Understanding frameworking for smart and sustainable city development: A configurational approach

Abstract

In recent decades, frameworks combining rankings and indices for smart and sustainable city development have proliferated. Stakeholders respond to them in various ways for strategizing towards urban sustainability. We refer to this as frameworking, which we identify as focusing on how frameworks are commensurated. However, research on commensuration has concentrated mostly on reactivity towards metrics. Little is known about how stakeholders contemplate the quality of and reaction to rankings and indices. We examine this issue through a configurational analysis of a set of European cities that consistently appear in these frameworks. We unveil several configurations of smart city metrics that relate to sustainability. Based on these effects, we theorize frameworking as differences in the relative configurations of smart city metrics that can generate performance. These configurations relate to three underlying dimensions: smart city capability, reactivity and context. We show that when frameworking is studied configurationally, we can identify the previously under-researched response to the quality of indices and reactivity to metrics. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of a complex account of frameworks relevant to boosting urban sustainability.