Exploring the Smart City Indexes and the Role of Macro Factors for Measuring Cities Smartness

The main objective of this paper is to discuss the key factors involved in the definition of smart city indexes. Although recent literature has explored the smart city subject, it is of concern if macro ICT factors should also be considered for assessing the technological innovation of a city. To achieve this goal, firstly a literature review of smart city is provided. An analysis of the smart city concept together with a theoretical framework based on the knowledge society and the Quintuple Helix innovation model are included. Secondly, the study analyzes some smart city cases in developed and developing countries. Thirdly, it describes, criticizes and compares some well-known smart city indexes. Lastly, the empirical literature is explored to detect if there are studies proposing changes in smart city indexes or methodologies to consider the macro level variables. It results that cities at the top of the indexes rankings are from developed countries. On the other side, most cities at the bottom of the ranking are from developing or not developed countries. As a result, it is addressed that the ICT development of Smart Cities depends both on the cities’ characteristics and features, and on macro-technological factors. Secondly, there is a scarce number of papers in the subject including macro or country factors, and most of them are revisions of the literature or case studies. There is a lack of studies discussing the indexes’ methodologies. This paper provides some guidelines to build one.