governance, and organizational network studies. Her work has been published in academic journals such as Public Administration Review, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, American Review of Public Administration, Public Management Review, Journal of Urban Affairs, Administration & Society, American Behavioral Scientist, and Research Policy.

Yueping Zheng

Yueping Zheng is an assistant professor at the Center for Chinese Public Administration Research, School of Government, Sun Yat-sen University. His research interests include e-government, digital governance, big data and public administration, and smart city. His recent publications include articles in Administration & Society, Public Performance and Management Review, Government Information Quarterly, and International Review of Administrative Science.