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This study aims to explore the complex, multi-level institutional dynamics of smart city reforms and projects and their potential sustainability pressures on the implementation of a management accounting system in an Egyptian state-owned enterprise (SOE), which has a politically sensitive institutional character.

This study adds to institutional management accounting research using a multi-level perspective of institutional dynamics in the smart city context. Data were collected from an interpretive case study of an Egyptian SOE that was under socio-political sustainability pressures to implement a smart electricity network project in New Minya city.

Smart city projects have formed social and political sustainability pressures, which introduced the enterprise resource planning (ERP) network as a new management accounting system. A new (complex and multi-level) management accounting system was invented to reinvent the sustainable city as an “accounting city” (which appeared rhetorically as a “smart city”). “Smart” being the visibility and measurability of the sustainability performance of the collective body, which calls the city and its connectivity to different institutional levels brought out in a city network project for the ERP-enabled electricity distribution.

This study examines a single case study from a single smart city and identifies the accounting community’s need for multiple and comparative case studies to further analyse the potential impact of smart city reforms and projects on the sustainable implementation of management accounting systems.

City policymakers and managers may benefit from the practical findings of this interpretive field-based case study in planning, implementing and monitoring smart city projects and objectives.

Individual and collective well-being may be enhanced through new management accounting forms of multi-level local governance and increased political, field and organisational sustainability.

This study provides important insights into the sustainability dynamics of management accounting in achieving smart city reforms. The achievement of sustainability management accounting systems has connected to multiple ERP roles at different institutional levels, which resulted in accommodating the socio-political objectives of smart city projects.

Cities throughout the world have experienced fundamental social, cultural and economic transformation in recent decades. Socio-cultural and urban identities have been transforming radically; globalization, internationalization and the rapid flow of information, as the case in the rest of the world, have played a significant role in changing cities and their people. These changing dynamics have affected continuity and development trends in urban-housing environments and housing preferences. The multidimensional outcomes of this transformation are manifest in peculiarities of activity patterns, behavioral relationships, and socio-cultural norms, as well as in architectural and urban configurations. These rapid economic and social changes demand continual redefinition of urbanization and housing concerns. Therefore, the main aim of the article that based on ongoing research is to examine implications of urban and architectural transformations in Istanbul with the subjects of economical, cultural and political conditions.

Based on these above arguments, article aims to analyze and discuss the relationship between urban dynamics and new housing developments in Istanbul in the context of transformation process. The article, which consists of five sections, has three sections besides the introduction and conclusion. In the first two part a theoretical framework is established, explaining and discussing culture, continuity and change in the process of urbanization. The second part includes the latest housing trends in Istanbul with the subjects of economical, cultural and political conditions that Turkey is already in and related. The third part examines the emerging patterns of social and cultural differentiation in Istanbul through the examples of the exclusive suburbs At the end, we argue that recent housing projects and trends represent new forms of organizing social and cultural differences, and could be read as urban forms, which create segregation and reproduce inequalities while transforming the character of public life.

This chapter develops a conceptual taxonomy of five emerging digital citizenship regimes: (1) the globalised and generalisable regime called pandemic citizenship that clarifies how post-COVID-19 datafication processes have amplified the emergence of four intertwined, non-mutually exclusive and non-generalisable new technopoliticalised and city-regionalised digital citizenship regimes in certain European nation-states’ urban areas; (2) algorithmic citizenship, which is driven by blockchain and has allowed the implementation of an e-Residency programme in Tallinn; (3) liquid citizenship, driven by dataism – the deterministic ideology of big data – and contested through claims for digital rights in Barcelona and Amsterdam; (4) metropolitan citizenship, as revindicated in reaction to Brexit and reshuffled through data co-operatives in Cardiff; and (5) stateless citizenship, driven by devolution and reinvigorated through data sovereignty in Barcelona, Glasgow and Bilbao. This chapter challenges the existing interpretation of how these emerging digital citizenship regimes together are ubiquitously rescaling the associated spaces/practices of European nation-states.

System dynamics is a whole-system modelling and learning approach, useful for tackling non-linear problems, such as sustainable urban development. The purpose of this paper is to review system dynamics applications in the simulation of sustainable urban development over a period from 2005 to 2017.

The analysis reveals that the number of applications of system dynamics modelling in the area of urban sustainable development increased in the analysed period. Research has changed its focus from the modelling of environmental problems to more complex models, portraying the multidimensional socio-economic processes that have an impact on the sustainability of urban development. Analysed case studies most often use the behaviour reproduction test for model validation, but without a unified approach. In most cases, modelling has been done in China, Germany and the USA, while urban development in the Eastern European countries, Africa and Latin America has not often been investigated. This paper indicates the knowledge gaps and suggests future research directions.

