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This article adopts an interpretive approach to investigate how local policy-makers portray and justify their own visions of digital governance initiatives at the municipal level. Our investigation focuses on smart city projects submitted by various Belgian municipalities in the framework of the 'Intelligent Territory' call for proposals initiated in 2019 by the Walloon Region. We use Boltanski and Thévenot's theory of orders of worth and combine quantitative and qualitative content analysis to categorize the different justifications elaborated by municipal governments. The empirical results point to the polysemic nature of the smart city concept and highlight the diversity of opportunities offered by smart city policies according to municipal policy-makers. Overall, our study contributes to the understanding of the varieties of interpretations underpinning the construction of digital governance initiatives. It therefore supports the argument according to which there is no one-size-fits-all approach to smart city policies as local policy-makers may attribute different meanings to them and may formulate place-based ICTs solutions to what they perceive as the most pressing problems of their territories. Points for practitioners: Smart city projects can be used by governing authorities as instruments to achieve a variety of policy goals Examples of policy goals are to boost local economic development, to improve the effectiveness of municipal service provision, to strengthen social bonds across local community members, to promote the ecological preservation of urban environments and to improve the collaboration between citizens and public administrations Local governments can adaptively use smart technologies as instruments to overcome multiple place-based environmental, social and economic problems Local governments should frame smart urban technologies as means to solve different societal problems and achieve different policy goals – rather than an end per se [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on Smart Cities lacks of research on how actors understand and appropriate the Smart City. This paper questions in an innovative way their appropriations of the phenomenon. Smart City is considered as an instrument, following the theory of Lascoumes and Le Galès (2007). Is the Smart City a functional instrument: a kind of evidence and a pragmatic solution at disposal or a public policy instrument: not neutral, provoking debates and influencing policies? An empirical analysis is carried on based on a survey among 193 Belgian actors active in the domain. The results show that the Instrument theory is relevant to analyse the actors' appropriation, which do not follow a homogeneous trend. In fact, each actor follows his own logics which will be interesting to study. • The Instrument theory is relevant to study the Smart City appropriation by actors. • Statistical treatments based on a study of 193 Belgian actors confirm this approach. • Actor's appropriation follows a partition between functional and public policy instrument. • Actors do not fit into one or the other category of instrument in a monolithic way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The Smart City is a fuzzy concept, which integrates numerous characteristics, components and dimensions. These characteristics are challenged in the academic literature, especially the technocentric approach and the central position of private companies. Moreover, the lack of proper conceptualisation pushes cities to claim themselves 'smart'. Finally, there are few rigorous analytical or statistical analyses of the concept and its application to territories. Therefore, this paper studies how Belgian municipalities understand the concept of Smart Cities in 2016. Based on the groundwork of literature on Smart Cities and the results of a survey of 113 Belgian municipalities, a typology of four understandings of the Smart City (technological, societal, comprehensive and non-existent) is elaborated. The results also show that municipalities with no understanding of the Smart City concept or with a technical understanding are mostly located in small and rural municipalities. This could be a sign of rejection of the phenomenon in this context. Conversely, medium and large-sized municipalities mostly develop a societal or comprehensive understanding. Therefore, this study highlights a dichotomy of understanding and acceptance of the concept of the Smart City between peripheral (rural and small size municipalities) and central municipalities (urban, medium and large size municipalities). Highlights • There are few rigorous analytical or statistical analyses around the concept Smart City and its application on territories. • A survey on Belgian municipalities stresses 4 Smart City understanding: technological, societal, comprehensive, non-existent. • A dichotomy of understanding appears between large & urban municipalities and rural & small municipalities. • The municipal appropriation of the Smart City phenomenon generates a vicious and virtuous circle. • Taking into account territorial scales and influences are necessary in the development of Smart Cities and Territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the potential impact of smart urban technologies used in smart city projects on three dimensions of urban sustainability (economic, environmental and social). Although the literature notes that smart urban technologies and their capabilities are potential saviours when it comes to urban and sustainability challenges in cities, there is a lack of studies exploring the impact of smart urban technologies on urban sustainability. Thus, we address this literature gap by conducting structural topic modelling on smart city projects retrieved from the Smart Territory call for projects. In these projects, city managers' report extensively on how smart urban technologies can support urban sustainability. Our results show nine groups of smart urban technologies that will support at least two urban sustainability dimensions. Smart mobility systems can support all three dimensions of urban sustainability. Technology benefits will be realised by smart urban technology capabilities and through the involvement of the city's community in the use of technology. • City managers may adopt smart urban technologies to achieve urban sustainability goals. • The results link different urban sustainability impacts to different smart urban technologies. • This paper provides a list of smart urban technologies that will support at least two urban sustainability dimensions. • Results provide a basis to measure smart urban technologies' impacts through different sustainability indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart city urban development seems inevitable for the future of our cities, but who should decide what that future should be like and whose interest's smart urbanism serves? The 'Right to the City' calls for citizens as 'users' of cities to be integral parts to the socio-technological processes that shape urban space. This article explores how citizens can participate meaningfully, and whether data protection rights can be instrumental to this objective. It does so by analysing several smart city projects in Belgium and the Netherlands that were affected by the GDPR. The findings illustrate that data protection impacts smart city developments, but meaningful influence of citizens, as in the Right to the City, remains very limited. The article argues that already dominant actors and decision-makers remain in control of 'smart' urban developments, while citizens often lack awareness and data literacy. We suggest that participatory methods for city-making are valuable if they bring about small, incremental changes and that researchers can play an active role in lowering barriers to meaningful participation in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent efforts have shown that research on selfadaptive systems can benefit from exemplars to evaluate and compare new methods, techniques and tools. One highly relevant application domain for self-adaptation is the Internet-of-Things (IoT). While some initial exemplars have been proposed for IoT, these exemplars are limited in scope to support research in realistic IoT domains, such as smart cities. To address this limitation, we introduce the DingNet exemplar, a reference implementation for research on self-adaptation in the domain of IoT. DingNet offers a simulator that maps directly to a physical IoT system that is deployed in the area of Leuven, Belgium. DingNet models a set of geographically distributed gateways, which are connected to a user application that is deployed at a front-end server. The gateways can interact over a LoRaWAN network with local stationary and mobile motes that can be equipped with sensors and actuators. The exemplar comes with a set of scenarios for comparing the effectiveness of different selfadaptive solutions. We illustrate how the exemplar is used for a typical adaptation problem of smart city IoT application, where mobile motes dynamically have to adapt their communication settings to ensure reliable and energy efficient communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]