A predictive and normative model for the “smart city” implementation concept in expert discourse

Abstract

The smart city concept strikes a discourse in the academic, media, political field in the present period. Discursive topics for that matter are the concept implementation model of choice determination, including its main structural parameters and the horizons of future development establishment. The challenge is the lack of a comprehensive approach to provide the effectiveness of social elements in the model of implementation of the concept of the smart city. The research issue includes an expert diagnosis parameter of the citizen as a subject. Set of parameters characterizing the social space of the city, namely, activity, identity, norms of trust and solidarity of the population, which together reflect the level of citizens’ subjectivity is proposed to take as a system indicator of the model of concept’s realization. The author model of the smart city concept implementation complements and expands the quadruplehelix model. The purpose of the work is aimed at predictive-normative model diagnostics by the expert community of the city for its integration into the management practice. Representatives of authorities, businesses, non-profit organizations of six cities as experts (Tyumen, Tobolsk, Khanty-Mansiysk, Surgut, Salekhard, Novy Urengoy) evaluated the implementation, prospects of the approach in their cities and the possibility of including the subjective model in management practice. The survey uncovered some degree of contradictions in the positions of experts on the predictive and normative model for the concept’s implementation. Most experts admit the increasing city dwellers subjectivity, but do not see opportunities and conditions for new forms of its institutionalization. As whole expert attitudes are not predictive, but rather demonstrate a prolongation of the existing provisions and trends of urban development. Nevertheless, the study showed that the parameters of the subject model are not in conflict with the existing model and can be used in the practice of urban management.