The rising popularity of smart city technology and digital government has prompted many national governments to attempt to spur municipal governments to adopt new tools aimed at digitalization, modernization, and innovation in a movement collectively known as “smart cities.” With few tools available to mandate that municipalities pursue a smart city approach, several national governments have turned to incentive-based competitions, launching state-led contests for their cities to upgrade their capabilities and offering millions of dollars in funding and organizational resources to incentivize communities to participate. Even for cities that do not win, these contests have created opportunities to critically assess their smart city aspirations and revisit long-term planning. Despite the intertwined histories of the smart city concept and urban competitions, limited research exists on the impact and influence of smart city competitions on city processes, plans, and operations. We ask the question “Is the competition model a good method to advance technological adoption in cities?”

This paper addresses this gap by exploring in depth four different government-led smart city challenges – one each in the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union, and Canada. By examining the program goals, competition mechanics, and publicized outcomes of each, then evaluating and comparing them through an urban change framework, this paper identifies the challenges inherent in a nationally driven, centralized approach to competition funding of municipal programs. It finds that these competitions were very effective at realizing the desired learning outcomes at the individual, organizational, and city levels: they helped generate new ways of thinking about technological solutions, and they supported the building of new relationships to address urban challenges for winners and non-winners alike. However, in terms of institutional and system change outcomes, the results of these competitions were much more limited. They were often most impactful for the city winners who were able to realize projects, and for national governments piloting a novel funding-by-competition model. We conclude by making policy recommendations on how to improve the implementation of this new model for the future.