Debunking common misconceptions about smart cities

Smart Cities have been the object intense scrutiny by both practitioners and scholars, as the number and size of Smart city initiatives in urban areas around the world is increasing. Notwithstanding the significant amount of work around this concept, there are still however many open issues and questions. Is the SC model living up to our great expectations for it? Are cities that have invested in SC policies and programmes experiencing relatively higher positive effects? In order to provide an answer to these questions, we have to be clear about what a SC actually is, what it can achieve and its limits. Unfortunately, misconceptions around this concept abound, among practitioners and researchers alike. My aim with the present paper is to clear some of these misconceptions, lay down what serious research allows us to say about the SC model and what we still have to explore to answer the questions above. Paper submitted to the Springer Edition-Contribution to Economics.