A New Era for Urban Actors

Introduction

Especially after the Second World War, city administrations started to gain importance with the rapid increase of urbanization. As in many countries and Turkey, after the 1950s, considerable rural-urban migration began, and as a result, the urban population started to increase rapidly (Ozgul, 2020). The local government's role has gained importance with the concentration of capital in certain cities and the increasing population (Ozgul, 2020). As in many countries, local management techniques have also varied according to technological change in Turkey. The reflection of the rapid transformation in innovation and communication technologies on the urban environment needs time. At the same time, how it will be reflected is still being discussed today. In this case, urban technologies and city administrations appear as essential issues that should be evaluated together. Smart governance and smart cities are gaining importance with the growing attention on technology in the built environment (Barns, 2018; Cowley & Caprotti, 2019). The smart city's primary focus is on the role of ICT infrastructure (Kitchin, 2014; Kitchin et al., 2015). However, much research has also been conducted on human capital/education, social and relational capital, and environmental interest as essential drivers of urban growth (Caragliu, Bo & Nijkamp, 2011). However, smart cities are not always undoubtedly taken into account. Confusion about different perspectives, variance in understanding its nature, and transformation of governmental structures are critical topics in smart cities. Smart city efforts, dominated by visions of technology-enabled urban revitalization, economic development, community engagement, and enhanced citizen well-being, instead functioned as a way for private and corporate interests to become more involved in urban governance and development processes at the highest level (Shelton & Lodato, 2019). However, problems and developments such as combating and adapting to the climate crisis, digital transformation, and even the global pandemic have become issues affecting urban planning and local governments. While it is indispensable for countries to take a global step, the adoption and implementation of these steps by local governments have revealed their power in the process (Yang, 2021). Even well-meaning smart city efforts are incredibly resource-intensive, financially and humanly resource-intensive, distracting attention from the less salient but essential and pressing issues facing cities (Shelton & Lodato, 2019).

Within the context of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the New Urban Agenda, innovation laboratories and urban living labs (ULLs) have gained tremendous significance, resulting in many rapid foundations in several countries, including Turkey (UN-Habitat, 2016). A European Network of Living Labs aims to contribute a constantly growing set of networked services to promote innovation for all actors in practice and has been developed to join forces, coordinate activities, and share learning experiences (Bergvall-Kåreborn & Ståhlbröst, 2009; Timmeren & Keyson, 2017). On the other hand, the most recurrent set of critiques unveils the highly modernist planning approach of smart city discourse that conceptualizes the city as a machine that can monitor in real-time and thus controlled at a distance (Kitchin et al., 2015). However, the network's definition is “an open innovation environment in real-life settings in which user-driven innovation” is the co-creation process for new services, products, and societal infrastructures. Thus, ULLs encompass societal and technological dimensions in a business-citizen-government-academia partnership (Bergvall-Kåreborn & Ståhlbröst, 2009). In this respect, ULLs can be considered a new methodology for handling global issues.