In search of ICT in smart cities – Policy documents as idea carriers in urban development

Abstract

This paper explores how policy documents carry and institutionalize smart city ideas from high policy level to concrete policy level in an urban development context. We analyze the national urban development vision for Sweden and documents in a local urban development project in a Swedish city, in order to explore what kind of roles and expectations ICT is given in these documents. We contrast this with views of how social and environmental aspects are discussed in the studied documents. In order to understand and analyze the result we apply the concept of institutional carriers from institutional theory to our findings. Our analysis shows that as carriers of how ICT can contribute to increased sustainability in urban development, the policy documents do not function very well. ICT aspects are not put forth by any policy-making actor, neither on national nor on local level. The notion of institutional carriers helped us understand that without a responsible actor focusing on ICT’s role in smart cities, it is easy to forget or lose sight of technology.