**1. Introduction**

The Smart City has become a key urban paradigm for cities across the world to transform themselves into successful competitive enclaves within the global digital capitalism geographies, through technological transformations. Embedded within the rhetoric of urban competitiveness in a globalized world, the Smart City has become an institutional policy promoted not only by local governments but also by national governments and supranational actors such as the European Union (EU). Moreover, Smart City policies are also presented as a factor of success not only for cities with a prominent role at the world level but also for middle-sized cities often competing in regional rather than global networks [1–3]. Central to this argument is the fact that the development of Smart City projects will enhance the local innovation ecosystems and the creation and/or consolidation of a local smart industry with locally based companies [4]. Yet very often these projects tend to focus on technology rather than the citizens [5]. Critical studies point out that the development of Smart City strategies is part of the neoliberalization of urban governance and instrumental in the colonization of the urban technology markets by transnational corporations [6–9]. In a nutshell, the deployment of Smart City strategies across the globe would reinforce current patterns of uneven development between global and unconnected cities, and between transnational companies and small and medium-sized companies. In contrast, recent critical enquiries on the consolidation of the Smart City have shown that the picture

is more nuanced [10–12]. A growing literature, based on paradigmatic case studies, has incorporated alternative smart strategies taking into account more inclusive and sustainable possibilities [13,14]. Yet, in both cases, Smart City studies need to pay attention to the networked insertion of Smart Cities in the global flows of the digital economy, avoiding "over-territorialization" [15,16]. In other words, move from place-based studies to the relational geographies of the Smart City to explore the limits and potentialities of Smart City models beyond local processes and factors.

In this regard, Wall and Stavrapoulos [15] propose the introduction of network analysis methodologies to understand, among other things, the articulation between local Smart City developments and the global urban and firm dynamics (see, for example, [17]). Following this call for incorporating urban networks analysis, this paper focuses on the articulation between cities, smart strategies and firms. However, rather than focusing on the global level, we will focus on the interrelation between Smart City strategies and national networks, an area that has received little attention so far. Unlike global cities, which usually have the capacity to implement their own agendas, for many regional and provincial cities the capacity to develop Smart City strategies depends on the mediation and support from nation-states or national networks, such as China's or India's Smart City programs. Additionally, the connection of these cities with global flows is often mediated at the national scale by firms that, at the most, establish local offices subordinated to national headquarters (see, for instance, [18] for a good description of the Indian case). Thus, this national mediation can open the door for different Smart City economies not controlled by usual global players.

To contribute to the scholarship documenting the network inequalities of cities and firms in the development of Smart City projects, in this paper we take as case study the Spanish Network of Smart Cities (*Red Española de Ciudades Inteligentes*), known as RECI, and focus on the relations of centrality and hierarchy among cities and firms in Spain participating of an institutionalized network of Smart Cities. First, we explore whether the structural advantages of participating in these networks have a leveling effect or rather reinforce existing hierarchies of cities. Second, we explore how firms are intertwined in Smart City projects and whether medium-sized local firms have a relevant presence, or whether these networks become a regional gateway for multinational firms to expand their presence, reinforcing their dominance.

Our results suggest that medium-sized cities involved in the network of Smart City projects can have a similar presence to that of bigger cities, but connectedness may come at the price of multinational firms being the main gateway that connect cities to the network. Indeed, our analysis suggests that the network of firms involved in Smart City projects in Spain is dominated by multinational companies. These findings support the claim that Smart City projects at national levels can be regarded as instrumental to the globalization process, by means of which big firms penetrate and maximize their presence in national markets. Moreover, we find limited evidence for a counter-argument often found in the public policy arena, according to which the participation of big firms in national networks, including medium-sized projects and cities, may foster the participation of small national firms that could improve their viability and scale.
