A modern approach to governance? Barcelona’s strategy is to respond to the two main challenges (March and Ribera-Fumaz, 2016; Smith and Martín, 2021). the city was facing in terms of its own organization and the To be sure, technology is at the core of the current smart integration of citizens, private companies, and the local city transformation in Barcelona. Most importantly, this administration (Gascó-Hernandez, 2018). Josep-Ramon technological approach represents a tool to better govern Ferrer, a former director of Barcelona’s smart city program, and organize the city in a smarter way (Ferrer, 2017). Two described that program as aiming to obtain a better features are critical: focusing particularly on engaging coordination between place, people, the private sector, and empowering citizens (Francesca Bria, March 2018), and the public administration (Ferrer, 2017). Barcelona’s and making them actively participate in the policy-making smart city strategy aimed to obtain a better launching and process.3 implementation of cooperation between private and public partners. It facilitated collaboration between companies, A strategic and transformational city project research centers and universities, and international organizations (Gavaldà and Ribera, 2012; Mora, Deakin, and Barcelona’s strategy has been embedded into an ambitious Reid, 2019). transformational plan (March and Ribera-Fumaz, 2018). Ferrer (2017) describes a plan named “Barcelona N.0.” It One of the strengths of Barcelona’s smart city strategy has has followed two main steps, taking advantage of both the been its use of a crosscutting or horizontal approach rather Olympic Games (1992) and the annual Mobile World Congress than a top-down one. Additionally, the city has deployed an organized in Barcelona. The post-Olympic era, named innovation-based model in order to provide new and useful “Barcelona 4.0,” was a step that involved the geographical services to citizens (Bibri and Krogstie, 2020; Smith and expansion of the city center to the seashore. To achieve this, Martín, 2021). The collaborative projects undertaken have the city started the building of new transport infrastructure developed some replicable processes (Ferrer, 2017). Three (ring roads, an airport, and so on). It aimed to include the characteristics define cooperation here: historical city in a larger metropolitan area (Ferrer, 2017; •Bringing the city closer to citizens; Mora, Deakin and Reid, 2019). •Launching initiatives through open data; •Offering valuable information to citizens, private companies, and, more generally, stakeholders. For instance, some scholars describe the City Operating System (City OS) as a decoupling layer between data sources and smart city solutions. The platform supplies different open sources and offers modules that can be added to and connected with each other (Bibri and Krogstie, 2020; Carrasco, Ricart and Berrone, 2017). This open data platform, called Smart Citizen, is a remarkable example of the replicable process that have been implemented in Barcelona. This open data platform is designed to generate participatory processes in the city (ajuntament.barcelona. cat/digital). Source: enes-f-DvU93UhTs-unsplash However, to go beyond the traditional smart city approach, technology cannot be seen as a goal in itself: it is simply a The second step of this plan was named “Barcelona 5.0.” tool and a facilitator. The purpose of data collection, analysis, It was implemented between 2015 and 2018 (Gavaldà and and platform management is to help decision making. Digital Ribera, 2012). The aim of “Barcelona 5.0” was to make the collaboration should ease policy making at the city level city become more inclusive, more productive, and more (3) https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/digital/en/digital-transformation/city-data-commons/cityos (accessed on June 2020 and 14 July 2021). 83 Quélin and Smadja | HEC PARIS | SMART CITIES | The sustainable program of six leading cities | 2021