Developing a mechanism for smart city public management: A regional approach

In conditions when cities become centres of attraction for resources and people, while experiencing significant problems of environmental, social, economic nature, it is extremely important to form new approaches to urbanised territories development. The article aims to design a mechanism for managing the development of smart cities using a regional approach. Methodologically, the research rests on the theory of the digital society and the propositions of urbanised territories’ public management. The methods include the system-logical method, graphical modelling, and qualitative analysis. The paper propounds a mechanism for smart city public management and proposes its interpretation as a set of measures, actions of management structures, society and business for resource provisioning, as well as technologies for managing the processes of formation and development of a smart city. The main functions of this mechanism include creating conditions for the interaction of ecosystem participants, stable functioning of governing bodies, transparency of management processes, as well as ensuring feedback. The article constructs a graphical model of the mechanism of urbanised territories’ public management under digitalisation. Based on the theoretical developments the paper structures the experience of the Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk oblast and concludes that despite quite an extensive list of the smart city initiatives, their implementation largely overlooks such aspects as determining the state and development directions of the digitalisation objects, assessing the risks of smart city projects, maintaining quality of implementation processes, and auditing smart city projects. The findings can contribute to planning the smart cities development at the regional level.