Increasingly, nations are engaging in smart city development projects. Smart city development aims to build urban areas with a wholesome quality of life with modern infrastructure capabilities (e.g., economic opportunities, cultural richness, and demographic-geographical balance), technological benefits (e.g., healthcare, education, government) and sustainability goals (e.g., clean, green, safe, and secure environments). This requires huge investments of resources and participation of diverse stakeholders, whose goals are often ambiguous and conflicting. It is not unusual that many of these projects are delayed because of a lack of consensus, which further adds unnecessary social costs and a waste of time and efforts. In this sense, determining strategic priorities for smart city development is crucial for achieving a set of integrative purposes in terms of resource allocation and social benefits goals. This paper aims to determine strategic priorities by examining multiple cases of smart city projects in Korea, Europe, and the U.S. A hierarchical strategic framework, which shows the vision, core values and strategic goals, is developed and proposed from the case studies. Lessons and practical implications are discussed for future study.

Purpose: This paper aims to examine how structured stakeholder prioritization can enhance alignment, transparency and legitimacy in digital governance for smart city policy contexts. It develops a comparative framework using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to systematically assess how diverse stakeholder groups prioritize strategic and operational objectives in public-sector decision-making. Design/methodology/approach: This study adopts a multistage research design combining cross-national benchmarking of 28 smart city cases with survey-based AHP estimation. Drawing on 423 stakeholder responses in South Korea, the framework quantifies pairwise priority judgments across 4 strategic domains – quality of life, sustainability, innovation and growth and city competitiveness – and 12 operational subfactors. Findings: The results reveal measurable convergence around quality of life and sustainability, alongside significant divergence between public authorities and nonpublic stakeholders regarding safety, social equity and governance structures. The structured AHP framework exposes legitimacy-sensitive priority gaps and clarifies trade-offs across competing policy objectives. Research limitations/implications: The empirical data are based on Korean respondents and cross-sectional analysis, limiting full cross-cultural generalization and dynamic interpretation. Future research may extend the framework through longitudinal and multicountry comparative designs. Practical implications: The proposed model provides policymakers and urban planners with a transparent decision-support mechanism to diagnose alignment gaps, prioritize infrastructure investments and strengthen accountability in digital governance systems. Social implications: This study highlights the importance of transparent and inclusive decision-making in digital governance. By comparing stakeholder priorities in smart city development, the framework helps policymakers identify perception gaps and better align policies with societal expectations, strengthening legitimacy, public trust and socially responsive urban governance. Originality/value: This study contributes to digital governance research by reframing AHP as a governance transparency and stakeholder-alignment tool rather than merely a technical evaluation method. By integrating structured prioritization with comparative benchmarking, it advances a systematic approach to institutional legitimacy and inclusive public-sector decision alignment in smart city governance.