Smart City Implementation Through Shared Vision of Social Innovation for Environmental Sustainability

Abstract

Environmental sustainability is a critical global issue that requires comprehensive intervention policies. Viewed as localized intervention policy implementations, smart cities leverage information infrastructures and distributed renewable energy smart micro-grids, smart meters, and home/building energy management systems to reduce city-wide carbon emissions. However, theory-driven smart city implementation research is critically lacking. This theory-building case study identifies antecedent conditions necessary for implementing smart cities. We integrated resource dependence, social embeddedness, and citizen-centric e-governance theories to develop a citizen-centric social governance framework. We apply the framework to a field-based case study of Japan’s Kitakyushu smart community project to examine the validity and utility of the framework’s antecedent conditions: resource-dependent leadership network, cross-sector collaboration based on social ties, and citizen-centric e-governance. We conclude that complex smart community implementation processes require shared vision of social innovation owned by diverse stakeholders with conflicting values and adaptive use of informal social governance mechanisms for effective smart city implementation.

Keywords

smart city environmental sustainability resource dependence theory citizen-centric e-governance case study Japan social embeddedness

Introduction

Increasingly, a sense of urgency has been raised about the magnitude of the environmental sustainability problems cities and nations face today and the need for society — governments, businesses, and citizens—to take decisive, preventive actions (Garnaut, 2008; Gore, 2013; Ministry of the Environment of Japan, 2014; Walsh, 2012). Most importantly, there has been a shift in public policy toward promoting social change in energy conservation and investments in green technology infrastructures for generating, capturing, and storing low-carbon, distributed, renewable energy sources (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2011; United Nation Environment Programme, 2009). This is most clearly demonstrated by the increasing implementations of smart cities, smart communities, and eco-cities around the world (Ministry of the Environment of Japan, 2010; New Energy Development Organization [NEDO], 2014).

In an analysis of the literature, smart cities are viewed as multifaceted and complex, with descriptions of smart cities including people and communities as well as information and communication technologies (ICTs) (Albino, Berardi, & Dangelico, 2015). However, much of the literature shows that environmental sustainability is a major strategic part of smart cities, in that there must be balance between growth measures and the protection of the environment for sustainable urban development (Caragliu, Del Bo, & Nijkamp, 2011; Shahrokni, Lazarevic, & Brandt, 2015; Wey & Hsu, 2014). Examining the various components of smart cities, Lombardi, Giordano, Farouh, and Yousef (2012) found that environmental sustainability is one of the five critical clusters. For example, environmental sustainability is seen through improvements in transportation in cities (Haque, Chin, & Debnath, 2013). Smart cities have also had an impact on reduced energy use in cities (Kramers, Höjer, Lövehagen, & Wangel, 2014). Finally, Neirotti, De Marco, Cagliano, Mangano, and Scorrano (2014, p. 27) found that “using technology to protect and better manage environmental resources and related infrastructure, with the ultimate goal of increasing sustainability” is increasingly important in smart cities research.

Despite this, there exist definitional confusions and overlaps among digital cities, smart/digital cities, and smart cities (Cocchia, 2014). “But an important reason to explain the difficult to define the smart city should be found in its bottom-up nature.” (Dameri & Rosenthal-Sabroux, 2014, p. 3, italics added for emphasis). In this article, we adopt the definition that smart cities refer to “territories with a high capacity for learning and innovation, which is built in to the creativity of their population, their institutions of knowledge production, and their digital infrastructure for communication” (Hollands, 2008, p. 306, italics added for emphasis). We hold that this high capacity for learning and innovation is necessary but is not sufficient to implement smart cities. Here we add and underscore two further definitional components, both of which constitute key valuable resources of the city: (1) green technology platforms, such as smart grids, smart micro-grids, smart meters, home energy management systems (HEMS), and mega solar systems, which are different from “digital infrastructure for communication” and (2) adaptive and intelligent stakeholders — governments, businesses, and citizens — whose active engagement can collectively contribute toward the high capacity for learning and innovation and the creative solutions to the complex wicked problems facing the cities. In this research, we hold that smart city implementations represent localized bottom-up intervention policy implementations.

