Strategic digital cities: A comparative analysis of municipal digital strategies in four South African metropolitan municipalities

Abstract

The digitalisation of public administration and urban management continues to reshape how municipalities plan, operate, and respond to growing urban pressures. In South Africa, these shifts are guided by national digital governance frameworks that emphasise the importance of technological infrastructure for sustainable development. Despite this policy direction, there is limited comparative analysis on how South African cities incorporate digitalisation into their strategic planning processes. To address this gap, this narrative review examines municipal strategic documents from four South African metropolitan municipalities to assess the extent to which their planning frameworks reflect digital priorities and align with the Strategic Digital City (SDC) concept. Using qualitative document analysis, the review identifies key themes, strategic priorities, and programme distributions across the four cities. The findings show that, while all cities embed digitalisation within their strategic structures, the depth and coherence of this integration vary, with stronger emphasis placed on technological infrastructure than on digital public-service transformation. The review contributes to current urban digitalisation scholarship, by providing a comparative account of how South African municipalities interpret and operationalise national digitalisation directives. It also highlights areas where digital strategies require further strengthening, offering a foundation for future empirical research on the implementation and impact of municipal digital initiatives.