Developing the N-SCIM Framework as an Integrated Framework for Smart City and Regional Ecosystem Governance

Smart City research has progressively moved beyond technology-centred approaches toward broader perspectives incorporating governance, sustainability, institutional capacity, citizen participation, and quality of life. Nevertheless, the literature remains conceptually fragmented, particularly regarding the relationship between public administration, regional ecosystem governance, digital transformation, and societal outcomes. This study develops the N-SCIM Framework for Smart City and Regional Ecosystem Governance through an integrative conceptual review and comparative synthesis of the relevant literature. The review examines established approaches in smart city theory, public administration, smart governance, regional development, digital governance, sustainability, and quality-of-life research in order to identify areas of convergence, divergence, and unresolved conceptual limitations. The findings indicate that existing frameworks frequently treat governance as one dimension among several, provide limited explanation of cross-sectoral coordination, and insufficiently account for the functional relationships between cities and their wider regional ecosystems. They also reveal conceptual overlap among principles, enabling conditions, substantive dimensions, and outcomes, particularly in relation to sustainability, adaptability, technologies, data, and quality of life. The framework comprises five functionally differentiated components: the Regional Ecosystem as territorial context, Governance as institutional coordination, Digital Capabilities as transversal enabling capacity, Development Domains as areas of intervention, and Public Outcomes as the level at which broader territorial consequences are interpreted. The framework positions public administration as the central coordinating mechanism, treats technologies and data as a cross-cutting enabling layer, and conceptualizes cities as components of multilevel regional ecosystems characterized by cooperation, unequal capacities, institutional tensions, and policy trade-offs. The contribution of the study lies not in introducing entirely new concepts, but in integrating and reorganizing established perspectives into a more coherent theoretical architecture for smart territorial governance. The framework provides a basis for future empirical validation and operationalization, while its effectiveness as an assessment model remains to be tested.