Presenting the Key Driving Forces for the Future of Smart City Governance (Case study: Rasht city)

The continuous development of urban population and their growing needs, widespread urbanization in the developing countries, demographic changes, environmental challenges, economic problems, urban transportation problems, advances in information and communication technology, and bureaucracy have made the smart city formulation and smart city governance necessary. Regarding the city of Rasht, it can be said that this city has not been able to imagine the future of development and make progress in the field of smart urban governance. The present study aimed to investigate the key driving forces of smart governance with a futures research approach. The study was applied and descriptive-analytical and exploratory in terms of method. Data collection is documentary and survey based on Delphi technique. The statistical population included all the urban specialists in Rasht. From which 45 people were selected as the sample using Rasco's rules through snowball sampling method. 8 components and 20 driving forces regarding smart urban governance were compiled and the questionnaire of interaction effects matrix (weight 0 to 3) was provided to the specialists. Finally, key driving forces were extracted using MicMac software. The results of the analysis indicated that the education of citizenship and raising the awareness, citizen participation and commitment of officials are among the first three driving forces of smart city governance in Rasht.