scholarly journals Actually existing smart citizens: expertise and (non)participation in the making of the smart city

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor Shelton ◽  
Thomas Lodato
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Top Down ◽  
The World ◽  
Number Of Individuals

In response to the mounting criticism of emerging ‘smart cities’ strategies around the world, a number of individuals and institutions have attempted to pivot from discussions of smart cities towards a focus on ‘smart citizens’. While the smart citizen is most often seen as a kind of foil for those more stereotypically top-down, neoliberal, and repressive visions of the smart city that have been widely critiqued within the literature, this paper argues for an attention to the ‘actually existing smart citizen’, which plays a much messier and more ambivalent role in practice. This paper proposes the dual figures of ‘the general citizen’ and ‘the absent citizen’ as a heuristic for thinking about how the lines of inclusion and exclusion are drawn for citizens, both discursively and materially, in the actual making of the smart city. These figures are meant to highlight how the universal and unspecified figure of ‘the citizen’ is discursively deployed to justify smart city policies, while at the same time, actual citizens remain largely excluded from such decision and policy-making processes. Using a case study of Atlanta, Georgia and its ongoing smart cities initiatives, we argue that while the participation of citizens is crucial to any truly democratic mode of urban governance, the emerging discourse around the promise of smart citizenship fails to capture the realities of how citizens are actually discussed and enrolled in the making of these policies.

Smart and Connected Cities Through Technologies

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vrushali Gajanan Kadam ◽  
Sharvari Chandrashekhar Tamane ◽  
Vijender Kumar Solanki
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Traffic Congestion ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Big Data Analytics ◽  
Crowd Sensing ◽  
The World ◽  
Important Challenge ◽  
Mobile Crowd

The world is growing and energy conservation is a very important challenge for the engineering domain. The emergence of smart cities is one possible solution for the same, as it claims that energy and resources are saved in the smart city infrastructure. This chapter is divided into five sections. Section 1 gives the past, present, and future of the living style. It gives the representation from rural, urban, to smart city. Section 2 gives the explanations of four pillars of big data, and through grid, a big data analysis is presented in the chapter. Section 3 started with the case study on smart grid. It comprises traffic congestion and their prospective solution through big data analytics. Section 4 starts from the mobile crowd sensing. It discusses a good elaboration on crowd sensing whereas Section 5 discusses the smart city approach. Important issues like lighting, parking, and traffic were taken into consideration.

scholarly journals Smart city as anti-planning in the UK

2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 428-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Cowley ◽  
Federico Caprotti
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Sustainable Urban Development ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Local Practices ◽  
Traditional Technologies ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Century Science

Critical commentaries have often treated the smart city as a potentially problematic ‘top down’ tendency within policy-making and urban planning, which appears to serve the interests of already powerful corporate and political actors. This article, however, positions the smart city as significant in its implicit rejection of the strong normativity of traditional technologies of planning, in favour of an ontology of efficiency and emergence. It explores a series of prominent UK smart city initiatives (in Bristol, Manchester and Milton Keynes) as bundles of experimental local practices, drawing on the literature pointing to a growing valorisation of the ‘experimental’ over strong policy commitments in urban governance. It departs from this literature, however, by reading contemporary ‘smart experiments’ through Shapin and Schafer’s work on the emergence of 17th-century science, to advance a transhistorical understanding of experimentation as oriented towards societal reordering. From this perspective, the UK smart city merits attention primarily as an indicator of a wider set of shifts in approaches to governance. Its pragmatic orientation sits uneasily alongside ambitions to ‘standardise’ smart and sustainable urban development; and raises questions about the conscious overlap between the stated practical ambitions of smart city initiatives and pre-existing environmental and social policies.

scholarly journals Expanded Urban Planning as a Vehicle for Understanding and Shaping Smart, Liveable Cities

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aija Staffans ◽  
Liisa Horelli
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Community Informatics ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Planning Approach ◽  
Academic Publications

Smart city is currently a trendy concept that has been promoted by many international companies, universities and cities, such as IBM, CISCO, MIT, Shanghai, as well as the European Union.  This top down, technocratic approach has been severely criticized in many academic publications. Concurrently there is an increasing buzz emerging from citizens – women and men, who are involved in the application of community informatics for self-organization in urban settings. Consequently, the smart city as a contested concept and an initiative is under social and political construction. We argue that the smart city can be better understood and implemented, when framed from a holistic and integrative perspective as a multi-scalar and multi-dimensional endeavor that is approached through “expanded urban planning”. The aim of the article is to present and discuss the expanded urban planning approach as an alternative story to smart cities. The relevance of this approach is assessed in the light of a case study of Designing for the Smart City, a course for future architects and planners, at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy.

