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Smart urban governance research has progressed over the past few decades following changes and increasingly complicated city management difficulties. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to use a scoping review and bibliometric analysis to examine all the publications on smart urban governance, especially in Asia.

A total of 1,900 smart urban governance articles indexed in the Scopus database was analyzed through scoping review and bibliometric analysis. The articles were analyzed by the number of publications per year, contributing countries, subject areas, authors, cited documents, related issues and cited papers. Furthermore, VOSviewer was used to provide a visual analysis of the co-occurrence of keywords.

This study indicated that urban smart governance publications continue to increase yearly. Even though the area of analysis is Asia, the USA and China seriously contributed to the analysis. Therefore, the topic of smart urban governance has become a discussion for scholars in the international. From the Scopus database analysis, the top three subject areas are social sciences (28%), environmental science (20%) and medicine (16%). The synthesis using bibliometric analysis by VOSviewer obtained 13 clusters.

This study only focuses on the Scopus database and one specific topic, using one bibliometric analysis tool. Meanwhile, national and international index databases are not used.

This paper examined publication trends on smart urban governance. This paper provided a comprehensive analysis of topic-specific knowledge areas based on previous studies. Additionally, this paper suggested the direction of the development of smart urban governance in the future.

The role of urban forests and urban trees in creating vibrant and resilient cities is widely recognised. Urban forest governance as the strategic decision and rule making for urban tree resources is no longer solely the domain of governmental actors, but occurs rather often as network governance also involving businesses and civic society. However, governance theory usually does not consider the role of non-human agency, which can be considered problematic due to, for example, the important role of urban trees in place making. The purpose of this paper is to provide further insight into the importance of considering tree agency in governance.

Taking an environmental governance and actor network theory perspective, the paper presents a critical view of current urban forest governance, extending the perspective to include not only a wide range of human actors, but also trees as important non-human actors.

Urban forest governance has become more complex and involves a greater range of actors and actor networks. However, the agency of trees in urban forest governance is seldom well developed. Trees, in close association with local residents, create places, something which needs to be better recognised in governance. Case studies show that this type of non-reflexive agency of urban trees often has emerged in the case of acute threats to urban trees or woodlands. New approaches such as those of biophilic urbanism and biocultural diversity can assist with better integration of tree agency in governance.

Urban forest governance is an emerging field of research which has seldom addressed tree agency. Thus the perspective on urban forest governance is enriched, beyond the dominant post-neoliberal and anthropocentric perspective.

This chapter concentrates on metropolitan governance, the use of projects (or ‘projectification’) in public administration and the development of metropolitan forms of citizen participation. The analysis is based on a case study from the Helsinki Metropolitan Area – a multi-actor policy programme called the Urban Programme, which included a specific participatory project named Citizen Channel. According to the analysis, the Urban Programme was a way to create consensus and collaboration between the municipalities of the area, whereas the Citizen Channel project created a ‘toolbox’ for metropolitan citizen participation. However, the relation between programme- and project-based development and municipal administration, especially the implementation of the results of short-term projects in permanent administration proved difficult. From the perspective of metropolitan ruralities, four kinds of conclusions are emphasised: the complexity and conflictuality of the issue of metropolitan governance; the use of relatively similar programmes and projects as policy tools both in urban and rural contexts; the ‘metropolitan dimension of everyday life’ of the inhabitants and its relation to municipal administrative cultures as well as the birth and strengthening of new actors such as local NGOs in projects. The originality of this chapter is to combine the frameworks of metropolitan governance, projectification and the development of citizen participation in an empirical study and to reflect them to the ‘metropolitan ruralities’ research.

This study seeks to explore the powerful role(s) of institutionalised performance measurement systems or metrics in smart city governance in a politically and militarily sensitive developing country.

This study extends the application and contribution of a multi-level institutional framework to previous management accounting literature on the potential relationship between performance measurement and smart city governance. The value of utilising a multi-level framework is to broaden and deepen theoretical analyses about this relationship to include the effect of political pressure from the military regime at the macro level on the institutionalisation of a performance measurement system at the micro-organisational level. Taking the New Cairo city council smart electricity networks project (Egypt) as an interpretive qualitative single-case study, data collection methods included semi-structured interviews, direct observations and documentary readings.

