Everyday urbanisms and the importance of place: Exploring the elements of the emancipatory smart city

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 004209802097097
Author(s):  
Nancy Odendaal
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Transformational Change ◽  
Human Dimensions ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Visual Narrative ◽  
Technology Appropriation ◽  
Multiple Dimensions ◽  
Smart Urbanism

Two of the most striking features of smart city discourses are the centrality of technology as a driver of transformational change and the strange ‘placelessness’ of its visual narrative. Whether envisaged in Kenya or Singapore, the commercial smart city is represented as a ‘city in a box’, seemingly capable of solving complex social issues through algorithms and technical innovation. Recently a robust literature has emerged that is critical of the techno-determinism inherent in smart city discussions. This paper expands on this critique by arguing that by solely focusing on the material dimensions of technologically informed urban change, devoid of context, we miss an opportunity to uncover an important moment in contemporary urbanity. By foregrounding the human dimensions of technology appropriation and the interface with livelihoods in their particular spatial contexts, this paper consciously decentres the dominant smart city discourse by arguing for the foregrounding of local dynamics. This paper rejects the universalisms embedded in smart city promises and argues that by provincialising the idea of smart urbanism, opportunities are presented for understanding the true markers of contemporary urbanism. Critical debates on the smart city, and by extension the need to consider smart urbanism contextually and as an infrastructure, relationally, together with the conceptual insights provided by postcolonial science and technology studies, contribute to a proposed frame for researching the ongoing dynamic between contemporary urban life and technological innovation. Empirical vignettes from urban Africa are used to illustrate the multiple dimensions of the interface between livelihoods and technology appropriation.

scholarly journals Making a Building Smart with a Co-Created and Continuously Evolving Enjoyable Service Entity—Insights from a Collaborative Study

Smart Cities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Maaria Nuutinen ◽  
Eija Kaasinen ◽  
Jaana Hyvärinen ◽  
Airi Mölsä ◽  
Sanni Siltanen
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Collaborative Study ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Smart Services ◽  
Smart Building ◽  
Quality Of Urban Life

Buildings shape cities as those cities grow from and nurture people living and working within the built environment. Thus, the conceptualization of smart building should be brought closer to the smart city initiatives that particularly target ensuring and enhancing the sustainability and quality of urban life. In this paper, we propose that a smart building should be interlinked with a smart city surrounding it; it should provide good experiences to its various occupants and it should be in an ongoing state of evolving as an ecosystem, wherein different stakeholders can join to co-produce, co-provide and co-consume services. Smart buildings require a versatile set of smart services based on digital solutions, solutions in the built environment and human activities. We conducted a multiphase collaborative study on new service opportunities guided by a Design Thinking approach. The approach brought people, technology, and business perspectives together and resulted in key service opportunities that have the potential to make the buildings smart and provide enjoyable experience to the occupants who support their living and working activities in smart cities. This paper provides the resulting practical implications as well as proposes future avenues for research.

Measuring Ambient Urbanities

2019 ◽  
pp. 252-280
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Exploratory Case Study ◽  
Quality Of Urban Life

The purpose of this chapter is to explore mechanisms and potentials for measuring ambient urbanities. This work advances the ambient metrics concept as a way of shedding light on the evolving nature of measures, standards, and indices required by more dynamic, adaptive, and aware environments, characteristic of smart and responsive cities. In the form of ambient metrics, measures are sought that support more informed city experiences, increased engagement and participation, and improved quality of urban life. The research literature for smart city metrics, standards, and indices is explored in this chapter enabling identification of issues, controversies, and problems. Using an exploratory case study approach, solutions and recommendations are advanced. This chapter makes a contribution to the research literature for smart city metrics, standards, and indices; the evolving of urban theory for 21st century cities; and urban theory in formulating a conceptual framework for rethinking measures for smarter urbanities.

scholarly journals Making the smart city: technologies, experiences, and future perspectives

2018 ◽  
Vol 212 ◽  
pp. 04017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Osipov ◽  
Aleksei Zeldner ◽  
Tatiana Skryl
Keyword(s):  
Water Supply ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Future Perspectives ◽  
Security Services ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
Integration Management ◽  
Services Integration ◽  
The Subject

The authors consider the problem of the conceptual the development of “smart cities” in the scholarly literature of foreign and Russian scientists. Based on published literature, the authors classify the concepts of “smart cities” in order to achieve greater clarity of the subject under consideration. Key characteristics of “smart cities” are also considered in the main areas of urban life: energy, water supply, transport, security, services, integration, management.

