Abstract
The proliferation of smart city initiatives has intensified tensions between harnessing data for public value and safeguarding individual privacy. This study investigates how data sovereignty frameworks can mediate these tensions by analyzing governance models across multiple urban contexts. Employing a mixed-methods approach combining survey data from 342 municipal stakeholders and policy document analysis of 15 smart city strategies, we identify three emergent sovereignty models: state-centric, market-oriented, and community-based. Our results reveal that community-based models achieve significantly higher perceived balance (β=0.47, p<0.001) between public value and privacy compared to state-centric (β=0.12, p=0.08) and market-oriented (β=0.21, p=0.03) models. Furthermore, transparency mechanisms—such as open data portals and privacy impact assessments—moderate the relationship between data collection intensity and citizen trust (interaction effect: β=0.34, p<0.01). However, implementation gaps persist, particularly in legal harmonization across jurisdictions. The findings suggest that hybrid governance arrangements, combining clear data stewardship rules with participatory oversight, offer the most promising pathway for reconciling competing objectives. We conclude by proposing a context-sensitive sovereignty continuum and actionable policy recommendations for urban administrators.