Smart Cities and Knowledge Commons

Smart city technology has its value and its place; it isn’t automatically or universally harmful. Urban challenges andopportunities addressed via smart technology demand systematic study, examining general patterns and local variations as smart city practices unfold around the world. Smart cities are complex blends of community governance institutions, social dilemmas that cities face, and dynamic relationships among information and data, technology, and human lives. Some of those blends are more typical and common. Some are more nuanced in specific contexts. This volume uses the Governing Knowledge Commons (GKC) framework to sort out relevant and important distinctions. The framework grounds a series of case studies examining smart technology deployment and use in different cities. This chapter briefly explains what that framework is, why and how it is a critical and useful tool for studying smart city practices, and what the key elements of the framework are. The GKC framework is useful both here and can be used in additional smart city case studies in the future.