INTRODUCTION: What happens when “smart cities” move beyond sensors, data dashboards, and technological ambition—and into the messy realities of governance, inequality, law, and citizen power? Smart Cities to Smart Societies: Moving Beyond Technology reframes the global smart city debate through a comparative public policy lens, asking not what technologies can do, but what societies need.

Drawing on cases and perspectives from both the Global North and South, the book examines how different political systems, institutional capacities, and cultural contexts shape the adoption, governance, and consequences of smart urban transitions. It challenges the idea of a universal smart city model, showing instead how policies travel unevenly, are adapted locally, and sometimes fail when detached from social realities.

By bringing together insights on citizen participation, governance accountability, and legal frameworks, the volume positions smart cities as a comparative policy experiment—one where outcomes depend less on technology and more on how states, markets, and communities negotiate power, knowledge, and public value.