Collaborative Strategies for Sustainable Smart City Development

Smart cities are facing major sustainability risks as environmental challenges are increasing at the same time as the demographic dependency ratio is deteriorating and the funding base for tax-funded city systems is becoming scarce. With the development of technological advances, there is potential to develop the city systems in new, innovative ways. However, in developing effective and citizen-centric digital solutions for sustainable cities, there is need for collaborative strategies that consider the different stakeholder perspectives to genuinely co-create value. Several previous studies from different contexts have emphasized the importance of identifying potential stakeholders and the presence of active dialogue within collaboration and furthermore, have proposed the necessity of active dialogue for effective collaboration and empowerment of stakeholders. Getting stakeholders' insights as feedback is valuable information for further city development. In this study, the different value co-creation models and collaborative strategies based on literature review are synthesized in order to build solid ground for developing sustainable smart cities.