Understanding the Influences of Urban-Specific Contexts for Smart City Development Using Structural Equation Modeling

The development paths of smart cities are highly dependent on urban-specific contextual conditions. To be successful in managing smart city projects, it is important to understand the dynamics of urban development, which involve both controllable enablers (e.g., digital, physical, and human infrastructure) and immutable urban contexts (e.g., geographic, demographic, and structural variables) at the municipal level. Although many studies investigated the management-related dynamics intrinsically associated with the development of smart cities, they less considered the influence of urban contextual elements. Thus, it is still challenging to understand how contextual factors specifically affect the dynamics of smart city developments. To address this issue, the authors build upon structural equation modeling (SEM) to quantify the manageable dynamics of smart cities and to assess the maturity level of enablers and the degree of achievement of performance objectives in 50 smart cities. Then, the research analyzed the evolution trends of these evaluation scores under the influences of urban contextual variables. The results demonstrated the particular effects of economic development, geographical region, density, and size of smart cities on their maturation. This paper presents data-driven specifications that formulate the most favorable smart city developmental conditions to help practitioners to improve the planning of future smart city projects.