Deciphering the understandings and appropriation of the Smart City concept: A multilevel inquiry

Over the last decade, the Smart City concept has become increasingly popular and has developed in diverse directions. The phenomenon comprises numerous orientations and different views of what a Smart City is or could be. Depending on the orientation, it provides different responses to urban and territorial challenges. Due to this diversity, identifying how stakeholders comprehend and appropriate this phenomenon is critical to further advance the scientific research, and to develop practical agendas for its implementation and governance.
To analyse stakeholders’ understandings and appropriation of the Smart City, this thesis offers innovative research combining various methodologies, theories, and territorial scopes. It focuses on Belgian stakeholders at different institutional levels. The thesis is articulated around four scientific articles – a literature review and three empirical research studies – respectively titled: 1. Governance and stakeholders of Smart Cities: A call for a stronger theoretical foundation to tackle complexity, 2. Municipalities’ understanding of the Smart City concept: An exploratory analysis in Belgium, 3. Smart City appropriation by local actors: An instrument in the making, 4. Actors’ centrality in the building of a Smart City: A critical analysis using the actor-network theory process of translation.
The results obtained indicate that the Smart City is not understood by Belgian stakeholders in a homogenous manner. Empirical research stresses that Belgian actors develop a variety of understandings and feature different appropriation of the phenomenon between rejection and adoption, some trends are nevertheless observed across certain categories of actors. The research offers an exploration of the factors affecting stakeholders’ appropriation. To improve Smart City implementation, this thesis provides practical recommendations based on the capitalisation on actors’ understandings and the consideration of new forms of management. Finally, the thesis calls for more careful consideration of territorial characteristics, and proposes some paths for future research on this topic.