scholarly journals Smart as (un)democratic? The making of a smart city imaginary in Kolkata, India

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442110275
Author(s):  
Bipashyee Ghosh ◽  
Saurabh Arora
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Social Inclusion ◽  
National Government ◽  
New Town ◽  
Participatory Techniques ◽  
Inclusive Processes ◽  
Design And Practice ◽  
The City ◽  
Smart Urbanism

‘Smart’ imaginaries have been enthusiastically embraced by urban planners and policymakers around the world. Indians are no exception. Between 2015–2018, following national government guidelines to use participatory and inclusive processes, many cities developed proposals for a smart city challenge. Successful proposals received financial and technical support from the national government. We examine the making of the smart city proposal submitted by New Town Kolkata (NTK). We ask how (un)democratic was the making of the proposal, along three aspects: distributive, participatory, and responsive. Based on an analysis of documents and interviews with policymakers and citizens, we find that NTK’s smart city imaginary largely failed to be distributive. It rarely accounted for the specific needs of poorer and vulnerable citizens. City officials invested considerable effort in using participatory techniques, but citizen participation was tightly controlled through top-down design and practice of the techniques. The latter often facilitated one-way flow of information from the city administration to the citizens. The proposal was responsive to some citizens’ voices, but only those belonging to the more affluent classes. A messy diversity of citizens’ voices was thus closed down, as the city officials filtered and cherry-picked citizens’ voices that were well-aligned with the official technocratic vision of ‘global’ smart urbanism. The paper shows how democracy can be put in the service of technocracy, within a rhetoric of citizen participation and social inclusion that embodies smart urbanism.

Citizens in the Smart City

2022 ◽  
pp. 126-143
Author(s):  
Zsuzsanna Tomor
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
European City ◽  
Citizen Empowerment ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The City

While the role of citizens in smart cities is hotly debated, there is a dearth of empirical research on the subject. This in-depth study of a European city, selected for its typical smart city ambitions, explores the roles that citizens actually play in smart city projects. The study examines twelve initiatives in the City of Utrecht (NL) using a framework that differentiates between types of citizen participation. The findings show that technology-enabled citizen participation in Utrecht is highly diverse and embraces all types of participation rather than simply taking the form of either “citizen empowerment” (as the advocates argue) or “citizen subjugation' (as the critics stress). The diversity found in the study highlights the need to conceptualize the role of the smart citizen at the micro (project) level rather than at the level of the city as a whole. The study shows that citizen participation in the smart city should not be understood as a technological utopia or dystopia but as an evolving, technologically mediated practice that is shaped by a variety of factors.

Citizens in the Smart City

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Zsuzsanna Tomor
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
European City ◽  
Citizen Empowerment ◽  
Depth Study ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The City ◽  
Project Level

While the role of citizens in smart cities is hotly debated, there is a dearth of empirical research on the subject. This in-depth study of a European city, selected for its typical smart city ambitions, explores the roles that citizens actually play in smart city projects. The study examines twelve initiatives in the City of Utrecht (NL) using a framework that differentiates between types of citizen participation. The findings show that technology-enabled citizen participation in Utrecht is highly diverse and embraces all types of participation rather than simply taking the form of either “citizen empowerment” (as the advocates argue) or “citizen subjugation' (as the critics stress). The diversity found in the study highlights the need to conceptualize the role of the smart citizen at the micro (project) level rather than at the level of the city as a whole. The study shows that citizen participation in the smart city should not be understood as a technological utopia or dystopia but as an evolving, technologically mediated practice that is shaped by a variety of factors.

scholarly journals Incentive theory for a participatory crowdsourcing project in a developing country

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Bosha ◽  
Liezel Cilliers ◽  
Stephen Flowerday
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Response Rate ◽  
Participation Rate ◽  
Limited Resources ◽  
City Management ◽  
Incentive Theory ◽  
Incentive Model ◽  
Analyse Data ◽  
The City

Background: Urbanisation has put enormous strain on the limited resources and services provided by city management. This means that the city must find new ways to manage their resources more effectively. One option is to collect data in a smart city from the citizens in order to make better decisions about resource management.Objectives: The aim of this study was to provide a participatory crowdsourcing incentive model that can be used by the city of East London, South Africa, to collect information continuously from citizens in order to improve public safety in the city.Method: This study made use of a quantitative approach to gather and analyse data. Data were collected using a questionnaire sent to all 91 East London citizens who had registered on the project website. The response rate was 81.3%.Results: A model was proposed that can be used by the city to increase the participation rate of citizens in smart city projects. Three factors: intrinsic, internalised-extrinsic and extrinsic, were identified as central to the incentive model.Conclusion: The recommendation of the study is that city management can use the crowdsourcing participatory incentive model to ensure citizen participation in smart city projects.

