The data-technology nexus in South African secondary cities: The challenges to smart governance

This article focuses on two critical and intersecting issues on the global urban agenda: the growing importance of secondary cities in urban development policies, and the proliferation of digital technologies and data to support smart urban governance. This article contends that smart governance is a critical factor in urban technological transformation processes. Smart governance aims at improving urban management through enhanced data-informed decision-making and the commensurate inclusion and participation of civic actors in this process. Drawing on interviews with administrators in three South African secondary cities, the analysis highlights the complex challenges that limit the effective inculcation of smart governance practices in these cities. It focuses specifically on the strategic, organisational and political challenges of municipal administrations, and the obstacles to effective interaction between key actors in developing an effective municipal data-technology ecosystem. In doing so, this article contributes new insights into enhanced governance practices in smartening secondary cities; it initiates a critical inquiry on the uneven ways these small, less resourced and socio-economically contentious cities negotiate complex social, administrative and political dynamics in incipient processes of urban smartening. 本文重点讨论全球城市议程上两个关键且交叉的问题：二线城市在城市发展政策中占据日益重要的地位，支持智慧城市治理的数字技术和数据出现激增。本文认为，智慧治理是城市技术型转型进程中的一个关键因素。智慧治理旨在通过加强基于数据的周密决策以及让公民事务行动者以相称的方式参与决策过程来改善城市管理。根据对南非三座二线城市行政人员的访谈，本文展开分析，强调了限制在这些城市有效贯彻智慧治理做法的复杂难题。文章侧重分析市政当局面临的战略、组织和政治难题，以及关键行动者在建设高效的城市数据技术生态系统方面开展有效互动所面临的障碍。由此，本文提供了关于二线城市智慧化进程中加强型治理实践的新见解；文章也率先开启了一项批判式审视，审视这些资源较少、社会经济争议较多的小城市在城市智慧化进程初期调解复杂的社会、行政和政治机制的不均衡方式。