Performance measurement systems or metrics, especially in politically and militarily sensitive smart cities, constitutes a process of cascading (macro-micro) institutionalisation that is closely linked to sustainable developments taking place in the wider arena of urban policies. Going a step further, accounting-based performance metrics, arising from political and military pressures towards public-private collaborations, contribute to smart city management and accountability (governance). Institutionalised measurement systems or performance metrics play a powerful accounting role(s) in shaping and reshaping political decisions and military actions in the city council.

Theoretically, this study goes beyond the cascading institutionalisation process by arguing for the powerful role(s) of institutionalised accounting and performance measurement systems in smart city decision-making and governance. Empirically, it enriches previous literature with a case study of a developing Arab Spring country, characterised by an emerging economy, political sensitivity and military engagement, rather than developed and more stable countries that have been thoroughly investigated. It is also among the first politically engaged accounting case studies to highlight public-private collaborations as a recent reform in public sector governance and accountability.

Conceptualizations of university governance have varied over time, with some scholars focused on the structure of stakeholder groups such as faculty, staff, and students in relation to how institutions make decisions, others focus on the competing spheres of political influence guiding institutional development, and most recently that higher education has adopted business management structures or academic capitalism. Each of these conceptualizations offered new insights into how universities make decisions and evolve. The interactions between the non-profit aspects of higher education institutions and their effects on the internal governance structures have been underdeveloped. In this chapter, the authors propose an urban governance approach to understanding how actors and their institutions make decisions.

In this chapter, the authors dissect these models and propose a shift in perspective described as academic municipalities. Prior models on university decision-making and its impact on institutional constituents all make certain sacrifices when attempting to conceptualize the complex organizational functions of the university. Birnbaum and Tierney in their arguments do not provide enough value to the structure imposed on higher education institutions by virtue of their non-profit status. The corporate concept does not account for the political ramifications to university functions that reach beyond corporate models. Academic capitalism explains the shift of the university to account for changes in the global marketplace but it does not explain the latent functions of the university, such as contributing to the public good, housing, libraries, public services, and other non-market-based activities. What is needed is an explanation that accounts for both market and political forces at play in the university.

This paper aims to promote urban–rural synergy in carbon reduction and achieve the dual carbon goal, reconstruct the low-carbon urban–rural spatial pattern and explore planning strategies for carbon mitigation in urban agglomerations.

The authors propose the idea of land governance zoning based on low-carbon scenario simulation, using the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) urban agglomeration as the empirical research area. Specifically, the authors analyze its spatiotemporal evolution characteristics of carbon balance over the past two decades and simulate the land use pattern under the scenario of low-carbon emission in 2030. Furthermore, the authors create spatial zoning rules combined with land use transition characteristics to classify the urban agglomeration into carbon sink restoration zone, carbon sink protection zone, carbon control development zone and carbon transition agriculture zone and put forward corresponding targeted governance principals.

The study findings classify the BTH urban agglomeration into carbon sink restoration zone, carbon sink protection zone, carbon control development zone and carbon transition agriculture zone, which account for 28.1%, 17.2%, 20.1% and 34.6% of the total area, respectively. The carbon sink restoration zone and carbon sink protection zone are mainly distributed in the northern and western parts and Bohai Rim region. The carbon transition agriculture zone and carbon control development zone are mainly distributed in the southeastern plain and Zhangjiakou.

The authors suggest restoring and rebuilding ecosystems mainly in the northwest and east parts to increase the number of carbon sinks and the stability of the ecosystem. Besides, measures should be taken to promote collaborative emission reduction work between cities and optimize industrial and energy structures within cities such as Beijing, Langfang, Tianjin and Baoding. Furthermore, the authors recommend promoting sustainable intensification of agriculture and carefully balance between both economic development and ecological protection in Zhangjiakou and plain area.