scholarly journals A Smart Right to the City—Grounding Corporate Storytelling and Questioning Smart Urbanism

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (17) ◽  
pp. 9590
Author(s):  
Anke Strüver ◽  
Rivka Saltiel ◽  
Nicolas Schlitz ◽  
Bernhard Hohmann ◽  
Thomas Höflehner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Critical Research ◽  
European Cities ◽  
Entrepreneurial City ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Urban Problems ◽  
The City ◽  
Rights To The City ◽  
Smart Urbanism

Against the backdrop of multiple ongoing crises in European cities related to socio-spatial injustice, inequality and exclusion, we argue for a smart right to the city. There is an urgent need for a thorough account of the entrepreneurial mode of technocapitalist smart urbanism. While much of both affirmative and critical research on Smart City developments equate or even reduce smartness to digital infrastructures, we put actual smartness—in the sense of social justice and sustainability—at centre stage. This paper builds on a fundamental structural critique of (1) the entrepreneurial city (Harvey) and (2) the capitalist city (Lefebvre). Drawing upon Lefebvre’s right to the city as a normative framework, we use Smart City developments in the city of Graz as an illustration of our argument. Considering strategies of waste and mobility management, we reflect on how they operate as spatial and technical fixes—fixing the limits of capitalism’s growth. By serving specific corporate interests, these technocapitalist strategies yet fail to address the underlying structural causes of pressing urban problems and increasing inequalities. With Lefebvre’s ongoing relevant argument for the importance of use value of urban infrastructures as well as his claim that appropriation and participation are essential, we discuss common rights to the city: His framework allows us to envision sustainable and just—actually smart—alternatives: alternatives to technocapitalist entrepreneurial urbanisation. In this respect, a smart right to the city is oriented towards the everyday needs of all inhabitants.

scholarly journals A novel framework of e-participation for smart cities

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Yusuf ◽  
Nurwahyu Alamsyah ◽  
Muh. Syarif ◽  
Arif Muntasa ◽  
Hakam Muzakki
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
The Body ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
High Tech ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Current State ◽  
The City

The smart city is an exciting concept for improving the quality of the city. However, a smart city needs participation from citizens and all related stakeholders to use the technologies effectively in order to achieve the goal and solve the problems. Even though the city already has high-tech infrastructures, participation still required to provide ideas, inputs, and roles within the development of smart city concepts. This research aims to describe and analyze the current state of the e-Participation frameworks and propose a novel framework for smart cities. The analysis will go through a systematic literature review. Hopefully, this study makes contributions by providing a novel framework of e-Participation for smart cities. This research has implications for theory and practice. For theory, the novel framework can be added to the body of knowledge of e-participation, e-government, and smart cities fields. For practice, the framework will be useful for practitioners, policymakers, people and other stakeholders related to the smart city governance to increase citizen participation through technology-based services.

YOUTH EXPECTATIONS OF SMART CITY LIVING: AN IMPORTANCE- PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF YOUNG RESIDENTS’ PERSPECTIVES OF CITY GOVERNMENT

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-128
Author(s):  
Jason Cohen ◽  
Judy Backhouse ◽  
Omar Ally
Keyword(s):  
Performance Analysis ◽  
Young People ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
City Government ◽  
Diagnostic Tools ◽  
City Management ◽  
Bottom Up ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The City

Young people are important to cities, bringing skills and energy and contributing to economic activity. New technologies have led to the idea of a smart city as a framework for city management. Smart cities are developed from the top-down through government programmes, but also from the bottom-up by residents as technologies facilitate participation in developing new forms of city services. Young people are uniquely positioned to contribute to bottom-up smart city projects. Few diagnostic tools exist to guide city authorities on how to prioritise city service provision. A starting point is to understand how the youth value city services. This study surveys young people in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, and conducts an importance-performance analysis to identify which city services are well regarded and where the city should focus efforts and resources. The results show that Smart city initiatives that would most increase the satisfaction of youths in Braamfontein  include wireless connectivity, tools to track public transport  and  information  on city events. These  results  identify  city services that are valued by young people, highlighting services that young people could participate in providing. The importance-performance analysis can assist the city to direct effort and scarce resources effectively.

