A tale of two “smart cities”: Investigating the echoes of new public management and governance discourses in smart city projects in Brazil

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of discourses of New Public Management and e-Governance on the manner in which Information Technology (IT) has been conceived in recent smart city initiatives in Brazil. A critical discourse analysis is conducted as the methodological approach to investigate the role of IT in smart city discourses of two cities. The main result has shown that the role of technology within the two cases strongly reflects the discourses of New Public Management and e-governance, in which there is clearly a latent tension between top-down and bottom-up approaches to smart cities.