The role of social capital in municipal governance in smart city approach

In 2019, the Ministry of Environment and Urbanisation prepared the ''2020-2023 National Smart Cities Strategy and Action Plan'' for smart city transformation in Turkey. The Plan is the fourth smart city strategy and action plan in the world and the first in Turkey. In the plan, four strategic objectives, nine targets, forty actions and various performance indicators were determined. The action numbered five under the third strategic objective is ''Smart city projects with high public value will be developed and effectively planned, implemented and disseminated''. In this context, ''Existence of National Smart City Project Inventory'' has been determined as one of the performance indicators. For this reason, ''Project Inventory'' has been prepared by the General Directorate of Geographical Information Systems of the Ministry of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change. In this study, it is aimed to determine the role of social capital of municipalities in smart city projects developed in the smart city transformation process in Turkey. In this context, ''Project Inventory'' was analysed using document analysis method. ''Project Inventory'' and ''Smart Cities Portal'' constitute the data set of the study. The status of two hundred and fifty-nine smart city projects in the Project Inventory was questioned and in this context, smart city projects were categorised as ''Start and End Date Uncertain or Not Started'', ''Ongoing'' and ''Completed''. Sixty-two smart city projects with ''Start and End Date Uncertain or Not Started'' were not included in the study. Eighty-four ''Completed'' smart city projects and one hundred and thirteen ''Ongoing'' smart city projects were included in the study. As a result of the evaluations made according to the findings obtained; it has been concluded that the performance of metropolitan and provincial municipalities in smart city projects developed for smart city transformation in Turkey is not yet at a sufficient level, but municipalities with high social capital accumulation have developed much more and qualified projects related to smart city transformation. Keywords: Smart City, Document Analysis, Social Capital, 2020-2023 National Smart Cities Strategy and Action Plan.