Assessing smart city maturity through a multidimensional DP2-based clustering of the IMD smart city index

The growing number of smart city rankings and composite indices has improved cross-city comparability, but often at the cost of blurring the distinction between technological advancement and structural urban development. In particular, the notion of smart city maturity is frequently used implicitly and conflicted with overall rank position, providing limited insight into how different dimensions of urban performance interact and balance each other. This study looks at city maturity as a multiple‑dimension setup that shows the degree of integration across key urban policy domains. The study uses perception‑based indicators from the IMD Smart City Index 2024. The study builds six domains: Digital Readiness, Infrastructure and Mobility, Environmental Quality, Community and Economic Resilience, Proximity and Livability and Circular Economy and Resource Management. Indicators are aggregated within each domain using a non-compensatory distance-based approach (DP2), which limits redundancy among correlated indicators and avoids excessive compensation across domains. Hierarchical clustering applied to the resulting domain scores identifies four distinct smart city maturity profiles: Digital, Smart-Sustainable, Resilient, and Circular. These categories are interpreted as descriptive archetypes rather than normative rankings. These profiles capture different configurations of strengths and weaknesses across domains and point to heterogeneous development paths among global cities. The proposed framework facilitates comparative interpretation and analytical discussion across urban policy domains by shifting the analytical focus from linear rankings approaches to multidimensional profiling. Limitations related to data structure and cross-sectional design are acknowledged, and directions for future longitudinal and integrative research are outlined.