Approaches to the development of the digital city concept: the role of the population in governance

Due to the growing population of cities around the world and in Russia, urban infrastructures are developing, new technologies are emerging or existing ones are being modernized to improve the quality of life of the population. The national program “Digital economy” has been developed and adopted for implementation, which is a large group of Federal projects aimed at fulfilling pre-designed tasks, namely, making the Internet accessible to all, improving the efficiency of the main sectors of the economy, training personnel to work in the digital environment, including by means of increasing the share of investments in the development of the digital economy in the country’s GDP. Numerous “smart city” or “digital city” concepts and related national programs included in Federal projects that have appeared relatively recently are also aimed at solving these problems. The need to systematize the developed concepts of “digital city”, assessment of the possibility of adapting such a project to the conditions of the Russian urban environment, the possibility of involving the population in making managerial decisions to form a more rational development strategy was the purpose of this study. In addition to the systems approach, the authors used a process approach, methods of comparative analysis, surveys and questionnaires of the population to assess key areas of development. The results of the work include the analysis of the “smart city” concepts adopted as the basis for the development of modern cities in Europe and the United States, several Russian concepts, the development of a model of the information portal of the city as a prototype of the future project on the example of Novosibirsk and classification of methods, tools and information technologies intended, necessary and adaptable for its implementation with a description of the characteristics and functions performed. The concept of the “smart city” does not have a single implementation method for all cities, and there are many implementation approaches. But the general understanding is that the main factor in development is human capital, which must be used most efficiently in urban management.