Another important concept discussed later in this article is shared vision. We argue that shared vision must refer to a shared “systems sense” (Senge et al., 2009, p. 45, italics added for emphasis) which enable leadership teams or networks in “defining overall outcomes and having guidelines for shaping strategies” (Senge et al., 2009, p. 46, italics added for emphasis). As examined later in the discussion section of this article, shared vision across leadership networks matters for effective smart city implementation, which aims to achieving large-scale systemic change at the local levels.

Despite the growing research interest in smart cities (Coe, Paquet, & Roy, 2001; Dameri & Rosenthal-Sabroux, 2014; Gil-Garcia, 2012; Schaffers, Ratti, & Komninos, 2012; Schuurman, Baccarne, De Marez, & Mechant, 2012; Townsend, 2014), however, theory-driven smart city implementation research is lacking. In consequence, very little is known about either positive (e.g., descriptive) or normative processes involved with smart city implementation. Specifically, very little is known about antecedent conditions necessary to achieve effective implementation of smart cities as bottom-up implementations of national-level energy and environmental sustainability intervention policies at the local levels. Therefore, this research aims to reduce this critical knowledge gap in smart city implementation research by raising a central research question:

What are the key antecedent conditions necessary to achieve effective implementation of smart cities for environmental sustainability?

The major contribution of this article is to examine smart cities and their impact on environmental sustainability, as we noted is very important in extant literature. However, much of the literature examines environmental sustainability from the aspect of various types of technology adopted, while this study examines it from the perspective of shared vision through our case analysis. We argue that environmental aspects are complements, not substitutes to smart cities’ urban form and that both will be required for smarter cities of the future.

In answering our research question, we have integrated resource dependence (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978, 2003), social embeddedness (Amaral & Uzzi, 2007; Uzzi, 1996, 1997), and citizen-centric e-governance (Reddick, 2011a, 2011b) theories to develop a citizen-centric social governance framework for identifying antecedent conditions necessary for achieving effective smart city implementation for environmental sustainability. In this research, we applied our framework to guide multiple case interviews, repeated field-based observations, and archived document collections at Japan’s Kitakyushu City smart community project site.

The structure of this article is organized as follows: the next section presents our research perspective of smart cities as bottom-up intervention policy implementations. The third section presents the theoretical foundation and an (initial) framework for identifying antecedent conditions necessary to achieve effective implementation of smart cities. In the fourth section, we describe our research methodology. In the fifth section, we present key research findings from the Kitakyushu City smart community implementation case study. In the sixth section, we further develop a citizen-centric social governance framework for effective smart city implementation for environmental sustainability. In the final section, we present our conclusions, including the research contributions, limitations of this study, and future research directions.

Smart Cities as Bottom-Up Intervention Policy Implementations

While the literature on smart cities clearly and unequivocally agree on the critical role of ICT in implementing, operating, and/or managing smart cities (Anthopoulos & Fitilis, 2010; Giffinger, Fertner, Kramar, Pichler-Milanovi, & Meijers, 2007; Gil-Garcia, 2012; Hollands, 2008; Pardo & Taewoo, 2011), they show the diversity of ICT and information resources deployed in implementing a wide range of “smart cities.” They include network infrastructures and Internet-based applications (Komninos, Pallot, & Schaffers, 2013), web-based geographical information systems (Odendaal, 2003; Tao, 2013), open data (Bakici, Almirall, & Wareham, 2013; Schaffers et al., 2012), open platforms (Schaffers et al., 2012), big data (Kitchen, 2014), broadband fiber-optic and wireless telecommunications grids (Schaffers et al., 2012), wireless sensor networks (Domingo, Bellalta, Palacin, Oliver, & Almirall, 2013; Schaffers et al., 2012), and sensor-based ubiquitous computing and virtual representations (Carvalho & Campos, 2013; Dodgson & Gann, 2011; Gabrys, 2014; Kitchen, 2014; Leydesdorff & Deakin, 2011). However, we find it rare to find existing smart cities implementation studies which have integrated green technologies with the city’s existing smart, mobile, and digital ICT and Internet-based infrastructures to achieving environmental innovation and green economic growth.

