Challenges for coonnecting citizens and smart cities: ICT, e-governance and blockchain

The way citizens interact with cities affects overall life quality. Their participation in social decisions is of paramount importance for helping on public decisions that affect governance, regulation and education. This interaction has the potential of being boosted within the scope of smart and digital cities, especially by recent advances in blockchain technology. This work introduces insights about how smart cities’ concepts and innovative technologies can help society to face daily challenges for improving citizens’ awareness. Digital technologies are able to drive social and economic development by employing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to promote innovation. In this context, e-governance, in conjunction with disruptive concepts such as blockchain, is showing up as a fundamental tool for a decentralized democracy. This study reviews, discusses, raises open points and presents suggestions towards an efficient, transparent and sustainable use of technology, applied to future cities.Thays A. Oliveira would like to thank the partnership with NeoResearch Community and support of Neo Foundation. Miquel Oliver was supported by the Spanish Government under projects TEC2016-79510-P (Proyectos Excelencia 2016); Miquel Oliver and Helena Ramalhinho were also supported by the 2017-SGR-1739 grant