depend substantially on decisions made by national levels of pursue its Smart Nation initiative, thus merging the two levels government or by supranational institutions. However, as we of governance. Doing so has helped Singapore to coordinate mentioned in Chapter 1, there was a collective awakening interagency efforts. among many city leaders after the failure of conferences such as the UN Climate Change Conference held in Copenhagen However, there are extremely few jurisdictions like Singapore in 2009. Provincial cities, small regions, and large cities are elsewhere in the world. Moreover, many city consortia or groups now showing what can be achieved when city leaders truly set and some prominent mayors express a different outlook to that their minds to bringing about change. Cities are emerging as a proposed by Singapore’s model: they claim that the world’s key part of the general effort to reduce carbon emissions and large cities can solve climate and environmental crises using change how the climate-warming drama unfolds. their own governance machinery (Miller, 2020). In our view, sometimes the institutional environment at the state level is Among the six cities studied in this ebook, Singapore is enough, and sometimes interactions between the city and state organized in a dualistic way; it is both a city and a national state. levels are required to bring about change. Ultimately, the quality Capitalizing on the confusion between these two statuses, the of any relationship between the two levels is the crucial factor. city is billing itself as a Smart Nation as it seeks to become recognized as a top global metropolis. A few years ago, the In this section, we will pick out some of the eighteen dimensions Singaporean prime minister elaborated Singapore’s vision for that we used to compare our six cities. All eighteen dimensions the future and established an entire government department to are shown in the Figure 8.1 below. Figure 8.1 Comparison of six cities over 18 dimensions A- Vision and governance these advantageous factors can still set themselves apart and develop their own efficient policies. Examples of places that All of our six cities are high-income cities that have well-developed have done so include Curitiba in Brazil, Kigali in Rwanda, and urban policies and among the world’s most advanced digital-, Medellín in Colombia. To rise to this challenge, however, they energy-, and mobility-technology infrastructure. When they began must have a clear vision, undertake sound urban management, their journeys of urban transformation, these six cities had intrinsic and act based on a willingness to break away from the advantages, including wealth (both in terms of geographical area dominant and traditional ways of doing things. Above all, cities’ and people), density (with regards to population and buildings), and management teams have to demonstrate their relentless innovative and high-tech industries. commitment to understanding and meeting the needs of the people whom they serve. Nevertheless, we believe that cities and metropolises that lack 224 Quélin and Smadja | HEC PARIS | SMART CITIES | The sustainable program of six leading cities | 2021