Stakeholders engagement in Smart Sustainable Cities: a proposed model

Transforming cities into Smart Sustainable cities (SSCs) is rapidly getting global attention as a desired goal for future urban development. Cities are dynamic living organisms that are continuously changing and evolving over time aiming to enhance their economic, social, environmental, and physical structures. At the heart of these structures there are the stakeholders that are treated as end users of city systems and services. These systems are more likely to be affected, directly on indirectly, by a SSC transformation process. Stakeholders, therefore, have a great role in SSC projects. Some may be able to provide financial supports to a project. Others may provide services at different city levels. Stakeholders feedbacks on the delivered solutions can also help in enhancing a SSC transformation process outputs and impacts. Accordingly, various studies in the literature emphasized the necessity of engaging different types of stakeholders in a SSC project. However; none of them provided a coherent, systematic model to realize this engagement process, which sheds light on a gap in knowledge. This research paper aims at closing this gap by proposing a novel model for stakeholders' engagement in SSC projects. The model is introduced based on “Stakeholder Theory” and other related studies in the literature. It captures the main stages to follow to ensure an effective and efficient engagement process, providing a systematic, holistic guidelines needed for this purpose. The model could be fully or partially adopted by different city planners and decision makers, helping them in facilitating the involvement of stakeholders in a process of transforming their cities into smart and sustainable ones.