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Paper short abstract

This study answers the research question: to what extent, and how, do smart city projects lead to regional development in Japan? It presents a statistical analysis of smart city funding distribution and a qualitative analysis of two case studies within the framework of public service ecosystem.

Paper long abstract

In the 5th Science, Technology and Innovation Basic Plan (2016), the Japanese national government launched the idea of Society 5.0 and designated the smart city as a space for its realization. In the past 10 years, implementation of smart city has progressed by taking advantage of regional vitalization schemes. Here lies the anticipation that smart city projects will result in regional vitalization. Thus far, however, existing studies do not sufficiently address the causal relationship between smart city projects and regional vitalization. Against this background, this study asks the following research question: to what extent, and if so how, do smart city projects contribute to regional vitalization? To address the first question, this study presents renewed analysis results on the regional distribution of smart city funding between 2017 and 2026, using the framework of Urban Employment Areas (Kaneoka and Tokuoka 2005). The results reveal a strong urban bias in the distribution of funding. To answer the second question, two prominent cases of rural smart cities in Okayama Prefecture are selected for indepth study. In order to make meaningful sense of local engagements, the idea of a service ecosystem is adopted. An emerging strand of public service literature points out that the New Public Management framework cannot explain governance in practice at the local level, as it fails to take citizen participation seriously. Instead, it recommends adopting public service logic, which considers governance as the outcome of co-creation among public, private, and civil actors. From this theoretical perspective, regional engagement develops as a web of service-for-service exchange among cross-sectoral actors, and regional vitalization occurs as the result of value co-creation among these actors. Final discussion will situate the observed local engagements back into the context of regional inequality. The conclusion will point out the dual structure of changing and unchanging relationship among local, prefectural, and national governments.