Analysis of the European and Brazilian Rankings of Smart Cities: a case study of São José dos Campos and Toulouse

Abstract

The concept of "smart city" has become more present in academic literature and public policy in recent years, due in large part to the growing importance of cities in the global context. For the first time in history, most of the global population lives in cities. Although they represent only 2% of the world's surface, urban areas consume more than 70% of the world's total resources. As a result of rapid population growth, cities are facing challenges that lead them to seek innovative approaches to management and organization. City managers need indicators to measure performance in providing services and improving the quality of life for the population, assessing the development of local public policies and benchmarking with other cities. It should be noted that to meet this need there was an expressive appearance of city rankings, but many of them focus only on the final result and do not present a clear methodology. In addition, the availability of open, standardized and up-to-date city data is a challenge. The objective of this article is to present a comparative analysis between two rankings of smart cities: the European ranking of European Smart Cities and the Brazilian ranking Connected Smart Cities. An exploratory study was carried out with bibliographical research on the theoretical concepts of intelligent cities, rankings and measures of city performance. A case study in the cities of São José dos Campos (Brazil) and Toulouse (France) was also carried out. The present study found that the analyzed rankings show convergences in most of their indicators. The European ranking has more academic characteristics and provides a more in-depth analysis of the data of the cities, and the choice of indicators for both rankings reflects the current situation of each region analyzed with regard to its development.