Open Access Article SciPap-1389
Smart Cities – Overview of Citizen Participation across Application Domains
by Oliver Rafaj 1,* iD icon, Stefan Rehak 2 iD icon and Tomáš Černěnko 3 iD icon

1 Department of Public Administration and Regional Development, University of Economics in Bratislava, Dolnozemska cesta 1, Bratislava 5 852 35, Slovakia

2 Department of Public Administration and Regional Development, University of Economics in Bratislava, Dolnozemska cesta 1, Bratislava 852 35, Slovakia

3 Department of Public Administration and Regional Development, Ekonomická univerzita v Bratislave, Dolnozemská cesta 1, Bratislava 852 35, Slovakia

* Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Abstract: Smart Cities is a widely discussed topic in the social sciences. At first, awareness of Smart Cities in society was based mainly on the fact that these are cities that use modern information and communication technology (ICT) to ensure the provision of public services to their citizens. However, with the development of technology and the growing openness, the role of citizens in the city administration is changing. Thanks to the day-to-day use of ICT to communicate with the city administration, citizens are gradually becoming from ordinary consumers of public services to their co-designers and co-authors. The existing body of literature has so far focused mainly on describing examples of forms of involving citizens in the design and creation of specific public services in selected application domains. However, a comprehensive overview and comparison of citizen participation between different application domains is lacking in the literature. Therefore, the aim of this article is to provide an overview of the development of citizen participation in the concept of Smart Cities and its various application domains. Our research has shown that the topic of Smart Cities is a widely discussed topic in society, especially over the last 10 years. At the same time, our findings confirmed that there exist differences between application domains in citizen participation. From an analysis of published scientific articles on Smart Cities, we found that most of the articles on Smart Cities deal with the fields of natural resources and energy, transportation and mobility, and living. However, from the perspective of the participation of citizens, there are other application domains at the top of the number of publications.

Keywords: Citizen Participation, Smart Cities, Application Domains, Smart City Governance

JEL classification:   H41 - Public Goods,   R58 - Regional Development Planning and Policy

SciPap 2022, 30(1), 1389; https://doi.org/10.46585/sp30011389

Received: 9 October 2021 / Revised: 24 January 2022 / Accepted: 24 January 2022 / Published: 24 March 2022