Public value mapping in the smart city: Assessing emerging urban technologies

Journal article, 2026

City governments must increasingly grapple with how to assess and deploy new and often disruptive technologies to advance public policy goals and community needs. While technology companies assert the transformative change smart technologies offer, significant tensions exist between the market values sought by industry and the public values that city governments are responsible for supporting. In this paper, we analyze two smart city technology cases – facial recognition in Portland, Oregon and autonomous vehicles in Tempe, Arizona – using public value mapping, a concept from public administration and science policy. This process allows for an evaluation of the mismatch between public values and market values. The two case studies show two different approaches to governing emerging technologies and different trajectories based on previous policy efforts. Our analysis suggests that increased cooperation between government, the public, and industry can benefit both public and private interests in relation to public value goals. Through our analysis of these case studies, we also demonstrate how public value mapping can be applied in practice by urban planners and other policy makers tasked with implementing smart city technologies. Public value mapping adds to an increasingly diverse toolkit available to policy makers to ensure that the development of policies and plans that more closely align technology deployment with public value outcomes.