Within our sample of six cities, Singapore has set the clearest governments have felt a need to call on civic tech talent and goals for implementing initiatives. Here, the national priority is private companies’ expertise within a couple of specialized to make the business environment attractive for international areas of urban development. investors by developing the world’s fastest and most extensive digital infrastructure. Singapore has also prioritized offering C- Innovation and citizens’ participation a wide range of government services digitally to make them faster, more convenient, and more accessible for citizens. Barcelona has innovated in this area by creating Decidim. Singaporeans can now use mobile applications for almost Barcelona, a digital platform that offers residents ways to everything, from accessing health records to paying for parking participate in the public decision-making process, including a tool and reporting emergencies. to make proposals, join discussion groups, and receive follow-up communications after they have expressed concerns. Barcelona’s B- Innovation and partnerships city government is also increasing citizen participation by inviting residents to notify it of any irregular and inappropriate aspects of Of our six cities, those which have the most advanced municipal contracts, which are published online. technological bases are Singapore, Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Toronto. Amsterdam Smart City is a public-private partnership Barcelona’s transition to becoming a smart city has significant (PPP) that brings together municipal departments, educational momentum. The Catalonian digital technological base is strong, organizations, nonprofit organizations,private sector boasting a remarkable open-data portal, a network of good air companies, and, of course, startups. Amsterdam views itself quality sensors, and extensive public Wi-Fi coverage. Moreover, as an innovation hub that plays host to many actors that are if we compare mobility and security, mobility applications have launching projects focused on broad and weighty issues such been more strongly embraced by the public than have security as renewable energy sources, smart energy, soft mobility, and apps that, for example, let members of the public report crimes accessible livability. Amsterdam has also taken an active role or see on a map where crimes have occurred. People are mostly in developing talent by establishing the Amsterdam Institute for aware of the mobility apps deployed to facilitate multimodal Advanced Metropolitan Solutions through a collaboration with transport habits; usage of them is growing and satisfaction with private sector partners. them is still high. Barcelona is known as one of the leading smart cities in Europe, competing with Amsterdam and Copenhagen. Barcelona, meanwhile, is using public funding to renovate older industrial sites via initiatives such as @22Barcelona. This is an More recently, around 2018, Barcelona’s city government incubator for startups to develop new services, apps, and tools. amended its data policy in order to deliver a more effective use The initiative has attracted private investment from Cisco, which of public data, dashboards, and platforms. The revised policy has set up the Barcelona Co-Innovation Center there.2 Among aims to make privacy, data sovereignty, and data security the tech companies, Cisco has made early moves in promoting the city’s three top data-related priorities. The amended policy also idea of turning cities into smart cities, developing platforms created an open-data platform, the Open Data BCN portal, and digital solutions that have since been implemented in, for whose data is accessible to every citizen. The city has therefore example, some US cities as well as in Songdo (South Korea). shifted from a locked-data policy to an open-data one. To do so, the city now retains control of platforms, and it aims to Toronto had set up a public-private partnership with Sidewalk harmonize rules and break down data silos. The city is also Labs (an Alphabet subsidiary) to turn a large part of the city’s incentivizing startups to use public data to launch new services. waterfront into a very modern and up-to-date community. The project was Alphabet’s venture into real estate, and it In Toronto, Sidewalk Labs held various community events, was envisioned as a testing ground for new technologies. including residents’ meetings, local pop-ups, and public Unfortunately, the project failed in spring 2020. workshops. Until Sidewalk Labs stopped its project, the firm used hackathons to crowdsource innovations, and it even used Overall, successful companies appear to have an intimate new tools such as modeling and visualization instruments to and deep understanding of the cities with which they want to offer 3D previews of the finished project and to communicate collaborate, and they see those cities as a place where they the design choices that were being considered. However, this can showcase how their solutions will transform people’s participative approach was ultimately not enough to create lives. It is significant and noteworthy that all six of our cities’ consensus. (2) https://www.cisco.com/c/m/es_es/innovationcenter/barcelona-en.html (Accessed on 21 April 2021). 225 Quélin and Smadja | HEC PARIS | SMART CITIES | The sustainable program of six leading cities | 2021