A public management perspective on smart cities: ‘Urban auditing’ for management, governance and accountability

Our exploration of three bodies of literature – public management, accounting and urban governance – shows that three views on these new technological practices of ‘urban auditing’ are present in the literature: a technocratic, a critical and an emergent view. We use these three views to introduce the six papers in this special issue. We conclude with the observation that the public management perspective is important for understanding smart city dynamics: we should not present our insights only in our own community, but should also connect to the interdisciplinary debate on smart cities.