scholarly journals Worlding infrastructure in the global South: Philippine experiments and the art of being ‘smart’

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 004209801989101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morgan Mouton
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Urban Infrastructure ◽  
Global South ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Development Agenda ◽  
State Administration ◽  
Infrastructure Provision ◽  
Integrate Science

This article explores the material dimensions of ‘smart city’ initiatives in the context of postcolonial cities where urban utilities are qualified as deficient. It argues that while such projects may very well be another manifestation of urban entrepreneurialism, they should not be dismissed as an already-outdated research object. Rather, they can be analysed in light of postcolonial cities’ development agenda. Here, I document and analyse the ongoing construction of New Clark City, a smart city project that is envisioned by the current Philippine state administration as a solution to the crisis that Metro Manila’s urban infrastructure is going through. In doing so, I seek to integrate Science and Technology Studies’ insights on infrastructure provision with the literature on worlding efforts in cities of the global South.

scholarly journals Where’s the database in digital ethnography? Exploring database ethnography for open data research

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 598-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Burns ◽  
Grace Wark
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Data Types ◽  
Digital Ethnography ◽  
Fundamental Dimension ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Technical Specifications ◽  
The City

Contemporary cities are witnessing momentous shifts in how institutions and individuals produce and circulate data. Despite recent trends claiming that anyone can create and use data, cities remain marked by persistently uneven access and usage of digital technologies. This is the case as well within the emergent phenomenon of the ‘smart city,’ where open data are a key strategy for achieving ‘smartness,’ and increasingly constitute a fundamental dimension of urban life, governance, economic activity, and epistemology. The digital ethnography has extended traditional ethnographic research practices into such digital realms, yet its applicability within open data and smart cities is unclear. The method has tended to overlook the important roles of particular digital artifacts such as the database in structuring and producing knowledge. In this paper, we develop the database ethnography as a rich methodological resource for open data research. This approach centers the database as a key site for the production and materialization of social meaning. The database ethnography draws attention to the ways digital choices and practices—around database design, schema, data models, and so on—leave traces through time. From these traces, we may infer lessons about how phenomena come to be encoded as data and acted upon in urban contexts. Open databases are, in other words, key ways in which knowledges about the smart city are framed, delimited, and represented. More specifically, we argue that open databases limit data types, categorize and classify data to align with technical specifications, reflect the database designer’s episteme, and (re)produce conceptions of the world. We substantiate these claims through a database ethnography of the open data portal for the city of Calgary, in Western Canada.

scholarly journals Factors Impinge on Development of a Smart City: A Field Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Priya Jothimani ◽  
Palanisamy Chenniappan ◽  
Vinothini Chidambaranathan
Keyword(s):  
Population Growth ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Structural Equation ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Equation Model ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
Significant Area ◽  
Chennai City

Abstract Smart City aims at amassed connectivity at various levels in the midst of citizens, as well as amid the administration and the daily growing population. India is one of the developing country where population growth is one of the significant area is to be noted seriously. A city is a large and permanent human environment that provides its citizens with many services and opportunities. The rapid economic growth and population growth have put a huge amount of strain on urban infrastructure and service provision. India is an under developing nation to modernize urban life, the current urbanization needs good tactics and creative planning. India’s government has launched 100 Smart Cities where it is expected that citizens will use new innovations and resolve the issues. Smart Cities are intended for finest usage of space and resources along with an effectual and optimum dissemination of benefits. This study is to investigate and analysis of Chennai Smart city Mission (SCM) development. This work has been undertaken to learn about the aspects of Smart Development and the factors that governing Smart City. The analysis has been split up into 4 portions as Questionaries’ survey in the Chennai city, Frequency and Percentage analysis, Descriptive analysis and using Structural equation modelling (SCM). Using the SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) version 21.0, conversational interviewing, and questionnaire survey and also journal study are conducted to find factors influencing the implementation of smart city and reviewed. Using the SEM (structural equation model) AMOS 21.0 software, confirmatory factor assessment had done. This study gives in-depth knowledge in implementation of the smart city scheme aspects and also suggests solution for most affecting factor in a city.

scholarly journals Museums and Heritage Sites — The Missing Link in Smart City Planning: A Case Study of Pune City, India

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 33-47
Author(s):  
Poonam Gandhi ◽  
Chaitanya Ravi ◽  
Prasad Pathak ◽  
Smriti Jalihal
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
City Planning ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Inclusive Development ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
Infrastructural Development ◽  
Cultural Spaces ◽  
The Government

