The Smart Sustainable City of Stavanger

Smart city initiatives have in many ways become an answer for solving societal issues in an urban context. But lately, a debate has arisen concerning to what degree the smart city, with its technological focus, facilitates sustainable cities and societies. This study investigates to what extent smart city initiatives and climate and environment initiatives can co-exist and mutually solve climate and environmental challenges in cities. The study applies an abductive research strategy to qualitative data produced from a case study of Stavanger municipality in Norway. It draws on document analysis and semi-structured interviews with actors from the public and private sector related to the smart city and climate and environment commitment in Stavanger. The findings from this research will be discussed up against relevant theoretical frameworks. Governmental inter-organizational information integration (GIII) will be applied to the discussion to evaluate communication, transparency, collaboration, and coordination in the municipality organization. Additionally, the discussion will use regional industrial path development (RIPD) to map out possibilities for sustainable industry development in the Stavanger region. The research has shown that the smart city and the climate and environment commitments in Stavanger municipality fail to coordinate their work. However, they share several of the same focus areas with their related challenges. These commitments show different sets of values and approaches towards climate and environmental challenges. These differences result in misconceptions and cast a shadow over possible collaborations. The Stavanger region finds itself struggling from solid dependency on the declining oil and gas industry concerning sustainable business development. But the smart city commitment can facilitate the growth of new, green industries in the region, given that local policies facilitate it