Papers that report the use of system dynamics modelling reveal a wide range of applications in urban sustainability. The analysis shows significant emphasis on environmental problems, while the interest for modelling social problems has been increasing during the last several years. Most of the modelled problems examine the sustainability of resources (land, water) and waste management, which are used for insights into the reasons for the system behaviour, forecasting future behaviour and policy testing.

The presented models were developed in most cases for the purpose of understanding the phenomena examined, as well as the future use of the models in policy planning. This brings us back to the need for greater stakeholder involvement, not only in the initial phase, but also during the whole modelling process, which could increase understanding, use and ownership of the models in the future, and thus increase their practical application.

This chapter introduces the book by revolving around its core concept: digital citizenship. This introductory chapter on digital citizenship regimes in the postpandemics could be established by including several brief discussion points that gradually introduce and lead us comprehensively to the chapters of the book previously introduced. These discussion points are informative and attempt to introduce progressively to the key chapters of the book as follows: (1) Urban-Digital Citizenship Nexus; (2) Advancing Recent Literature on Citizenship; (3) Rescaling Nation-States: Pandemic Citizenship and Algorithmic Nations; (4) Beyond the Smart Cities; (5) Exploring Digital Citizenship Towards Technopolitical Dynamics; (6) Borderless and Pandemic Citizenship; and (7) In Summary: Towards Future Research and Policy Avenues in the Postpandemics.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a qualitative explanation, understanding, and policy suggestions on the socio‐economic causes, effects, and challenges facing nomadic rural girls' street hawking in cities of Northern Nigeria. The aim is to present the paper as a source of literature that will serve as a future document in formulating inclusive policies for the girls as explained in the section on educational policy options.

Research orientation and design involved qualitative phenomenology that explored girls' street hawking experiences. Study sites included three major Nigerian cities and three villages of the girls. Purposeful sampling was used to select 20 girls between ages eight and 15 and female parents as primary participants, while two traditional and religious leaders from each of the villages, and one administrator of the local state nomadic education commission served as secondary participants. Snowball samples of three male parents of the girls in each village were used as part of data validity. Data collection technique involved unstructured focus group interviews, participant observations, and video recording of the girls at home, at markets, and at streets in the cities. Ethical issues were addressed by obtaining oral and written consent of participants orally and in writing using the native language for clarity and understanding of their role. Data analysis of interview involved transcription and the repeated reading of the transcripts that identified major themes. Observational data were converted to field notes and analyzed for patterns of ideas that support major themes of the analyzed interview data for validity. Triangulation process of checking validity was used with sample of snowball participants as state educational administrators of nomadic education, religious leaders, amongst others.

Major findings are presented as themes on major economic causes of the girls' street hawking of dairy products as a part of family gender division of labor, poverty level of most families, preparing girls for self‐reliance and economic independence, and to augment family income. Social causes include Islamic religious pressure of teaching youth self‐reliance in preparation for early marriage, to finance wedding expenses, to acquire material possessions as child brides, for family honor, to accrue income to maintain their bodily aesthetic needs, group street hawking as a means to girls socialization, and exposing girls to suitors as future husbands, amongst others. Challenges facing the girls include lack of safety, exposure to forms of abuse, and being left behind in basic literacy, amongst others.

This paper is of significant value due to its novelty. It will serve as primary literature on minority West African pastoral girls' impact on rural‐urban migration, their challenges, and their position in the current world social policy of the Department for International Development and UNICEF Girls Education Project.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how future urban icons can effectively contribute to the development of an authentic city brand linked to local identity. Urban icons have been one of the main tools of city branding to promote a unique and distinctive image of the city. However, the rising of the globalization reflects a series of strong dilemmas regarding the contemporary urban icons because these have been reproduced in a standardized way around the world without any connection to the local context.

This exploratory study consisted of 30 in-depth interviews with visual aids of urban icons conducted with local residents of the city of Monterrey, Mexico.

The results demonstrate that the acceptance of a contemporary urban icon by local residents depends on their relationship with the most representative aspects of the local identity and their ability to generate positive experiences. The outcomes of the research suggest that future urban icons should favor the local identity and the free coexistence between local residents over the attractive visual design and the private space.

The article discusses the dynamics between urban icons and the city brand from a new theoretical approach supported by empirical evidence. The novelty of this approach consists of the vision of the urban icon as an element capable of linking the city brand with the values and ideals of local residents.

