163 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
E. Estevez et al. (eds.), Smart Cities and Smart Governance, Public
Administration and Information Technology 37,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61033-3_8
A Methodology for Participatory Planning
of Smart City Interventions
Charalampos Alexopoulos, Loukis Euripidis, and Yannis Charalabidis
Abstract The development of smart cities is a highly diffcult undertaking, which
requires participation and cooperation of several stakeholders, both in its planning,
due to the multiplicity of possible smart city interventions available as options, and
also in its implementation, due to its high complexity. Especially for planning
(selecting and prioritizing) specifc smart city actions to be implemented it is neces-
sary to combine knowledge: (1) on one hand from the university and the industry,
concerning the possible smart city interventions, the capabilities they can offer in
general, as well their diffculties and challenges; (2) and on the other hand from the
municipalities and the citizens, concerning the ‘real-life’ benefts and value that
these possible interventions can actually provide, and their potential for addressing
specifc challenges, problems and needs of modern cities. However, there is a lack
of sound methodologies for this required participatory planning of smart city inter-
ventions. This chapter contributes to flling this gap, by presenting a methodology
for this purpose. It is based on a detailed taxonomy of possible smart city actions,
which we have developed through a review of relevant literature, representing
knowledge that has been developed in this area by the university and the industry,
who can be viewed as the smart city actions’ supply side. This taxonomy is used for
collecting assessment data from municipalities as well as citizens concerning these
possible smart city actions, which incorporate relevant knowledge and preferences
of municipalities and citizens, who can be viewed as the smart city actions’ demand
side). Our methodology includes three layers of processing the above municipali-
ties’ and citizens’ assessment data, which reveal: (a) the perceptions and priorities
of these two important stakeholders concerning smart city actions (layer I–II respec-
tively); and (b) points of convergence as well as points of divergence between them
(layer III). These enable a rational participatory planning of smart city interven-
tions. Our methodology has been applied in the context of Greece: assessment data
concerning the above possible smart city actions have been collected from 144
Greek municipalities and 500 citizens, and their processing has led to interesting
conclusions, which can be quite useful for planning the next steps of smart cities’
development in Greece.
C. Alexopoulos (*) · L. Euripidis · Y. Charalabidis
University of the Aegean, Lesbos, Greece
e-mail: alexop@aegean.gr; eloukis@aegean.gr; yannisx@aegean.gr