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Public engagement and smart city definitions: a classifying model for the evaluation of citizen power in 2025 Tehran

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Abstract

Smart city concept enjoys different aspects and a variety of definitions making it complicated to find out how much power citizens have in an envisioned smart city. This article is aimed at proposing a model help understand the level of citizen power as a dimension of public engagement. The suggested model classifies smart cities into three groups based on their potentials for the empowerment of citizens: bottom-up, beneficial, and techno smart cities, each one referring to certain intimations. This article illustrates that most of available definitions project beneficial smart cities where citizens enjoy a variety of facilities and opportunities but little power to affect smart city formation or governance. The improvement of life quality is a significant intimation for such smart cities and sustainability is a main goal for smartness. In this article, the suggested model and related intimations are applied to analyze Comprehensive Plan of Tehran City, an official document manifesting 2025 Tehran as a smart city. The analysis of the document shows that 2025 Tehran has little chance for turning into a bottom-up smart city, while there are many indications for a beneficial one.

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  1. Department of Management, Science and Technology, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Tehran, Iran

    Hesam Mohseni

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Mohseni, H. Public engagement and smart city definitions: a classifying model for the evaluation of citizen power in 2025 Tehran. GeoJournal 86, 1261–1274 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-019-10126-x

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