Aspirations and realizations: The smart city of Seattle

Smart city initiatives have been launched on every continent. That notwithstanding the concept of “smart city” has remained ambiguous. We systematically interviewed officials of an acclaimed Smart City (Seattle) and explicitly asked the officials for their own definitions of “smart city,” which we then compared to the respective projects run by that City. While the definitions given by the practitioners were found different from those in the literature, the smart city projects lived up and matched the practitioner definitions to a high degree. We document the projects and their expected and realized benefits, which illustrate where a leading City government is headed in terms of smart government. However, “Smart City” initiatives in local government might be only a steppingstone in making the greater urban space a “smart city,” which appears to be a more challenging undertaking.