Northern Ireland (NI) has pervasively been a fragile and often disputed city-regional nation. Despite NI's slim majority in favour of remaining in the European Union, de facto Brexit, post-pandemic challenges and the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) have revealed a dilemma: people of all political hues have started to question aspects of their own citizenship. Consequently, this chapter suggests an innovative approach called ‘Algorithmic Nations’ to better articulate its emerging/complex citizenship regimes for this divided and post-conflict society in which identity borders and devolution may be facilitated through blockchain technology. This chapter assesses implications of this dilemma for a city-regionalised nation enmeshed within the UK, Ireland and Europe: NI through Belfast, its main metropolitan hub. The chapter explores digital citizenship in NI by applying ‘Algorithmic Nations’ framework particularly relating to intertwined (1) cross-bordering, (2) critical awareness, (3) digital activism and (4) post-pandemic realities and concludes with three dilemmas and how ‘Algorithmic Nations’ framing could better integrate NI's digital citizenship.

The purpose of this paper is to advance knowledge of the transformative potential of big data on city-based transport models. The central question guiding this paper is: how could big data transform smart city transport operations? In answering this question the authors present initial results from a Markov study. However the authors also suggest caution in the transformation potential of big data and highlight the risks of city and organizational adoption. A theoretical framework is presented together with an associated scenario which guides the development of a Markov model.

A model with several scenarios is developed to explore a theoretical framework focussed on matching the transport demands (of people and freight mobility) with city transport service provision using big data. This model was designed to illustrate how sharing transport load (and capacity) in a smart city can improve efficiencies in meeting demand for city services.

This modelling study is an initial preliminary stage of the investigation in how big data could be used to redefine and enable new operational models. The study provides new understanding about load sharing and optimization in a smart city context. Basically the authors demonstrate how big data could be used to improve transport efficiency and lower externalities in a smart city. Further how improvement could take place by having a car free city environment, autonomous vehicles and shared resource capacity among providers.

The research relied on a Markov model and the numerical solution of its steady state probabilities vector to illustrate the transformation of transport operations management (OM) in the future city context. More in depth analysis and more discrete modelling are clearly needed to assist in the implementation of big data initiatives and facilitate new innovations in OM. The work complements and extends that of Setia and Patel (2013), who theoretically link together information system design to operation absorptive capacity capabilities.

The study implies that transport operations would actually need to be re-organized so as to deal with lowering CO₂ footprint. The logistic aspects could be seen as a move from individual firms optimizing their own transportation supply to a shared collaborative load and resourced system. Such ideas are radical changes driven by, or leading to more decentralized rather than having centralized transport solutions (Caplice, 2013).

The growth of cities and urban areas in the twenty-first century has put more pressure on resources and conditions of urban life. This paper is an initial first step in building theory, knowledge and critical understanding of the social implications being posed by the growth in cities and the role that big data and smart cities could play in developing a resilient and sustainable transport city system.

Despite the importance of OM to big data implementation, for both practitioners and researchers, we have yet to see a systematic analysis of its implementation and its absorptive capacity contribution to building capabilities, at either city system or organizational levels. As such the Markov model makes a preliminary contribution to the literature integrating big data capabilities with OM capabilities and the resulting improvements in system absorptive capacity.

This paper analyses changes in the activity pattern of Damascus city from late modern era (late Ottoman rule) to the contemporary era. The research objective is to explore the impact of the socio-historical process on the evolving morphological structure of the urban core and to draw implications for post-war reconstruction.

Space Syntax methodology was employed to trace the historical and morphological changes in the urban core of Damascus. The timeframe was divided into five periods covering the city's socio-political transformation and five maps depicting these periods. Local and global integration measures were used to analyse the changes in the urban core across each period. Normalised angular choice (NACH) measure was used to identify the changes in the city planning system.

The results revealed that the urban core corresponded to the main streets, which had socio-economic importance across history. However, introducing a new planning system influenced by Western planning ideals led to the creation of multi-morphological patterns. At the city level, the study found that the urban core was more accessible in the preplanned areas, while the organic expansion of the informal settlements was exclusive of the core area. At the local level, some informal settlements showed an intense core. Intelligibility analysis revealed that earlier periods showed considerably higher values, implying declines in the ease of navigation of the city over time.

This study did not account for the political, economic and cultural factors that could shape morphological changes in Damascus. In addition, the study adopted historical reference points to understand the morphological changes, as high-quality geospatial data was not available to monitor the recent post-war situation.

The research findings give a foundation for a more contextualised historical understanding of spatial structure and changes, which can contribute to the post-war reconstruction and redevelopment of Damascus city.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to trace historical spatial changes in Damascus from a space syntax approach, weaving together socio-historical and configurational studies. In doing so, it shows how historically informed and spatially aware urban planning and design policies can support policymakers and built environment professionals in planning and redevelopment.