Smart city scholarship has matured well beyond a purely technological discourse, yet the organizational and financial architectures that enable urban transformation remain unevenly synthesized in the literature. This article presents a policy-oriented comparative study of business models used in smart cities, positioned explicitly at the intersection of urban development, digital governance, and sustainable infrastructure delivery. Using a narrative review of Scopus-indexed publications and a comparative analysis of three leading European smart cities—London, Amsterdam, and Berlin—the study identifies the principal institutional arrangements through which smart city initiatives are financed, governed, and operationalized.
The review frame is anchored in a ten-year Scopus search window (2014–2024) and centers the 153 records retrieved for the combined terms “smart cities” and “business models.” Across this corpus and the accompanying case analysis, eight recurrent business model families are consistently observed: public–private partnerships, build–operate–transfer arrangements, performance-based contracts, community-centric models, innovation hubs and incubators, revenue-sharing models, outcome-based financing, and asset monetization strategies. The comparative evidence shows that the three benchmark cities do not converge on a single ideal model. Rather, they assemble distinct portfolios of contractual, collaborative, and entrepreneurial mechanisms aligned with their infrastructure priorities, social goals, and governance traditions.
London is characterized by strong large-scale infrastructure partnerships and revenue-linked service operation; Amsterdam demonstrates especially coherent integration of redevelopment, mobility innovation, and participatory urbanism; Berlin stands out for combining infrastructural pragmatism with community-driven housing and innovation ecosystems. The central conclusion is that successful smart urban development depends less on any one contractual instrument than on the strategic orchestration of complementary business models that jointly enhance efficiency, resilience, legitimacy, and long-term urban value creation.