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1. How State Mandates Moderate the Utility Ownership and Conservation Relationship in Municipal Water Governance: Evidence From U.S. Water Reuse Policies

   https://doi.org/10.1177/10780874251412787  

   Barnes, Jesse L; Koebele, Elizabeth A (January 2026, Urban Affairs Review)

   Municipalities are at the frontline of addressing water governance challenges, but local political pressures can stymie municipal conservation action. Some governance scholarship emphasizes the role of state-level policies in spurring municipal sustainability efforts, while other work argues local institutional arrangements—including municipal water utility ownership status—are drivers of local action. Guided by multilevel governance and institutional reform literature, we argue that state and local factors interactively drive municipal conservation policy adoption, using the case of water reuse policy. Statistical analysis of municipality survey data and state-level conservation regulations indicates that in states without conservation mandates, non-utility-owning municipalities are less likely to adopt water reuse measures compared to municipalities that own their utility. However, this negative local relationship decreases as state mandate stringency increases. These findings highlight the influence of both local and vertical institutional factors in municipal sustainability-related policy decisions and offer insights for future urban sustainability scholarship. 

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2. Smart Cities and the Challenges of Cross Domain Risk Management: Considering Interdependencies Between ICT-Security and Natural Hazards Disruptions

   https://doi.org/10.2478/jec-2019-0026  

   Uwe, Busbach-Richard; Gerber, Brian J. (December 2019, Economics and Culture)

   Abstract Research purpose. Smart City technologies offer great promise for a higher quality of life, including improved public services, in an era of rapid and intense global urbanization. The use of intelligent or smart information and communication technologies to produce more efficient systems of services in those urban areas, captured under the broad rubric of “smart cities,” also create new vectors of risk and vulnerability. The aim of this article is to raise consideration of an integrated cross-domain approach for risk reduction based on the risks smart cities are exposed to, on the one hand, from natural disasters and, on the other, from cyber-attacks. Design / Methodology / Approach. This contribution describes and explains the risk profile for which smart cities are exposed to both natural disasters and cyber-attacks. The vulnerability of smart city technologies to natural hazards and cyber-attacks will first be summarized briefly from each domain, outlining those respective domain characteristics. Subsequently, methods and approaches for risk reduction in the areas of natural hazards and ICT security will be examined in order to create the basis for an integrated cross-domain approach to risk reduction. Differences are also clearly identified if an adaptation of a risk reduction pattern appears unsuitable. Finally, the results are summarized into an initial, preliminary integrated cross-domain approach to risk reduction. Findings. Risk management in the two domains of ICT security and natural hazards is basically similar. Both domains use a multilayer approach in risk reduction, both have reasonably well-defined regimes and established risk management protocols. At the same time, both domains share a policymaking and policy implementation challenge of the difficulty of appropriately forecasting future risk and making corresponding resource commitments to address future risk. Despite similarities, different concepts like the CIA Triad, community resilience, absorption capacity and so on exist too. Future research of these concepts could lead to improve risk management. Originality / Value / Practical implications. Cyber-attacks on the ICT infrastructure of smart cities are a major vulnerability – but relatively little systematic evaluation exists on the topic. Likewise, ICT infrastructure is vulnerable to natural disasters too – and the risk of more severe natural disasters in the context of a global trend toward massive cities is increasing dramatically. Explicit consideration of the issues associated with cross-domain integration of reduction of interdependent risk is a necessary step in ensuring smart city technologies also serve to promote longer-term community sustainability and resilience. 

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3. Model Policy: Privacy Impact Assessment

   Finch, Kelsey; Mattmiller, Michael (November 2020, G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance)

   null (Ed.)

   The Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) co-led a task force of experts to develop a Model Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) Policy for governments and communities that are considering sharing personal data collected from “smart city” solutions. This Model PIA Policy was developed as part of the G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance on Technology Governance, a partnership of leading international organizations and city networks working to source tried-and-tested policy approaches to govern the use of smart city technologies. Its institutional partners represent more than 200,000 cities and local governments, leading companies, startups, research institutions, and civil society communities. 

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4. Global Retail Capital and Urban Futures: Feminist Postcolonial Perspectives.

   Faria, C. and (October 2020, Geography compass)

   Critical scholarship on urban development and displacement has a long history in geography. Yet one emergent driver remains strikingly understudied and poorly understood: global retail capital. In constructive tension with Marxist urban geographies of displacement, antiracist, feminist, postcolonial, and queer scholarship disrupts Anglo Euro-American and capitalo-centric intellectual modes of thought. It pushes for an intersectional understanding of capitalism, including its work driving urban displacement, as always co-produced through gender, racial, heteronormative, nationalist and other power-geometries. This essay reviews and connects these literatures, using feminist postcolonial work to theorize from the processes, drivers, impacts of and scholarship around global retail capital emerging in urban East Africa. With this we assert that feminist postcolonial interventions, engaging but other-than Marxist norms, and grounded in African continental critical feminist work, offers more complex and historicized understandings of those urban transformations, displacements and resistances driven by global retail capital. feminist postcolonial geography helps us imagine other urban futures, with and beyond Africa, that are critical of colonial past-presents; free of the modernizing imperatives of normative urban planning; and that recognize the work and insights, intellectual and material, of African women. 

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5. Partnering with Non-State Actors to Govern Nexus Problems and Promote Climate Action in Smart Cities and Regions

   https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4090922  

   Johnson, Walter G.; Bowman, Diana Megan (April 2022, SSRN Electronic Journal)

   While uncertainty remains about what a smart city “is,” significant advances have been made in the technologies and applications that will underpin their roll out. In this paper, we argue that a smart city or region is not truly “smart” unless it places sustainability and quality of life at the center of the planning, governance, and innovation processes. The public sector lacks the resources to operate at this nexus alone, yet legitimacy challenges must be overcome to effectively draw on the capacities of non-state actors. By focusing on the Greater Phoenix Smart Region Consortium (The Connective), established in March 2019, we illustrate the role non-state actors play within the smart cities/regions space and highlight new types of partnerships to address climate change as part of their smart city vision. The regional and multi-stakeholder, participatory approach of The Connective offers lessons for advancing nexus governance in other jurisdictions. 

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