Unsurprisingly, of those case studies on smart cities, a significant portion of the smart cities described in the academic literature did not address the energy and environmental sustainability problem in general and threats of CO₂ emissions and the greenhouse effect produced by human activities to the environment. For example, prior studies on the transformation of Barcelona (Bakici et al., 2013), Thessaloniki (Komninos & Tsarchopoulos, 2013), and Singapore (Tan, 1999) into smart cities, the role of citizens in urban land planning approval in a smart city (Marsal-Llacuna & López-Ibáñez, 2014), geographic information systems for smart city management (Tao, 2013), sensors-generated data mining for smart city management (Li, Shan, Shao, Zhou, & Yao, 2013), geo-tagged data for innovative solutions in smart cities (Doran & Daniel, 2014), and location-aware mobile government services in smart cities (Calderoni, Maio, & Palmieri, 2012) all studied various aspects of smart cities but did not address the critical nexus between smart cities and environmental sustainability. In consequence, these studies failed to view smart city implementation as a potential innovative solution to the growing environmental sustainability problems faced by urban cities and communities in many parts of the world. In other words, hyperconnected digital cities, which use ICT in their city services and operations, do not automatically become smart cities (Hollands, 2008).

Theoretical Foundation for Effective Implementation of Smart Cities

The proposed initial framework identifies three antecedents of effective implementation of smart city (Figure 1). We hold that that leadership network formed based on resource dependence, cross-sector collaboration based on social ties, and citizen-centric e-governance are critical antecedents necessary for effective smart city implementation. Here the three antecedents are described.

Figure 1.

(Initial) framework for effective implementation of smart cities.

Leadership Network: Resource Dependence Theory

Resource Dependence Theory (RDT) views the organization as an open system that is influenced by the external contingencies in the environment (Pfeiffer and Salancik, 1978). RDT holds that organizational performance and survival critically depend on the organization’s capability to procure critical resources from the external environment. This resource dependence creates environmental uncertainty. Underlying this is the concept of power which refers to the organizational control of critical resources in the environment. In response, RDT researchers have questioned the theory’s core construct, resource dependence, for its ambiguities (Casciaro & Piskorski, 2005) and for its possible contribution to the conflicting empirical results in the research domains (Hillman, Withers, & Collins, 2009).

In an effort to reduce the ambiguities of the core construct, Casciaro and Piskorski (2005) identify two distinct theoretical dimensions of resource dependence: mutual dependence and power imbalance. They argue that these two dimensions were combined in the construct of environmental interdependence in the original RDT. They further argue that these two theoretical dimensions exert opposite influences on the organization’s ability to reduce environmental dependencies and environmental uncertainty by mitigating the sources of external constraint.

In this research, we submit that different organizations form a leadership network driven by mutual dependence to reduce environmental interdependence and environmental uncertainty of the complex project of implementing a smart city. From this leadership networks characterized by high-level mutual dependence and low-level power imbalance are associated with more effective resource sharing and hence better network performance than those characterized by low-level mutual dependence and high-level power imbalance.

In the digital age characterized by new communication technologies and social networking, we have observed changes in organizations, including the increased use of alliances and network forms, the reduction in hierarchical levels, and greater use of teams and matrix structures combined. We argue that organizational research under conditions of major technological and organizational changes — such as our research work here — should examine the institutional field rather than the organization as the unit of analysis as the most appropriate level (Davis & Marquis, 2005). Therefore, our research adopts the field which consists of multiple organizations and at least one network of leaders formed from some of the major stakeholder organizations as the unit of analysis.

Cross-Sector Collaboration: Social Embeddedness Theory

Social embeddedness refers to “the process by which social relations shape economic action” (Uzzi, 1996, p. 674). By social relations, Uzzi means social ties and social capital content. Social embeddedness theory (SET) aims to explain how social embeddedness and social network structure enable or inhibit organizational performance, more centrally economic behavior and economic outcomes in SET-driven empirical studies. Uzzi (1996) observes that social embeddedness exists, as social network forms of an exchange system, which is arguably different from market-based exchange systems. SET’s core hypothesis is that businesses organized in social networks show better survival and organizational performance than do those which maintain arm’s-length market relationships.

