A systematic review of smart city governance in the Southern African Development Community

TY - JOUR

T1 - A systematic review of smart city governance in the Southern African Development Community

AU - Duca, Federica

AU - Mutua, Amy

AU - Tetley-Brown, Lucille

AU - Karuri-Sebina, Geci

AU - Backhouse, Judy

N1 - Copyright: © 2025, UNU-EGOV and Federica Duca, Amy Mutua, Geci Karuri-Sebina, under exclusive licence to Springer Nature America, Inc.

PY - 2025/3/3

Y1 - 2025/3/3

N2 - This paper offers a systematic review of literature on smart cities in the Southern African Development Community countries, with a focus on the complexities of urban dynamics and governance within the region. The novelty of this qualitative systematic review is that it includes policy documents and reports as well as academic papers to interrogate the state of both smart city knowledge and smart city practice in the region. The review identified five research themes, namely, (1) the social development promises of the smart city, (2) institutionalizing smart city governance, (3) smart cities and digital citizenship, (4) smart city (as) infrastructure and (5) approaches to ‘smarting’ the city. The study shows that, for a comprehensive agenda on smart city research, more attention should be given to smart city projects and the impacts of digitalization and datafication, but it also finds that more considered local and governance-oriented lenses for such agendas are necessary if they are to be relevant to the Southern African Development Community region.

AB - This paper offers a systematic review of literature on smart cities in the Southern African Development Community countries, with a focus on the complexities of urban dynamics and governance within the region. The novelty of this qualitative systematic review is that it includes policy documents and reports as well as academic papers to interrogate the state of both smart city knowledge and smart city practice in the region. The review identified five research themes, namely, (1) the social development promises of the smart city, (2) institutionalizing smart city governance, (3) smart cities and digital citizenship, (4) smart city (as) infrastructure and (5) approaches to ‘smarting’ the city. The study shows that, for a comprehensive agenda on smart city research, more attention should be given to smart city projects and the impacts of digitalization and datafication, but it also finds that more considered local and governance-oriented lenses for such agendas are necessary if they are to be relevant to the Southern African Development Community region.

U2 - 10.1038/s44284-025-00199-w

DO - 10.1038/s44284-025-00199-w

M3 - Article

SN - 2731-9997

VL - 2

SP - 149

EP - 156

JO - Nature Cities

JF - Nature Cities

IS - 2

ER -