scholarly journals Sustainable Smart City—Opening a Black Box

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 769
Author(s):  
Mona Treude
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Evolutionary Economics ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Innovation Process ◽  
Sustainable City ◽  
Smart Services ◽  
Underlying Processes

Cities are becoming digital and are aiming to be sustainable. How they are combining the two is not always apparent from the outside. What we need is a look from inside. In recent years, cities have increasingly called themselves Smart City. This can mean different things, but generally includes a look towards new digital technologies and claim that a Smart City has various advantages for its citizens, roughly in line with the demands of sustainable development. A city can be seen as smart in a narrow sense, technology wise, sustainable or smart and sustainable. Current city rankings, which often evaluate and classify cities in terms of the target dimensions “smart” and “sustainable”, certify that some cities are both. In its most established academic definitions, the Smart City also serves both to improve the quality of life of its citizens and to promote sustainable development. Some cities have obviously managed to combine the two. The question that arises is as follows: What are the underlying processes towards a sustainable Smart City and are cities really using smart tools to make themselves sustainable in the sense of the 2015 United Nations Sustainability Goal 11? This question is to be answered by a method that has not yet been applied in research on cities and smart cities: the innovation biography. Based on evolutionary economics, the innovation biography approaches the process towards a Smart City as an innovation process. It will highlight which actors are involved, how knowledge is shared among them, what form citizen participation processes take and whether the use of digital and smart services within a Smart City leads to a more sustainable city. Such a process-oriented method should show, among other things, to what extent and when sustainability-relevant motives play a role and which actors and citizens are involved in the process at all.

scholarly journals Disaster Management in Smart Cities

Smart Cities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 819-839
Author(s):  
Luís B. Elvas ◽  
Bruno Miguel Mataloto ◽  
Ana Lúcia Martins ◽  
João C. Ferreira
Keyword(s):  
Disaster Management ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Practical Implication ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Critical Infrastructures ◽  
Cascading Effects ◽  
Data Driven Approach ◽  
New Research ◽  
The City

The smart city concept, in which data from different systems are available, contains a multitude of critical infrastructures. This data availability opens new research opportunities in the study of the interdependency between those critical infrastructures and cascading effects solutions and focuses on the smart city as a network of critical infrastructures. This paper proposes an integrated resilience system linking interconnected critical infrastructures in a smart city to improve disaster resilience. A data-driven approach is considered, using artificial intelligence and methods to minimize cascading effects and the destruction of failing critical infrastructures and their components (at a city level). The proposed approach allows rapid recovery of infrastructures’ service performance levels after disasters while keeping the coverage of the assessment of risks, prevention, detection, response, and mitigation of consequences. The proposed approach has the originality and the practical implication of providing a decision support system that handles the infrastructures that will support the city disaster management system—make the city prepare, adapt, absorb, respond, and recover from disasters by taking advantage of the interconnections between its various critical infrastructures to increase the overall resilience capacity. The city of Lisbon (Portugal) is used as a case to show the practical application of the approach.

Predictive Analytics for Smart Parking: A Deep Learning Approach in Forecasting of IoT Data

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Francesco Piccialli ◽  
Fabio Giampaolo ◽  
Edoardo Prezioso ◽  
Danilo Crisci ◽  
Salvatore Cuomo
Keyword(s):  
Deep Learning ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Predictive Analytics ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Search Time ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Ensemble Technique ◽  
Smart Parking ◽  
Polluting Emissions ◽  
The City

Nowadays, a sustainable and smart city focuses on energy efficiency and the reduction of polluting emissions through smart mobility projects and initiatives to “sensitize” infrastructure. Smart parking is one of the building blocks of intelligent mobility, innovative mobility that aims to be flexible, integrated, and sustainable and consequently integrated into a Smart City. By using the Internet of Things (IoT) sensors located in the parking areas or the underground car parks in combination with a mobile application, which indicates to citizens the free places in the different areas of the city and guides them toward the chosen parking, it is possible to reduce air pollution and fluidifying noise traffic. In this article, we present and discuss an innovative Deep Learning-based ensemble technique in forecasting the parking space occupancy to reduce the search time for parking and to optimize the flow of cars in particularly congested areas, with an overall positive impact on traffic in urban centres. A genetic algorithm has also been used to optimize predictors parameters. The main goal is to design an intelligent IoT-based service that can predict, in the next few hours, the parking spaces occupancy of a street. The proposed approach has been assessed on a real IoT dataset composed by over than 15M of collected sensor records. Obtained results demonstrate that our method outperforms both single predictors and the widely used strategy of the mean providing inherently robust predictions.

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