Smart and Connected Cities Through Technologies

2022 ◽  
pp. 1113-1131
Author(s):  
Vrushali Gajanan Kadam ◽  
Sharvari Chandrashekhar Tamane ◽  
Vijender Kumar Solanki
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Traffic Congestion ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Big Data Analytics ◽  
Crowd Sensing ◽  
The World ◽  
Important Challenge ◽  
Mobile Crowd

The world is growing and energy conservation is a very important challenge for the engineering domain. The emergence of smart cities is one possible solution for the same, as it claims that energy and resources are saved in the smart city infrastructure. This chapter is divided into five sections. Section 1 gives the past, present, and future of the living style. It gives the representation from rural, urban, to smart city. Section 2 gives the explanations of four pillars of big data, and through grid, a big data analysis is presented in the chapter. Section 3 started with the case study on smart grid. It comprises traffic congestion and their prospective solution through big data analytics. Section 4 starts from the mobile crowd sensing. It discusses a good elaboration on crowd sensing whereas Section 5 discusses the smart city approach. Important issues like lighting, parking, and traffic were taken into consideration.

scholarly journals The social innovation–(re)politicisation nexus: Unlocking the political in actually existing smart city campaigns? The case of SmartCity Cologne, Germany

Urban Studies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 894-915 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Leitheiser ◽  
Alexander Follmann
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Top Down ◽  
The Social ◽  
Governance Practices ◽  
Urban Futures ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Urban Commons

As a prominent and performative discourse, The Smart City has the potential to shape urban futures. Yet, its mostly top-down implementation and dominantly technocratic definition of problems raises critiques of The Smart City as the latest version of a series of post-political and neoliberal visions of urban governance. However, as smart cities are implemented into ‘actually existing’ strategies locally, they are always negotiated and translated into place-specific contexts. Beyond critiquing the powerful discourse of The Smart City, the social innovation–(re)politicisation nexus (SIRN) spells out a framework for contesting and co-producing radically transformative smart city visions and politics as they take shape on the ground. Linking the empirical case study of the ‘top-down’ implementation of SmartCity Cologne, Germany, to current ‘bottom-up’ discourses on reclaiming the urban commons, we show how ‘true’ and ‘real’ social innovation must go hand-in-hand with a re-politicisation of hegemonic logics and discursive framings. In doing so, this paper makes theoretical and empirical contributions to public and academic discourse on which governance practices, methods and policies could contribute to radical transformations towards a ‘truly’ smart and sustainable urban future.

SenCity – Evaluating Users’ Experiences of Intelligent Lighting for Well-Being in Smart Cities

2018 ◽  
pp. 60-67
Author(s):  
Henrika Pihlajaniemi ◽  
Anna Luusua ◽  
Eveliina Juntunen
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Evaluation Methods ◽  
Data Analyses ◽  
Sense Of Security ◽  
System Data

This paper presents the evaluation of usersХ experiences in three intelligent lighting pilots in Finland. Two of the case studies are related to the use of intelligent lighting in different kinds of traffic areas, having emphasis on aspects of visibility, traffic and movement safety, and sense of security. The last case study presents a more complex view to the experience of intelligent lighting in smart city contexts. The evaluation methods, tailored to each pilot context, include questionnaires, an urban dashboard, in-situ interviews and observations, evaluation probes, and system data analyses. The applicability of the selected and tested methods is discussed reflecting the process and achieved results.

scholarly journals Challenges and Barriers for Net‐Zero/Positive Energy Buildings and Districts—Empirical Evidence from the Smart City Project SPARCS

Buildings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 78
Author(s):  
Daria Uspenskaia ◽  
Karl Specht ◽  
Hendrik Kondziella ◽  
Thomas Bruckner
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Practical Experience ◽  
Positive Energy ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Net Zero ◽  
Multidimensional Representation

Without decarbonizing cities energy and climate objectives cannot be achieved as cities account for approximately two thirds of energy consumption and emissions. This goal of decarbonizing cities has to be facilitated by promoting net-zero/positive energy buildings and districts and replicating them, driving cities towards sustainability goals. Many projects in smart cities demonstrate novel and groundbreaking low-carbon solutions in demonstration and lighthouse projects. However, as the historical, geographic, political, social and economic context of urban areas vary greatly, it is not always easy to repeat the solution in another city or even district. It is therefore important to look for the opportunities to scale up or repeat successful pilots. The purpose of this paper is to explore common trends in technologies and replication strategies for positive energy buildings or districts in smart city projects, based on the practical experience from a case study in Leipzig—one of the lighthouse cities in the project SPARCS. One of the key findings the paper has proven is the necessity of a profound replication modelling to deepen the understanding of upscaling processes. Three models analyzed in this article are able to provide a multidimensional representation of the solution to be replicated.

