Perspectives on Smart Cities Strategies: Sketching a Framework and Testing First Uses

Many cities today claim to be or to become a "smart city". The approaches and public policy foci taken by cities differ depending on the particular context of each city, e.g., size, technology strategy, political system, current challenges and history. This paper is proposing a Smart City Strategy Framework in the form of a morphological box, describing elements relevant for a smart city strategy and their possible manifestations. The framework is based on a literature analysis and the contained elements are grouped into four dimensions: city context, governance, implementation, and infrastructure. The framework can be used to compare different cities in their approach towards becoming a smart city, and we claim that it also helps city planners to develop a strategy, guiding the evolutionary and continuous processes in their smart city. To validate the applicability of the framework, we used it in the drafting and structuring of a questionnaire to city representatives that served as preparation for an international stakeholder workshop on smart cities strategies in order to find out what strategies cities are following and what their current status is. The results of the questionnaire and the workshop hinted at common patterns for smart city strategies, and shows that maturity levels as well as cultural differences need to be taken more into account in future versions of the framework.