Understanding Smart Cities: A Tool for Smart Government or an Industrial Trick?

This book investigates the role of smart cities in the broader context of urban innovation and e-government, identifies what a smart city is in practice and highlights their importance to the welfare of society. The book offers specific, measurable, and action-oriented public sector planning and management principles and ideas for smart governance in the era of global urbanization and innovation to help with the challenges in maintaining the democratic system of checks and balances as well as the division of powers in a highly interconnected world. The book will be of interest researchers, practitioners, students, and public sector IT professionals that work within innovation management, public administration, urban technologies and urban innovation, and public local administration studies.

Dr. Leonidas Anthopoulos is an Associate Professor at the Business School of the TEI of Thessaly. Dr. Anthopoulos has IT research, planning and Management experience with the development and deployment of complex IT projects. At his previous job positions, as an Expert Counselor at the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs in e-Government and e-Diplomacy areas, as an IT researcher and manager at the Research Committee of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece), Municipality of Trikala (Greece), Administration of Secondary Education of Trikala (Greece) and Information Society S.A. (Greece), he was responsible for planning and managing the development of multiple IT projects for the Greek Government and for various Public Organizations. Among them it worth mentioning the Smart City of Trikala (e-Trikala), the SYZEFXIS and Police-online projects, the central portal for the Hellenic Ministry of Foreign Affairs etc.  He is a member of various committees, worth mentioning the ITU Smart City Focus Group, Associate Editor of the IJPADA journal (IGI-GROUP) and editor of book collections. He is the author of several articles published on prestigious scientific journals, book collections and international conferences. His research interests concern, among others, smart city, e-Government, Enterprise Architecture, Strategic Management, etc.