Can small cities from developing countries be smart cities? The case of argentinean smart cities

ALDERETE MARÍA VERÓNICA

Conferencia; BALAS Conference; 2022

The objective of this paper is to deepen the analysis of smart cities in less developed countries; in particular in Argentina. Based on Alderete (2021) index of smart cities (ICI) for the Argentinean capital cities, we conduct a k means cluster analysis to distinguish among smart cities. As a result, three groups of cities were obtained in terms of economic resources and population size mainly: ?prosperous, large and smart cities?, ?potentially smart, small and poor cities? and ?smart, medium size and poor cities?. From cluster analysis, the third best positioned cities (CABA, Córdoba and Bahia Blanca) in the ICI ranking belong to different clusters. For instance, CABA, which is the second smartest city in Argentina, has the largest budget or economic resources and it is also de biggest city in the country in terms of inhabitants. On the other side, Bahía Blanca which is the smartest city on ICI, it is a small and poor city. International smart cities indexes as Cities in Motion Index (CIMI) do not consider this last type of cities, which are usually non-global cities, even though they are smart.