Digital justice in the smart city: Developing a framework for participatory digitalisation strategies at the local level

An integrated consideration of digital justice in smart cities is relatively new to most discussions on the subject, and an applicable research framework for the assessment and management of digital justice in the smart city is still lacking. This paper proposes a framework for an action-oriented approach to analyse and strategically reduce digital injustices in smart cities. There are five requirements for creating digital justice: the availability of a strategy with sufficiently allocated resources, the availability of digital infrastructures and technologies, the existence of programmes for improving digital competencies and offerings for citizen participation and finally the consideration of global sustainability issues of digital justice. For nine different case studies, we assess the coverage, integration and impact of these features. The analysis confirms that the proposed methodological framework can record and evaluate strategies that aim at ensuring digital justice in smart cities.