Smart city development as public entrepreneurship

This article investigates smart city programs as wicked policy arenas in which government-led networks of business and non-business stakeholders collaborate to achieve multiple innovation projects. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory, it provides an in-depth empirical analysis of the smart city transformation of a Belgian urban area. The article argues that a key role in this process is played by mayoral leadership. Acting as public entrepreneurs, mayors succeed to navigate through the wickedness of smart city programs and to shape the innovation process along three different albeit interconnected dimensions. First, they provide the strategic vision of the smart city transformation process through the multivocal problematization of key policy texts in order to accommodate stakeholders’ multiple views and interests. Second, they interact with the municipal administration and the broader institutional context of the city through project-based and business-like devices that allow them to overcome inter-organizational complexity and to establish formal relationships with key stakeholders. Third, they work to secure public support and legitimacy by mobilizing citizens through communication and information sharing campaigns. For each of these three dimensions the limits of the mayor’s action and possible solutions are identified and discussed.