The authors propose a zoning method based on the optimization of land use towards low-carbon development by combining “top-down” and “bottom-up” strategies and provide targeted governance suggestions for each region. This study provides policy implications to implement the regional low-carbon economic transition under the “double carbon” target in urban agglomerations in China.

The chapter focuses on rural-urban food links in the context of governance. We seek to understand a rural-urban innovator mechanism is emerging through the food system and the renewed question of proximity and relative autonomy in the alimentary supply of this type of space and local society. We present case studies from Paris and Budapest metropolitan rural areas exploring institutional and private actors of governance, their power networks, food and related cultural components of rural-urban relations, the function of food links and the way in which they are governed. We have found several differences in governance methods between the Paris and Budapest metropolitan ruralities. The areas surrounding Paris are characterised by multi-level governance methods. However, an isolated form of rural governance of the rural-urban local food link can be identified in Budapest’s rural areas. Understanding the complex and dynamic interaction of food links and related activities within metropolitan areas offers the possibility of a far greater understanding of the complex and multiple links between sustainability, renewal of social interaction and cohesion.

The growing turbulence of the external environment has progressively led to the necessity by organizations of exploiting new opportunities provided by data-driven approaches for supporting the even more complex decision-making processes. The new digital environment has led to the development and adoption of innovative approaches; also in the urban context which has always been characterized by different, interconnected, and dynamic dimensions. Urban governance models have been enhanced by smart technologies, which act as enablers of advanced services and foster connections between citizens, public and private organizations, and decision-makers. In this context, the objective of this chapter is to examine the role of data-driven approaches in the urban context during the chaotic and high variable circumstances related to the diffusion of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19). Thanks to the adoption of the co-evolutionary perspective, a cycle in urban governance decision-making approach based on digital technologies is depicted and its contribution for managing the ongoing Covid-19 is traced. The results of the analysis highlight how the data-driven approach supports urban decision-making process and shed light on the co-evolutionary perspective as heuristic device to map the interactions settled in the networks between local governments, data-driven technologies, and citizens. In this sense, this chapter offers interesting insights, potentially capable of generating useful implications for both researchers and professionals in the public sector.

The chapter summarises issues associated with the effectiveness of urban policy interventions. In particular it emphasises the importance of sites, scales and spaces of state activity and the implications for the current and future nature of regeneration governance, policy and practice.

The chapter draws upon strategic-relational state theory.

With reference to the United Kingdom (UK), there are significant changes taking place that are affecting the site, scale and nature of urban regeneration. However, there is considerable uncertainty over the extent to which discrepancies in performance between areas will be addressed.

Further research will be required on the consequences for regeneration of the rescaling of state power, the changing institutions of the state and the emergence of new political forces and strategies.

The chapter provides a theoretical and empirical framework to understand both the current and future nature of urban regeneration governance in the UK and beyond.

The purpose of this study is to understand through the qualitative assessment, how the current strategy plans are geared toward reducing urban flood risks and achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 11 and 13.

The Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR) plays a major role in Thailand’s economic development. Thus, when the 2011 Thailand flood disaster occurred, BMR suffered major economic and social losses, which impacted the rest of the country. This mega disaster prompted policymakers, the academe and other relevant stakeholders to reevaluate and amend the current urban flood risk reduction measures and governance. The present study attempts to evaluate and compare the post-2011 Thailand flood disaster strategy and master plans, policies and reports that directly and indirectly reduce urban flood risks in the provinces of BMR. Basing on SDGs 11 and 13 targets that impact urban flood risk and resilience, a set of criteria was developed to screen, score and asses the selected documents. A screening process of three levels are conducted to limit the documents to be reviewed, and subsequent content analysis for scoring also has been done.

The projected results indicate the need for improved and increased number of localized strategic plans and policies, which are more comprehensive and integrated as risk governance documents.

Furthermore, it is projected that there is need to integrate measures to increase adaptive capacity for BMR.

This study is original, and methodology can be replicated for other urban areas for flood risks and resilience assessment.