Smart City: Social Entrepreneurship and Community Engagement in a Rural Regional City

Bartlett L¹*

1. Australasian Institute for Social Entrepreneurship, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

The proposed presentation will explore the concept and role of social entrepreneurship (SE) in the social and economic development of a rural regional city. Using a case study of the innovative Smart City Project sponsored by the Queensland State Government for approximately $15 million, the presentation will first outline the project’s conceptual framework represented in the intersecting relationships among the three ‘drivers’ of business, education and training, and culture (the Arts), all informed and supported by the idea of information and communications technology. How this framework was applied in specific community business and educational settings for the development of an ‘enterprise knowledge community’ will be reviewed.

Discussion will then focus on how the three principal elements of SE (an enterprise orientation, social goals, and social ownership and participation) within the many subprojects of the Smart City initiative, contributed (or failed to contribute) to the effective engagement of various community members and organizations in both the private and public sector. Reference will be made to the geographical foci of the Smart City Project in the city centre, the city, and the greater region in which the city was located; and to the establishment of structural and organizational links between the project and key existing and new organizations for whose purposes were the community and economic development.

Finally, an assessment/evaluation will be made of the project’s overall outcomes, what ‘worked’ in initial implementation, the politics and micro-politics of engagement, the procedural means established for ensuring effective decision making and taking, and the capacity of leading organizations to support and effect change in a rural context.

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