The collaboration dilemma in smart city projects: Time to ask the right questions

Abstract

This Connexions article links collaboration in smart city projects, a contemporary and undertheorised social challenge, with theories on assemblage thinking, organisation, and public value creation. Using this multidisciplinary lens, we critically analyse smart city theory and expose the inability of prevailing collaborative models to properly account for the complexities of real-world practices. Building on our observations, we formulate a new and more robust theoretical perspective on smart city collaboration, which helps us trigger new research questions that focus on procedural, relational and diversity factors previously ignored.