Practice Report “Smart Disaster Management” — Combining Smart City Data and Citizen Participation to Increase Disaster Resilience

i-com ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-193
Author(s):  
Daniel Wessel ◽  
Julien Holtz ◽  
Florian König
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Development Process ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Government Support ◽  
Sensor Data ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Mutual Support ◽  
The Everyday

Abstract Smart cities have a huge potential to increase the everyday efficiency of cities, but also to increase preparation and resilience in case of natural disasters. Especially for disasters which are somewhat predicable like floods, sensor data can be used to provide citizens with up-to-date, personalized and location-specific information (street or even house level resolution). This information allows citizens to better prepare to avert water damage to their property, reduce the needed government support, and — by connecting citizens locally — improve mutual support among neighbors. But how can a smart city application be designed that is both usable and able to function during disaster conditions? Which smart city information can be used? How can the likelihood of mutual, local support be increased? In this practice report, we present the human-centered development process of an app to use Smart City data to better prepare citizens for floods and improve their mutual support during disasters as a case study to answer these questions.

scholarly journals Modeling and Visualizing Smart City Mobility Business Ecosystems: Insights from a Case Study

Information ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Faber ◽  
Sven-Volker Rehm ◽  
Adrian Hernandez-Mendez ◽  
Florian Matthes
Keyword(s):  
Smart City ◽  
Design Science ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Knowledge Flows ◽  
Sustainable Mobility ◽  
Ecosystem Models ◽  
Business Ecosystem ◽  
Proactive Management ◽  
Business Ecosystems

Smart mobility is a central issue in the recent discourse about urban development policy towards smart cities. The design of innovative and sustainable mobility infrastructures as well as public policies require cooperation and innovations between various stakeholders—businesses as well as policy makers—of the business ecosystems that emerge around smart city initiatives. This poses a challenge for deploying instruments and approaches for the proactive management of such business ecosystems. In this article, we report on findings from a smart city initiative we have used as a case study to inform the development, implementation, and prototypical deployment of a visual analytic system (VAS). As results of our design science research we present an agile framework to collaboratively collect, aggregate and map data about the ecosystem. The VAS and the agile framework are intended to inform and stimulate knowledge flows between ecosystem stakeholders in order to reflect on viable business and policy strategies. Agile processes and roles to collaboratively manage and adapt business ecosystem models and visualizations are defined. We further introduce basic categories for identifying, assessing and selecting Internet data sources that provide the data for ecosystem models and we detail the ecosystem data and view models developed in our case study. Our model represents a first explication of categories for visualizing business ecosystem models in a smart city mobility context.

scholarly journals A Unified Smart City Model (USCM) for Smart City Conceptualization and Benchmarking

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonidas Anthopoulos ◽  
Marijn Janssen ◽  
Vishanth Weerakkody
Keyword(s):  
Health Education ◽  
Smart City ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Policy Impact ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Management Architecture ◽  
The World ◽  
City Model ◽  
And Control ◽  
Urban Characteristics

Smart cities have attracted an extensive and emerging interest from both science and industry with an increasing number of international examples emerging from all over the world. However, despite the significant role that smart cities can play to deal with recent urban challenges, the concept has been being criticized for not being able to realize its potential and for being a vendor hype. This paper reviews different conceptualization, benchmarks and evaluations of the smart city concept. Eight different classes of smart city conceptualization models have been discovered, which structure the unified conceptualization model and concern smart city facilities (i.e., energy, water, IoT etc.), services (i.e., health, education etc.), governance, planning and management, architecture, data and people. Benchmarking though is still ambiguous and different perspectives are followed by the researchers that measure -and recently monitor- various factors, which somehow exceed typical technological or urban characteristics. This can be attributed to the broadness of the smart city concept. This paper sheds light to parameters that can be measured and controlled in an attempt to improve smart city potential and leaves space for corresponding future research. More specifically, smart city progress, local capacity, vulnerabilities for resilience and policy impact are only some of the variants that scholars pay attention to measure and control.

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