Developing smart cities as digital ecosystems and service platforms helps to rediscover and value the concept of citizenship. Cities help for formation of citizenship being entities where people are learning to become good citizens. Within post-industrial and service economies and knowledge based societies cities tend to emerge as drivers and engines of social, cultural and economic urban development. Cities as knowledge oriented organizations and communities contribute to enable public value creation the active co-production of public services relying on internet-enabled and digital platforms as ecosystems of economic and social innovation and accountability making available and accessible sufficient quality and useful data to citizens, consumers and businesses within networked systems for good government (Fang, 2002; Linders, 2012; Harrison, Cook & Pardo, 2012).
Smart city is enabled by the use of technologies in order to improve competitiveness and ensure a sustainable development by combining networks of people, businesses, technologies, infrastructures, consumption, energy and spaces. Cities as service organizations provide infrastructures ICTs-enabled and digital platforms for advanced services to support business and improve quality of public life by strengthening integration, innovation and creativity, citizen centricity and engagement, promoting sustainability and effectiveness of public policies entrepreneurialism, resiliency and savvy technology (Gil-Garcia, Zhang and Puron-Cid, 2016). Citizens planning smart initiatives contribute to improve services and quality of life for citizens reinforcing and rediscovering the meaning of citizenship as related to urban and local dimension by encouraging participation of citizens in urban and policy processes. The paper aims at explaining that developing smart cities as digital ecosystems and service platforms helps to rediscover the meaning of citizenship leading to build and develop sustainable cities. The study relies on archival and qualitative data drawn by analyzing and reviewing the literature on digital public ecosystems, on smart cities and the use of services platforms. The democratic citizenship refers to citizens acting as members of a political community constituting political spaces (Stewart, 1995). Cities following an e-government paradigm for actively engaging citizens and fostering civic participation are embracing new technologies of information and communication (ICTs) as services platforms and organizations driving service innovation for improving the quality of life of citizens (Ho, 2002; Anttiroiko, Valkam & Bailey, 2014). Cities contribute to create and share knowledge as to support the learning with resource integrators like people, consumers, citizens and businesses. Cities of the future will be smart and sustainable communities as ideal places for work and live, playing a central role for improving the competitiveness of the urban system (Begg, 1999; Shapiro, 2006). Sustaining a smart city approach helps use ICTs for reinvent cities as communities knowledge oriented creating public value, promoting high quality of life related to productivity, growth and human capital as platforms or digital ecosystems for public and social value co-creation and co-production by sustaining change and service innovation searching for participation and collaboration by re-constructing civic identities. Cities planning smart initiatives and policies to improve public services contribute to reinforce and rediscover the meaning and importance of citizenship as value reinforcing the sense of community.
Smart Cities – analysing rhetoric and reality from a public management perspective