The process of urbanisation has dramatically increased in India in recent years. The Government of India launched Smart City Mission in 2015 which was intended to transform 100 cities into smart cities. The focus of our research is one such city in India on its path to smartification. Pune’s smart city mission focuses on techno-infrastructural development to increase mobility and digital connectivity. Social-cultural and historical indicators are not considered an integral part of this development. Given this, does the smart city mission of Pune privilege the techno-infrastructural development of a city over its social and cultural development?  In this paper, we identify museums and heritage sites in Pune as signifiers of a city's culture and analyse metro development plans through GIS to understand whether the museums' current geography mentioned above and heritage sites require alignment with Pune’s planned smart city mission. The research shows that the quest to ‘upgrade’ and ‘modernise’ is not adequately aligned with the role of key historic-cultural institutions such as museums and heritage sites. The case of Pune city shows that, without careful and inclusive development plan, a full roll-out of the smart city project will exclude a large number of historical and cultural spaces such as museums and heritage sites from emerging as an integral part of smart cities across the country and render them peripheral to modern urban life.  

scholarly journals The Use of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as an Element of Smart City Implementation: A Case Study of Electricity Billing Document Management at Bydgoszcz City Hall

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (16) ◽  
pp. 5191
Author(s):  
Andrzej Sobczak ◽  
Leszek Ziora
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Document Management ◽  
Process Automation ◽  
Robotic Process Automation ◽  
The City

Smart cities are an extremely important, multi-faceted subject, both in terms of their practical aspects and in terms of research. This is expressed, among other things, in the multitude of approaches to this concept. These approaches differ based on the emphasis placed on individual aspects: some focus more on technology, and others put more weight on social issues, while still others value sustainable development issues. Currently, an important topic of discussion about the development of the smart city—the importance of which has become even greater in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic—is the digital transformation of the city. The use of robotic process automation (RPA) tools can be a part of such a transformation, as such tools, using advanced software, enable the automation of those tasks carried out thus far by humans. Although such an approach has, to date, been widespread in the case of enterprises (in particular, those operating in the financial and BPO/SSC sectors, but less often in the utilities sector, the first applications of these solutions in the context of process automation for cities are also beginning to emerge in various parts of the world. This article is based on a case study approach. The implementation conditions (including the constraints) of such an approach, the benefits achieved, and the lessons learned (which can be important for other local government units) are outlined using the example of the Bydgoszcz city hall’s (Poland) electricity billing document management. The results of the case study presented here lead to the conclusion that the use of RPA tools enables, very quickly and at relatively low cost, measurable results to be achieved that are related to the processing of electricity billing documentation for the city of Bydgoszcz. This allows the assertion to be made that robotic process automation can be taken into consideration as one of the tools used to build smart cities.

Ramarajya

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koneru Ramakrishna Rao
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Equality Of Opportunity ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Ideal Form ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter focuses on Gandhi’s vision of governance. The Mahatma envisioned the ideal form of governance as Ramarajya. By Ramarajya, Gandhi meant a form of government which involves the empowerment of people at grassroots, equality of opportunity, decentralization of administration, cooperative participation of people, and democratic self-governance. The chapter discusses various steps taken since Independence by the Congress and governments by other parties to implement Gandhi’s ideas on Panchayat Raj and, more recently, the new initiatives of the government headed by Narendra Modi such as the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Mission), Saansad Adarsh Gram Yojana (Model Village Plans), and the Smart City initiative. However, the author mentions that these initiatives need to be based not on Western application of sophisticated information technology, but on promoting face-to-face relations between people and on developing instrumentalities to breathe rural ethos into urban life.

Smart City Ethics

2020 ◽  
pp. 822-839
Author(s):  
Ellen P. Goodman
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Data Analytics ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
Big Data Analytics ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Or Education ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Data Flows

This chapter explores the concept of “smart cities,” a term which describes the growing role of data analytics and sensors in urban life. Smart city initiatives rely on pervasive data gathering and integration, big data analytics, and artificial intelligence to manage mobility, energy, housing, public realm access, and myriad public and private services. These data flows can change how physical infrastructure like streets and parks are configured and services provisioned. They can tailor opportunities for housing or education based on individual digital identities and predictive algorithms. As more life in the city runs through digital apps and platforms, rights to access and control data increase in importance. Data flows from residents and public spaces to smart city corporations raise pressing policy questions about what power the public should cede to private developers to shape urban space, subject to how much oversight and with what expectation of return on public assets. The chapter then sorts these concerns into three major groups: privatization, platformization, and domination.

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