Bozkurt, Rossmann, Pervez and Ramzan address smart cities from the standpoint of governance rather than technological capability. The iconic idea is that urban data potential remains structurally underused when municipalities lack clear roles, standards, access rules and cross-departmental coordination. The theoretical contribution is to treat smart city data governance as a specifically urban problem, irreducible to enterprise data management because cities operate through polycentric authority, public accountability, heterogeneous systems and contested values. Methodologically, the study derives actionable requirements from expert interviews with representatives of twenty-seven European cities and benchmarks existing governance models against those requirements. Its bridge to the wider field is the movement from smart urbanism to institutional design: data becomes not simply a resource, but a governed public infrastructure whose reliability, interoperability, security and legitimacy depend on organisational culture, regulatory clarity and civic purpose.
URBANISM MEETS ART