EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - ICT, the City and Society

ICT, the City and Society

Introduction

How do urban decision-makers perceive the opportunities of ICT policy and the relevance of such policies for their city? To which extent are urban authorities willing to invest in and adopt a dedicated ICT policy?

Description

The growing importance of Information and Communication Technologies, ICT, prompts the need to consider ICT more explicitly in urban policies. Much attention has been given to the expected social benefits from deploying ICT in different fields. It has the potential to mitigate various current or emerging urban problems. The expected benefits from ICT encourage urban authorities to formulate proper public ICT policies.

Conclusions

The ICT policies profiles operationalises the concept of the decision-maker's perceptions.

Goals of ICT policies that are relevant to the decision-maker:

economic development of the city;
improvement of municipality citizens relationships;
networking with other cities.

Relevant tools to employ ICT policies:

this variable represents the degree of awareness and knowledge of relevant ICT measures.

Municipality in the ICT area:

how much influence the municipality has with regard to the application of ICT in the city;
the agreement with the statement that private sector decisions and activities are not affected by municipal ICT activities.

Five different clusters of ICT policies characterising five approaches to assess the relevance of ICT for urban policies:

it allows the actors to develop a systematic typological analysis of imaginable cities based on the perceptions among urban actors.

Each decision-maker can now be identified by his type of city perception, his opinion about ICT, and the corresponding ICT-related policy type.

Contact info

Tinbergen Intitute
Cohen, G.

Publication date

05/10/2004

Links

Tinbergen Institute

ICT, the City and Society (PDF, Eng, 150 KB)

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Economy knowledge & employment

Keywords

Digital services