ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the problem-solving capacity of smart city solutions. It shows that the impact of smart city applications depends primarily on their ontology, and secondarily on smart technology, programming features, and code. The chapter examines the relationships between technology, innovation and ontology in number of smart city applications and platforms and discusses how we can improve their effectiveness by expert and user-driven design. It suggests that individual applications should be orchestrated into wider systems with respect to features of city ecosystems, neighbourhoods, districts, and sectors of activity. Within smart city environments, the ‘platform logic’ prevails in business models, which is to create products and services that can serve as a basis for other products and services. The physical space of cities, which is represented by maps and virtual city portrayals, has a rather marginal position into the functionality of the applications examined.
