Ensuring Engagement of Stakeholders in Smart City Projects: Case Study in Sri Lanka

Escalating challenges in modern cities along with rapid urbanization, which emphasize the requirement to manage cities, means that sustainable urban development is necessary, and smart cities have been identified as an ideological solution to achieve this. In Sri Lanka, the smart city concept has had a significant influence on city development projects and one smart city development project has already started. Therefore, due to the novelty of the concept, the development of strategic plans when delivering smart cities is beneficial. In addition, since a smart city is a multistakeholder ecosystem, ensuring the effective engagement of the stakeholders is a key success factor when developing smart city projects and therefore was selected as the main research focus. Using the explanatory sequential mixed research approach, a comprehensive literature review, a desktop, and case study will be conducted to investigate the stakeholders and factors that ensure their engagement in smart city projects. The research findings could be utilized to ensure the effective engagement of the stakeholders in smart city projects, which could enable the application of the smart concept during the development of cities in Sri Lanka.