Type: Article
Title: Selective inclusion: Civil society involvement in the smart city ecology of Amsterdam
Authors: Mello Rose, Filipe 
Thiel, Joachim 
Grabher, Gernot 
Issue Date: Jul-2022
Keywords: Civil society involvement; collaboration networks; economic civil society; smart city ecology; smart city governance; social civil society
Abstract: 
Although research on smart cities increasingly acknowledges the involvement of civil society actors, most studies fall short when it comes to clarifying the specific modalities of civil society involvement. By probing into the smart city ecology that has developed around the Amsterdam Smart City-Foundation, we explore not only the extent to which the civil society is part of a smart city ecology but also what role civil society actors hold within this ecology. This article draws on data gathered and analyzed through quantitative and qualitative methods. The qualitative analysis focuses on analyzing the institutional dynamics that shape civil society involvement in Amsterdam’s smart city ecology. The quantitative data are used to unravel the relational dynamics by quantifying collaborative patterns between different types of organizations in Amsterdam’s smart city ecology. Our findings reveal that powerful institutional dynamics, manifested through normative pressures, favor the involvement of socially oriented civil society actors. At the same time, however, relational dynamics that shape the collaborative patterns in the projects of the ecology rather exclude the socially oriented civil society at the benefit of an economically oriented civil society. In other words, while the entire ecology rhetorically adheres to an ethos of pervasive civil society involvement, politically, socially, and civically oriented civil society actors lack inter-organizational collaboration—even in the supposedly inclusive context of Amsterdam.
Subject Class (DDC): 300: Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie
HCU-Faculty: Stadt- und Regionalökonomie 
Journal or Series Name: European Urban and Regional Studies 
Volume: 29
Issue: 3
Start page: 369
End page: 382
Publisher: Sage
ISSN: 0969-7764
Publisher DOI: 10.1177/09697764221092587
URN (Citation Link): urn:nbn:de:gbv:1373-repos-10763
Directlink: https://repos.hcu-hamburg.de/handle/hcu/847
Language: English
Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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