Smart cities as an urban challenge for the African leader

Abstract

Since the 90’s, the concept of smart cities as well as the integration of information and communication technologies started to blend. Nowadays, growing urbanization has begun to significantly influence the quality of life in the city. This had led to adopt the concept of smart cities in different countries around the word. Morocco as a leader of Africa in this field has also made efforts and adopted this concept. This study gives an overview of the concept of smart cities all over the word and presents a comparative case study between three different smart city models. The top-down presented by Malaysia, the bottom-up as in the European smart city leader Spain and the emerging national strategy of Morocco. By comparing different models, this paper aims to analyse how different governance structures, national priorities and the level of digital maturity can influence the smart city implementation. It presents a new lens for understanding smart city development. We can say that a single model cannot be suitable for all cities and countries and each country has its specifics challenges as it navigates into the transition to smarter urban models. The study presents at the end some solutions to help morocco move forwards with this concept.