Tracking Paths to Smart Governance: The Case of Korydallos Municipality—Greece

Abstract

Strengthening capacity of urban systems and their constituents in order to effectively tackle contemporary challenges and risks in a rapidly evolving, complex and uncertain global environment; and produce value for local communities in a sustainable and inclusive way, brings to the forefront the concept of smart governance. Tracking paths to smart governance, being the focus of this work, implies the need to conceptualize smartness and governance; and shed light on key organizational attributes that can pave the way for the transition from government to smart governance. Having identified these attributes by literature review, the paper highlights institutional, organizational, societal etc. developments in a Greek city, Korydallos Municipality, in order barriers and gaps in its trajectory to smart governance to be illuminated, both before and during the economic recession and austerity stress, faced by the Greek economy. Experiences gained by this pilot example, representing a rather typical small and medium-sized city in the Mediterranean context, provide useful inferences and evidence-based results for similar cities that strive to ride the smart governance wave.