More recently, Uzzi and Lancaster (2003, p. 383) extended the original SET (Uzzi, 1996) to hold that informal social networks shape interorganizational knowledge transfer and learning processes by creating communication channels for knowledge exchange and by reducing the risk of organizational learning. In developing their social embeddedness framework, Uzzi and Lancaster (2003) explicate the knowledge transfer capabilities of different types of informal social ties, the informational properties of public and private knowledge, and how types of knowledge transfer and forms of learning follow from the social networks within which organizations embed their exchanges.

One of the first studies in the information systems field that draws on sociological theories of embeddedness addresses the frequently observed difficulty in realizing strategic payoff from advanced electronic data interchange (EDI) network technology investment from a perspective of EDI network initiator (Chatfield & Yetton, 2000). Their cross-case analysis of three separate cases reports different levels of realized strategic payoffs. Specifically, the findings show that while high embeddedness motivates adopter strategic use, low embeddedness deters such use.

We submit that businesses organized in social networks promote more effective cross-sector collaboration than do those which maintain arm’s-length market relationships. Furthermore, we adopt the SET’s core hypothesis which states that businesses organized in social networks show better organizational performance. In this research context, better organizational performance refers to better (or more effective) smart city implementation.

Citizen-Centric E-Governance Theory

Smart cities can also become sustainable cities with the citizen-centric focus, with citizens being a critical part of the process (Gabrys, 2014; Lee & Lee, 2014). The conception of citizen-centric e-governance underscores the imperative of empowering ordinary citizens to engage in democratic governance through the use of the Internet and other emergent social media network technologies such as Twitter (Reddick, 2011a). Citizen-centric e-governance, therefore, provides the new ability to transform the government-to-citizen and the citizen-to-citizen relationships (Reddick, 2011a; Linders, 2012). It also provides networked ordinary citizens with the new virtual public spheres — for example social media networks in government—through which they can influence (or even coproduce) innovations in political institutions and hence helping government moving away from traditional supply-side, government-centric provision and delivery of public services, toward more demand-side, citizen-centric public services for greater citizen satisfaction and participation (Gauld, Goldfinch, & Horsburgh, 2010; Reddick, 2005, 2011b).

Although prior research in general has not paid research attention to the role of e-governance in smart city implementation, limited but available studies directly and indirectly imply the importance of citizen-centric e-governance in effecting enhanced participatory environmental management. For example, Newig and Fritsch (2009) find that environmental sustainability preferences of the involved stakeholders determine the environmental sustainability decision outcomes.

Finally, a Canadian study on the use of a sustainability framework for municipal sustainability planning, which is linked to federal government funding for infrastructure improvements, finds that citizen engagement is critical to create a shared vision and plan for developing more environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable communities (Calder & Beckie, 2011). Therefore, in this research, we hold that citizen-centric e-governance promotes democratic governance and hence positively influencing effective smart city implementation. Since smart city implementation is localized bottom-up intervention policy implementation, it makes novel demands on collaborative, participatory, democratic, and self-organizing forms of social governance that facilitate higher level citizen engagement in solving the complex environmental sustainability problems at the local levels and generating social value for the community at large.

Since smart city implementation is viewed as collaborative bottom-up intervention public policy implementation for social innovation in this research, we hold that “active government leadership characterized by its pro-innovation orientation” (Yoshimura, 2009, p. 7) plays a key role in the cross-sector collaboration initiatives to enhance environmental sustainability. Therefore, we further hypothesize that a citizen-centric local government as part of the leadership network promotes citizen engagement in smart city implementation projects through citizen-centric e-governance.

Research Method

The overarching objective of this study is to develop a deep theoretical understanding of antecedent conditions necessary to achieve effective implementation of smart cities for environmental sustainability. This case study research strategy is suitable to answer our research question, since it enables researchers to capture the dynamic interactions (Eisenhardt, 1989) within the leadership networks to focus on emerging and complex phenomena and to induce theories (Benbasat, Goldstein & Mead, 1987).

Longitudinal case study research has been conducted over a time span of a year and a half in Kitakyushu City, Fukuoka Prefecture, Kyushu, Japan. It involves the study of strategies and activities related to the implementation of a smart community in Kitakyushu City. With a much wider citizens’ engagement, Kitakyushu City has transformed itself into a “green city” over a period of 15 years.

