Do Small Towns Have Big Smart City Dreams?

Although many angles of the smart cities’ movement have been well-studied by academia, a gap remains in our understanding of how municipal policymakers understand and apply the concept in their localized contexts—particularly how community size affects smart city ambitions. In 2017, Infrastructure Canada announced its Smart City Challenge (SCC), asked communities across Canada—municipalities, local or regional governments, and Indigenous communities—to design creative and innovative solutions to address any societal problem using any data and connected technology solution. The application process was a de facto survey that generated a unique, publicly available dataset from the 199 applicant communities, big and small alike. We find that larger communities submit more ambitious proposals to use latest technologies to address social equity and inclusion concerns through expanded operations, whereas smaller, more rural municipalities focus more on basic infrastructure and services. Though there is overlap, their dreams differ.