The institutionalisation of the smart city: public entrepreneurs, gaps and the circulation of models.

Project overview

PhD project funded by KPMG.

The thesis was defended on 28 November 2025 under the title: The institutionalisation of the smart city: public entrepreneurs, interstices and the circulation of models.

This thesis analyses how the ‘smart city’ is becoming institutionalised within French local authorities across three case studies: La Rochelle, Paris-Saclay and the Communauté de Communes du Pays Haut Val d’Alzette. It examines the emergence of a new field of territorialised public action driven by the combined effect of national incentive frameworks and local innovation dynamics. Drawing on the concept of the local public entrepreneur, the notion of interstices and the idea of the circulation of models, the study demonstrates that the institutionalisation of the smart city results from a process of translation and adaptation. It emerges that local officials, acting as genuine local public entrepreneurs, play a pivotal role. They exploit institutional interstices to experiment locally with socio-technical systems (urban data platforms, digital services) whilst relying on national instruments (calls for projects, labels) to legitimise and structure their initiatives. The thesis thus sheds new light on the mechanisms through which the smart city is gradually taking shape in local public policy, highlighting the importance of mutual learning between regions, multi-level funding and the co-production of shared frameworks between public and private actors.