In this longitudinal case study, multiple sources of evidence were used, including 30 semistructured interviews and field observations, which allowed us to increase our construct validity (Yin, 1994). Our research cycle and the multiple data collection methods are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Research cycle and corresponding data collection methods.

Phase 1 Data Collection: April 2010–July 2010

Longitudinal case study interviews were conducted in two different phases over a span of a year and a half with three different groups. The first group consisted of three senior policy analysts from Policy Planning Division of the federal government agencies who were best informed of Japan’s energy and environmental policies. The second group consisted of the leadership networks directly involved with the four smart city implementation projects: Kitakyushu City smart community project, Yokohama City smart city project, Toyota City smart city project, and Kyoto Prefecture smart region project.

After the Phase 1 data collection period, we have examined our initial framework for effective implementation of smart cities based on the case analysis and the cross-case analysis of the case data. The initial theoretical framework was discussed earlier in this article (see Figure 1).

Phase 2 Data Collection: January 2012–July 2012

The third group of case interviewees included five experts on smart grids, micro-grids, smart cities, smart communities, international standards, and renewable energy sources, who were either invited speakers or expert panel members at Smart Community Summit 2012 organized by NEDO and Japan Smart Community Alliance (JSCA) on May 30–31, 2012 in Tokyo, Japan.

During the Phase 2 data collection period, the four municipal government senior managers of the first group interviewed during the Phase 1 data collection were again interviewed, but second interviews were not conducted with the federal government agencies during this phase. The same four interviewees and two new leadership network members of the second group were contacted for the Phase 2 interviews on implementation strategies and shared visions. Furthermore, the interviewees referred the research team to four project managers for further interviews on implementation processes. Updated archived documents were also collected during the on-site field observations. The external validation of some of the case interview data from the archival data of the smart community implementation increased confidence in self-reports and reduced the risk of common-method bias.

In summary, a total of 11 semistructured interviews during the Phase 1 and a total of 19 during the Phase 2 were conducted, having given us a combined total of 30 interviews with the diverse informants with expertise and experience with smart city implementations. Table 1 summarizes the case interviews conducted in the two phases over time in this longitudinal case study research.

Table 1.

Case study interview schedule.

Group	Organization Type	Phase 1	Phase 2	Total
1	Federal government	3	0	3
1	Local government	4	4	8
2	Leadership network members (top/senior managers/the member organizations’ smart city project managers	4	6	10
2		0	4	4
3	Smart city domain knowledge experts	0	5	5
	Sub-total of interviews at each Phase	11	19	30

Case Study Findings on Kitakyushu Smart Community Implementation

The initial framework developed in this study has been examined through the case study of the Kitakyushu City smart community implementation. In 2010, Japan’s central government intervention policy initiative has certified the four smart city projects including the Kitakyushu City smart community project. The four smart city implementation sites are shown on a map of Japan in Figure 3. While all the four implementations were studied, in this article, we have centrally focused on the Kitakyushu City smart community project alone which is shown at the bottom left of the map because it represents one of the two most successful implementations with greater citizen engagement with the implementation and hence perceived greater social value model described in our Method section.

Figure 3.

A map of four government certified smart city implementation sites.

In the remaining section, we turn our attention to the Kitakyushu City smart community implementation outcomes by describing the key findings on the three antecedent conditions identified in our initial citizen-centric social governance framework for effective smart city implementation.

Leadership Network Based on Resource Dependence

An overall view of the Kitakyushu smart community implementation is shown in Figure 4. Nippon Steel is the lead organization of the governing coalition of the local business leaders. It has collaborated with IBM Japan, Fuji Denki Electric Systems, and Kitakyushu municipal government to produce the winning Kitakyushu smart community project proposal in 2009. On the one hand, Figure 4 illustrates the conspicuous absence of the upstream energy suppliers from the governing coalition of local business leaders (on the right-hand side of Figure 4) and 225 households and 50 businesses in the local community as the downstream energy consumers (on the left-hand side). Their conspicuous absence uniquely differentiates the leadership network formed for the Kitakyushu smart community project from those of the three other smart city projects. In Japan, the region’s electric power and gas companies have monopoly power in setting pricing strategies without competitive pressures. Other smart city projects viewed the upstream energy suppliers as an integral part of their implementation projects, if not heavy dependence. For example, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) joined the Yokohama City smart city project leadership network, Kansai Electric Company joined the Kyoto Science City smart region project leadership network, and Chubu Electric Power Company became a member of the Toyota City smart city leadership network. In contrast, Kyushu Electric Power Company was not a part of the Kitakyushu smart community leadership network. In consistent with the RDT predictions, the Kitakyushu City leadership network did not view Kyushu Electric Power Company as the only supplier of critical energy source for the smart community.

