The smart city and urban governance: the urban transformation of Barcelona, 2011–2023

ABSTRACT

This study explores the changes and stability of urban governance through the lens of smart city policy in Barcelona. It argues that the concept of smart cities is flexible and can be applied to both the neoliberal and participatory models of urban governance. Smart city policies undergo gradual rather than radical changes, with public–private relationships remaining stable despite fluctuations in the prominence of different actors. Comparing the smart city policy approaches of two ideologically opposite local governments, this study reveals similarities in the use of the scale, which is limited to local and global dimensions, and dismissal of metropolitan scale.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban governance
• smart city
• urban politics
• local government
• public policies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Research involved collaboration with the Autonomous University of Barcelona in the first phase, and the Université du Québec à Montréal in the second phase. The author has access to qualitative information since she is member of the scientific committees of the Smart City Expo World Congress and Barcelona Institute of Technology for the Habitat Foundation, and has been on the advisory board of the Metropolitan Strategic Plan 2030. The author does also regular observations in Barcelona’s makerspaces.

2. Participation in the study was entirely voluntary, and all participants provided informed consent. The duration of the interviews was between 30’ to 75’ minutes. They were enregistered, transcribed and codified with Atlas.ti software following the key elements of our analytical framework: the actors, the tools and the scale of the smart city strategy. Interviewees cited in the text provided written consent. This project was approved by the University of Barcelona’s Bioethics Commission (Institutional Review Board, IRB00003099).

3. In the SCWE 2022 edition, there were 20,423 in-person attendees; 28621 online attendees; 853 exhibitors; more than 400 speakers and 149 side events. Information available at: https://www.smartcityexpo.com/2022-highlights/ Accessed 25^th July 2023.

4. As member of the scientific committee of the Smart City Expo World Congress since 2018, the author has access to all paper and conference proposals.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Spain [CSO2011-28850]; Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain [PID2019-106931 GA-I00].

Notes on contributors

Mariona Tomàs

Mariona Tomàs is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Barcelona, Spain. Specializing in metropolitan governance, urban policies, and local democracy, Dr Tomàs has participated in numerous national and international research projects and published several articles in international journals. She is also a member of various networks and advisory councils related to metropolitan governance and urban policy.