  The purpose is to investigate the expected participation and mentality of
smart citizens in smart cities. The key question is the role of the human
factor in smart environments globally studied through a research corpus of 150
documents including mainstream summaries trend reports, white papers and
visions of business, governmental and university research cooperations reaching
a wide audience of the subject. Foremost, a short review of the changing
scholarly trends is presented as a theoretical framework. Concerning its key
ideas, the corpus based findings are recapped and analysed by content networks
and the most referred city strategies. Besides, a critical approach reveal
further required factors and risks to investigate. The ultimate goal is to
understand how the smart city landscape is shaped by citizen-based strategies,
open data, empowerment and responsibility. Accordingly, the paper closes with
further considerations regarding the importance of anonymous open data,
advantages of neighbourhood-based implementations, aspects of permanent and
temporary citizen-engagements, interpretation of metaphors or upcoming
technologies, and also, privacy and ethical issues. The results provide the
policy development and the emerging scholarly interest with a framework study.