Figure 4.

Kitakyushu smart community implementation of low CO₂ emissions.

Kyushu Electric Power Company and Kansai Electric Power Company were the first movers in promoting the use of smart meters by households, and they completed proof-of-concept smart meter projects in 2009, 1 year earlier than TEPCO, Japan’s largest power company. However, the Kitakyushu smart community leadership network had already secured the active engagement of Toshiba and Toyota Motor Kyushu which remained competitive in Japan’s smart meters, smart homes, and smart buildings markets. Moreover, Toshiba and Fuji Denki Electric Systems are also market leaders in HEMS and building energy management systems (BEMS) products and services, whereas Toyota Motor Kyushu has been producing electric vehicle (EV) and hybrid-plug-in vehicles as green technology products.

In the Kitakyushu smart community project, the only smart city project without the participation of a dominant regional power company, Nippon Steel played new roles of the upstream energy producer and distributor of hydrogen gas to the government certified Higashida smart community area of approximately 1.2 km². Hydrogen gas is a natural by-product of the steel manufacturing process which Nippon Steel has explored and exploited into an innovative renewable energy generation system to heat and fuel the government certified smart community households, businesses, and a community center. By 2012 Toyota Motor Kyushu has successfully produced two prototype hydrogen gas-fueled government vehicles for Kitakyushu municipal government, while the Kitakyushu smart community project also completed a hydrogen fuel station.

Cross-Sector Collaboration Based on Social Embeddedness

The four leadership network members, Nippon Steel, IBM Japan, Fuji Denki Electric Systems, and Kitakyushu municipal government also extended its leadership network membership to include Toyota Motor Kyushu, Furukawa, and Toshiba. They also had successful track records of close collaboration with the four leadership network members in the Kitakyushu City’s large and small low-carbon environmental projects, information infrastructure projects and green technology innovation projects prior to its 2009 winning proposal submission. Cross-sector executive friendships and mutual trust have been forged strongly between Nippon Steel and IBM Japan and between Nippon Steel and Fuji Denki Electric Systems, among others. The proposal centrally focused on leveraging the existing complementary technological knowledge to implement a new micro-grid energy network which interconnects with smart meters and alternative energy systems, and securing 100% citizen engagement within the smart community so as to reduce 50% of the 2009 CO₂ emissions by the end of the project in 2014.

The Kitakyushu City smart community’s 225 households have adopted smart meters and HEMS, whereas 50 businesses have adopted BEMS as of the Phase 2 case data interviews (June 2012). Continuous energy consumption data from a household smart meter provided the automatic visualization of energy consumption at the individual household level through the HEMS which could be accessed anytime anywhere via a smart mobile phone or an iPad. The Kitakyushu smart community leadership network held that well-informed individual households could make smarter energy usage decisions in the ways which can make a difference to reducing CO₂ emissions into the environment. According to IBM Japan, the household smart meter data were aggregated on a 5-min interval at the community level and automatically sent to cloud computing servers for analysis using business intelligence and big data analytics tools to generate insights into localized energy demand patterns at the smart community level. The community-level energy demand information flows through the micro-grid network to the upstream energy supplier, Nippon Steel and others, including IBM Japan. In response to the aggregate demand, Nippon Steel could be more flexible in controlling the production and distribution of hydrogen gas to the smart community.

Moreover, the Kitakyushu smart community project with the support of the Kitakyushu City Government launched an innovative experiment in exploring a dynamic pricing model aimed to change the energy demand behaviors within the smart community. Nippon Steel, IBM Japan, and Kitakyushu City Government explained that Nippon Steel would be able to increase its capability in delivering the new on-demand renewable hydrogen generation and distribution through the real-time actual usage data. IBM Japan mentioned the use of big data analytics to develop deeper insights into the actual usage patterns across citizens and across businesses.

