SMART CITIES IN PRACTICE: IOT-ENABLED CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT AND LOCAL SERVICE DELIVERY

Abstract

The development of smart cities also marks a paradigm change in the governance of cities with the Internet of Things (IoT) was acting as a booster to the participation of citizens and better services delivery. This paper seeks to interrogate how IoT-based infrastructures change the way local governments operate by making decision-making participatory, city operations efficient and bolster citizen trust. The study is based on the multi-case comparative design that takes its qualitative data at the city level in various geographical regions. The evidence base consists of interviews with local stakeholders on municipal level, interpretation of IoT platforms, and policy and technical documentation. The results show that platforms enabled by IoT enable real-time communication between rulers and the ruled, decreased response-time in service-delivery, and promoted transparency by means of data-driven governance. In addition, the uses of IoT enable citizens to co-design solutions in the fields of waste and transportation, mobility and energy efficiency, in tandem with the general principles of sustainable smart governance. Technical issues like the protection of privacy, compatibility of IoT standards, and scalability of solutions have been detected, and the federated data frameworks and lightweight protocols should be considered as an integration. It is concluded that the idea of citizen participation through IoT contributes to a better-performing city not only in terms of city responsiveness but also supports the concepts of Industry 5.0, such as the illusion of an urban ecosystem that is human-centric, collaborative, resilient in nature. In four cities, citizen reports rose 106143% waste collectors costs declined 25%, and citizen trust levels rose 32 percentage points (4678%), showing measurable improvement in governance through IoT enabled citizen participation.