The influence of context in the implementation of a smart city project: The case of cidade inteligente Búzios

Abstract

The growth of urban population is widely acknowledged to be a central trend that poses challenges for the administration of cities worldwide. In this context, several advances in information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been developed to gradually transform urban centers into smart cities. In this article, we seek to contribute to filling a knowledge gap in the literature on smart city — namely the lack of empirical data in works on this subject — by investigating a project aimed at turning the municipality of Búzios in Brazil into a smart city, named Cidade Inteligente Búzios (CIB). Our objective is, thus, to describe and understand the controversial influence of the context in the implementation of the project, which was considered a success for some actors and irrelevant for others, a situation that defies the very concept of success in the implementation of smart cities.