How Citizens Participation Begin and Continue in Developing Smart Cities

“Smart Cities” where utilize city data and ICT technology to improve urban living, have attracted attention in the world. Externalized characteristics of smart cities around the world are diverse, while smart cities in Nordic coun-tries are often introduced as future city design with citizen participation. However, how exactly citizens participation begins and continues smart city projects has not fully been explored, yet. In this paper, we analyzed Danish smart cities from the three axes of the subject of action, the applied technologies, and the instruments for realization, and derived three poten-tial devices that bring citizens’ autonomous participation. The investiga-tion identifies constant citizens’ participation rooted in society as a mech-anism, which is enabled with joint citizens decision-making by accessing to resources and commending ways of collaborating. The finding of this pa-per contributes to the participatory researchers on smart cities, who values citizens’ autonomous participation in design.