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This article analyses the Data Smart Cities Strategy, a key policy component under India's ambitious 100 Smart Cities Mission, to understand how a national government-driven urban digitalisation agenda is being implemented in a federal political system where urban development responsibilities are shared between different tiers. A review of the implementation progress shows wide city-to-city variation in digitalisation and data readiness. Using the lens of multilevel governance as the analytical framework, our study highlights the importance of state-level factors in shaping city-level outcomes. Governance capacities and administrative attention towards urban issues vary significantly from state to state. This, in turn, impacts city performances as the institutional architecture of smart cities is dominated by state-level actors. We flag concerns that the top-down digitalisation agenda may widen the regional divide. While seed capital provided under the central scheme helped cities in poorer states to build expensive digital infrastructure, there are uncertainties regarding how these will be managed once the scheme ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As China's urban digitalization strategy advances to a new stage, the urgent issue of promoting urban digitalization development by optimizing the business environment requires immediate attention. Scholars have illustrated the positive impact of urban digital development on both the environment and sustainable growth. In our study, we utilized the "Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE)" framework to analyze a series of exemplary urban digitalization cases in China from 2021 onward. This analysis was conducted using the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method. Our primary findings reveal that government policies, digital talents, and digital infrastructure are key drivers in advancing urban digitalization. Specifically, we identified four distinct pathways, all involving various combinations of government environment, digital talents, and digital infrastructure, leading to significant urban digitalization. These insights uncover the connection between the business environment and urban digital growth. This relationship not only offers valuable guidance for future urban digital initiatives but also supports the broader goals of urban environmental sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses discourse analysis methods to get a better understanding of India’s Smart Cities Mission which was launched in 2015. It focuses on nine policy documents and assessment frameworks published by the nodal ministry at federal level to guide 100 smart cities. The paper situates the Mission within the global smart city rhetoric and within the rhetorical shifts toward a softer version, smart city 2.0. The paper examines whether the Indian Mission follows a similar trajectory or whether it has persisted with the techno-utopian, economic driven, and citizen-blind version of the smart city paradigm. Studying the discourse and imagery of these documents, it brings to light the fact that, while the language has changed and become more inclusive, the interventions recommended by the Ministry have become more data dependent and technologically driven. The paper presents the reasons for which discourse analysis is a useful method for studying smart cities, and offers a basis on which more detailed city-level analyses can be undertaken in the Indian smart city context.

• The social dimension is crucial in the conceptualization of urban digital twins. • The more aspects urban digital twins cover, the higher influence in sustainability. • Urban digital twins are scarcely aligned to the global sustainability initiatives. • Clearer goals in the Spanish Agenda are needed to be pursued in urban digital twins. • The contribution of the Barcelona digital twin to the Spanish Urban Agenda is scant. The New Urban Agenda was conceived as a global endeavor to transpose the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda into urban areas. Both initiatives were merged into the Spanish Urban Agenda (SUA), which includes 10 strategic and 30 specific goals, among which leading and promoting digital innovation toward the development of smart cities stand out. As Urban Digital Twins (UDTs) are a technology that arises to enhance smart cities, this research aims at assessing how they may contribute to the achievement of the SUA. A framework was accordingly built to associate UDTs with the SUA to then be applied to the Barcelona digital twin as case study. A combination of an in-depth literature review on UDTs and the Delphi technique was used as methodological approach. More than 70 % of the strategic and specific goals included in the SUA, as well as the four sustainability dimensions are represented in the new instrument. The case study reflected a limited contribution in pursuing the SUA. Nevertheless, the proposed framework offers potential lines of action to reinforce the role of the Barcelona digital twin towards the SUA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays countries in the world are striving to transform their economic and social development modes to achieve the general goal of green development. With the rapid development of communication technology, digitalization has affected production and life, touching all aspects of society. Can digitalization make the world “greener”? To this end, this study conducts an empirical research based on the panel data of 276 cities in China from 2011 to 2020. Firstly, this paper separately measured the comprehensive level of urban digitalization and urban greening through the Entropy-TOPSIS method, then analyzed their spatial distribution characteristics and evolution process respectively, finally used the spatial Durbin model to explore the impact of digitalization on urban greening development. The following conclusions were drawn accordingly: (1). The development pattern of urban digitalization has changed from “multi-point” sporadic distribution to “group-type” aggregation with obvious spatial heterogeneity. The gap between cities is not narrowing. The Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration has become an important high-level digital agglomeration area; (2). The urban greening develops with obvious spatial heterogeneity. The difference between eastern regions and western regions is prominent, and the urban spatial agglomeration characteristic is distinct. However, the spillover effect is weakened with distance, while the convergence characteristic becomes obvious; (3). Digitalization is significantly beneficial to the development of urban greening with obvious spatial heterogeneity. Digitalization in cities within urban agglomeration and in eastern regions has a stronger effect on promoting the urban greening, which is not obvious in cities located in western regions and non-urban agglomeration. Finally, according to the research results, suggestions for urban digitalization and greening development are put forward.

Rapid population growth and urbanization have a strong impact on individuals' well-being. These trends are currently important topics in city management. As a significant driver of digitalization, technological development has been found to have great potential as a mitigator of a wide range of issues that cities face. To ensure the available technologies are being correctly used, municipalities need to measure their degree of digitalization. This assessment is also important to improve city officials' understanding of areas that need interventions so that cities can be managed better and provide their residents with a better quality of life. This study applies the baseline principles of the multiple-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) approach to develop a decision-support system that facilitates urban digitalization evaluations. The results rely on insights provided by a panel of experts in this area, who used cognitive mapping and the best worst method (BWM) to identify important evaluation criteria within urban digitalization and to analyze their cause-and-effect relationships. The final outcomes were validated by the panel members and representatives of the Associação Nacional de Municípios Portugueses (i.e. , National Association of Portuguese Municipalities) and the Agência National de Inovação (i.e. , National Innovation Agency). These specialists confirmed that the evaluation system developed facilitates city differentiation in key areas of urban digitalization. The advantages and limitations of the proposed procedures are also discussed. • This study contributes to a holistic understanding of urban digitalization. • The proposed system overcomes some limitations of purely statistical methods. • Cognitive mapping improves the selection of evaluation criteria. • BWM allows criteria weights to be calculated. • The system created allows urban digitalization to be evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coordinated promotion of urban digitalization and green development is an inevitable requirement for sustainable development in the digital age. Based on the coupling mechanism of urban digitalization and green development, in this study, we took 282 cities at the prefecture level and above in China from 2011 to 2019 as the research object, and we constructed the evaluation index system and calculated the coupling coordination degree (CD&GDD) of the two through the coupling coordination degree model. We further used the Dagum Gini coefficient, kernel density estimation, Markov chain and Moran's I to assess the spatial effects of the regional differences, dynamic evolution trends and degree of coupling coordination. The results show the following: (1) The level of urban digitalization and green development show a fluctuating upward trend, and the interaction between the two is obvious. (2) Although the CD&GDD of most cities is continuously improving, it is still at a low level. There are large differences in the levels between the regions. (3) The inter-regional differences are the main source of the large overall differences in the CD&GDD in China, and these are mainly composed of the hypervariable density and net differences between the regions. (4) The phenomenon of "club convergence" exists in the CD&GDD. (5) The coupling coordination relationship between cities has a substantial spatial effect, and the spatial effect has obvious regional heterogeneity. The results and conclusions provide a reference for developing countries to promote green and low-carbon urban development.