Most importantly, all the leader network members interviewed underscored their shared vision of social innovation; Nippon Steel’s hydrogen gas as an innovative renewable energy source and other renewable energies such as mega solar systems by Fuji Denki Systems and Toyota Motor Kyushu’s rechargeable EV and hybrid plug-in vehicles the smart community have been exploring can help the City of Kitakyushu reduce its dependence on fossil fuels energy toward building a low-carbon society. They all retold the transformation of the steel city and attributed the City’s successful smart community project to the history of their close cross-sector collaboration.

Citizen-Centric E-Governance

Kitakyushu City was able to get active buy-in from the local citizens living in the Kitakyushu City smart community, which is imperative for the Kitakyushu City project to achieve its overarching project aim of creating a low-carbon society and generating public value. Most importantly, both the Kitakyushu City Government and the Yokohama City Government more explicitly than other two local governments underscored the importance of engaging the local citizens in their smart community/smart city projects in order to fully realize the planned reduction of CO₂ emissions. The Kitakyushu City smart community’s project charter has explicitly stated the imperative of active citizen engagement. Moreover, the Kitakyushu City smart community leadership network engaged a few existing citizens’ associations and groups. Finally, the Kitakyushu City Government, Nippon Steel, and IBM Japan all concurred on the critical importance of citizens’ awareness of climate change debates, environmental sustainability challenges, and the need for change in demanding fossil fuels both at the individual and societal levels. They all reminded the research team of the important role of the historical paths the leaders of the City Government, businesses and citizens’ associations have taken to work together and solve the industrial air and water pollution problems and transform the City of Kitakyushu from a grey steel city to an internationally recognized green city.

As the steel industry city, Kitakyushu City faced the serious industry air pollution problems in the 1960s (Fujikura, 2001; Ministry of the Environment of Japan, 2010) and the water contamination by synthetic chemicals due to urbanization and industrialization (Akiyama & Koga, 1983). In fact, Kitakyushu City was known as Japan’s most polluted industrial city at that time (Fujikura, 2001).

Japan’s urban antipollution protests in the 1960s have been described as a national phenomenon (Fujikura, 2001). However, in Kitakyushu City, no confrontational citizens’ protests movement developed. Because local politics and economics were so dominated by Nippon Steel and its affiliated heavy industries, its citizens were reluctant to directly challenge these powerful industries. Instead, local women’s groups such as Women’s Association learned the scientific data collection methods from the local university scientists, collected massive local pollution data for statistical analysis, and presented their research findings to the public. These collective citizens’ activisms raised public awareness and mobilized increased political support for local leftist politicians because leftist local administrations had succeeded in cutting pollution in other cities in Japan. Kitakyushu City’s conservative mayor and Nippon Steel both became concerned that leftists would win the next local elections if pollution were not reduced. In consequence, the Kitakyushu City Government used the scientific pollution data to build consensus among the all local heavy industries on sulfhur oxide pollution control agreements, which were individualized pollution reduction agreements. The public policy resulted in a significant reduction in air pollution, despite the absence of the citizens’ protests movement in Kitakyushu City (Fujikura, 2001; Kitakyushu City Government, 2012).

Based on the 2012 interviews with the local government, Nippon Steel, and IBM Japan, the local citizens in general and the residents in the smart community in particular had been actively engaged with the Kitakyushu City smart community implementation through the local e-government website (http://www.city.kitakyushu.lg.jp/index.html) and made contributions to increase public awareness of the environmental sustainability problem many cities face and to build shared values for environmental health and corporate social responsibility.

Based on our observations of this particular smart community, what makes this smart community smart is neither the level of the smart community’s digital information infrastructure nor the level of citizens and businesses that are hyperconnected with the digital information infrastructure. What makes this community smart is its localized collective intelligence and adaptive capability to rethink and transform human-related activities that contribute to the high-level carbon emissions and challenge sustainable energy and environment policies. It requires the mass mobilization of local citizens who are not only hyperconnected with the smart city’s digital information infrastructure through various smart and mobile devices such as smart phones, but also well informed about and well aware of the energy consumption of major household appliances and the energy cost of using these appliances, and therefore can intelligently select the most economical time to use household appliances in the ways which the household level energy consumption can be minimized. What makes smart cities smart is a critical mass of citizens’ radical rethinking and systemic behavioral change toward new environmentally sustainable lifestyle, transport choice, and energy conservation. To offset Japan’s continued push for economic growth, citizens in smart communities/cities will be required to make more than incremental change. For example, buying household appliances with better energy saving features is necessary but not sufficient unless it is coupled with change in usage patterns—using off-peak times and using less frequently.

