Open Smart Cities Guide

This document intends to guide city stakeholders (public officials, civil society, technology innovators, private sector, academics, residents, etc.) toward formulating and strategically aligning practices with their agreed upon and unique Open Smart City vision. The Open Smart City definition and guide are relevant to city leaders and community leaders at multiple levels of governance (e.g., provincial, territorial, and federal).

The Open Smart City V1.0 definition is the end result of a one-year collaborative research project. The research team first set out to understand what a contemporary smart city looks like. A socio-technological data assemblage approach was used to inform the collection of documents produced by smart city vendors, think tanks, associations, consulting firms, standards organizations, conferences, civil society organizations, including critical academic literature, government reports, marketing material, specifications and requirements documents.

Even though there are many definitions for a smart city and that no two smart cities are the same due to a combination of factors such as local context, governmentalities, political economies, and the actors involved, one main shared feature is data and networked urbanism. Data has to be integrated with urban plans and open government practice in order to realize the full potential of smart cities.