Discussion

In the previous section, the key findings from the longitudinal case study on the Kitakyushu City’s implementation of a smart community seem to support the overall validity and utility of the initial framework for effective smart city implementation. However, during the field-based case interviews a new construct of shared vision of social innovation has emerged, which was not predicated in any of the three complementary theories used to develop the initial citizen-centric social governance framework. Based on a further review of the literature on shared vision, we have revised the initial framework’s relationships between the three antecedents and the consequence for future research. Figure 5 illustrates this revised citizen-centric social governance framework in which the new construct of shared vision of social innovation has been added as a moderator between the three antecedents and the consequence. In other words, shared vision of social innovation will likely moderate the relationships between the antecedents and the consequence by either strengthening or weakening the strength of each of the postulated relationships. Therefore, the case of the Kitakyushu City smart community implementation, where high-level shared vision of social innovation was forged by the leadership network as well as the local citizens produced more effective smart city implementation than other sites.

Figure 5.

A revised social governance framework for effective smart city implementation.

The revised citizen-centric social governance framework identifies four antecedents of effective implementation of smart city—the consequence. We hold that shared vision for social innovation is a first-order antecedent of effective smart city implementation. Moreover, we also hold that resource dependence, social embeddedness, and citizen-centric e-governance are second-order antecedents. Since the second-order antecedents and the consequence have been described earlier in this article, we focus on the first-order antecedent in the following subsection.

Shared Vision of Social Innovation: First-Order Antecedent

In this article, we argued that leadership networks require their shared vision and direction to manage the complex project’s scope and quality, to implement a smart city and to achieve its strategic goals of creating effective solutions to the energy and environmental sustainability problems. In other words, leadership networks will likely face more serious a challenge in the context of radical change initiatives at a scale that matters at the community or society levels—beyond the individual organizational boundary because creating systemic, transformational or adaptive change often requires engaging large communities of diverse stakeholders with conflicting values and different motivations.

Attaining environmental sustainability will require concerted collaborative efforts among various stakeholders with conflict of interest, many of whom have not yet recognized the seriousness of the growing environmental crisis. The inability of key stakeholders to engage collaboratively and proactively is an obstacle to the actual attainment of environmental sustainability. On the other hand, some local communities with high-level social capital have shown that they can collaborate for long-term environmental management. Social capital was found essential for governance of common resources because it fosters stakeholders’ confidence to invest in collective sustainable management activities (Pretty, 2003). Similarly, self-organization forms emerging among resource users were necessary in achieving an environmental sustainability of complex social-ecological systems.

Conclusion

This theory-building case study in this article has identified antecedent conditions necessary for implementing smart cities for environment sustainability. We have integrated resource dependence, social embeddedness, and citizen-centric e-governance theories to develop a citizen-centric social governance framework. We have applied the framework to a field-based case study of Japan’s Kitakyushu smart community project to examine the validity and utility of the framework’s antecedent conditions: resource-dependent leadership network, cross-sector collaboration based on social ties, and citizen-centric e-governance. We conclude that complex smart community implementation processes require shared vision of social innovation owned by diverse stakeholders with conflicting values and adaptive use of informal social governance mechanisms for effective smart city implementation.

Our findings from the interviews indicated that citizen engagement was key for effective smart cities implementation. Without citizen input through various channels and the work of business with government created this shared vision. The proposed citizen-centric social governance framework using the complementary theories developed in this research is expected to be very helpful in diagnosing the conditions of smart city implementations.

However, this research has inherent limitations of a single case study in a specific research context of Japan. Future research directions include a large-scale global survey research of smart city implementation projects to examine the validity and utility of the revised social governance framework for effective smart city implementation.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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