scholarly journals Being a ‘citizen’ in the smart city: Up and down the scaffold of smart citizen participation

Author(s):  
Paolo Cardullo ◽  
Rob Kitchin

This paper critically appraises citizens’ participation in the smart city. Reacting to critiques that the smart city is overly technocratic and instrumental, companies and cities have reframed their initiatives as ‘citizen-centric’. However, what ‘citizen-centric’ means in practice is rarely articulated. We draw on and extend Sherry Arnstein’s seminal work on participation in planning and renewal programmes to create the ‘Scaffold of Smart Citizen Participation’ – a conceptual tool to unpack the diverse ways in which the smart city frames citizens. We then use this scaffold to measure smart citizen inclusion, participation, and empowerment in smart city initiatives in Dublin, Ireland. Our analysis illustrates how most ‘citizen-centric’ smart city initiatives are rooted in stewardship, civic paternalism, and a neoliberal conception of citizenship that prioritizes consumption choice and individual autonomy within a framework of state and corporate defined constraints that prioritize market-led solutions to urban issues, rather than being grounded in civil, social and political rights and the common good. We conclude that significant normative work is required to rethink ‘smart citizens’ and ‘smart citizenship’ and to remake smart cities if they are to truly become ‘citizen-centric’.

2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 345
Author(s):  
John Kleinsman

This article will argue that the notion of the common good is imperilled by a particular contemporary account of the moral good; one which, because of its (somewhat narrow) emphasis on the individual, readily lends itself to a state of 'moral hyperpluralism' in which 'the good' is primarily defined in terms of the promotion and protection of self-interest. At the same time, it will be argued that any quest to recover the notion of the common good cannot be achieved by either returning to, or holding onto, a more traditional account of morality. It will also be proposed that, as part of the quest to recover the common good, close attention needs to be paid to how the term is understood. The tension between individual autonomy and the welfare of society, and the differing ways in which this tension is resolved within different moral paradigms, will emerge as central to any discussion about the ongoing place of the common good in contemporary legal and moral debates. Finally, it is suggested that a solid basis for articulating a robust account of the common good may be found in the foundational and innovative work being done by thinkers of the gift to establish an alternative account of morality. 


2013 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Māmari Stephens

New Zealand's social security system was born out of a vision of society consistent with a definition of the common good informed by Christian ethics. The past 30 years, in particular, have seen fierce ideological battles fought between the left and right over the extent, coverage, and generosity of the system. Yet a remnant of the vision of the common good remains, whereby individuals can have some access, by virtue of social security, to the sufficient conditions of social life to be free enough to find some level of fulfilment in that life. However, the freedom to be good, as is also required by a broad understanding of the common good, is under threat within New Zealand's social security law. Social security law asserts a vision, and not a coherent one, of what it means to be good in New Zealand society.  Newly minted social obligations in the Social Security Act 1964 go beyond the purposes of the legislation; being unconnected to relieving need, maintaining fiscal prudence, or even seeking paid employment as a means of achieving welfare. These modern moral obligations ensure that beneficiaries' freedom to choose to live life in a way consonant with the common good is frustrated, if not substantially abrogated, striking the wrong balance between the law's protection of individual autonomy and its implementation of social imperatives in pursuit of the common good.


2017 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 681-686 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Inclezan ◽  
Luis I. Pradanos

AI developments on smart cities, if not critical, risk making a flawed urban model more efficient. Instead, we suggest that AI should challenge the mainstream techno-optimistic approach to solving urban problems by dialoguing with other academic fields, questioning the dominant urban paradigm, and creating transformative solutions. We claim that doing differently, rather than doing better, may be smarter for cities and the common good. This article is part of the special track on AI and Society.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-239
Author(s):  
Victoria Shamrai

The article reveals the role of education in ensuring the existence of a contemporary democratic system. Democratic governance is viewed through the prism of the crisis of representative democracy that arises in global world. The focus of the crisis forms a crisis of citizen participation in democratic governance. Among the various scenarios for overcoming this crisis, the emphasis is on a model of deliberative (“discussing”) democracy. Accordingly, a key role in the productive functioning of contemporary democracy belongs to public discourse. Public discourse has an internal contradiction. Its participants are guided by their own interests, but the productivity of the discourse is achieved only if it is subject to the requirements of the common good. Five criteria of the authenticity of the discourse that make it aimed at the common good are highlighted. The medium of discourse that ensures its authenticity is a public intellectual. It is proved that the main vocation of education in the contemporary democratic system is the production of a public intellectual as an effective social character. In this process, a key role belongs to humanitarian education, respectively organized.


Lex Russica ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 78-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. L. Likhter

The paper is devoted to the Russian Federation Constitutional Court understanding of the permissible limits of individual autonomy and boundaries of its limitation for the common good.Constitutional axiology as a form of direct relation to the model and practice of actual constitutionalism functions as the basis for the formation of a social policy. In Russia, economic cataclysms reveal problems in the system of pensions, taxation, employment and education. We are witnessing a certain deformation of the legal consciousness of the population. Such turning points inevitably raise questions about the best balance between the interests of the individual, society and the state.The threat of imbalance between public and private interests stimulates the highest judicial authorities to interfere in the formation of the hierarchy of constitutional and legal values. Increasingly, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation deals with issues of the common good, the need to take into account public interests in the resolution of tax, labor, civil and other types of disputes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-259
Author(s):  
Gloria Ostos Mota

Desde una aproximación neoinstitucionalista presentamos el OCI Los Cabos como una nueva organización para la participación ciudadana; según la clasificación de North, es un nuevo cuerpo político, que enfrentando los mismos retos para su autogobierno que Ostrom define para otras organizaciones en El Gobierno de los Bienes Comunes, propone además una nueva institución, el estándar internacional ISO 18091, para la gestión de calidad de los gobiernos locales, con el objetivo de promover la eficiencia y la participación ciudadana en el gobierno del bien común local, y global, según la Agenda 2030. En esta interacción compleja entre organizaciones (OCI Los Cabos) y organismos (gobierno local) con las viejas y nuevas instituciones se requiere de una participación ciudadana consciente y competente que desarrollando una inteligencia política colectiva contribuirá, sin duda, a un cambio institucional hacia una mejor gobernanza local global.


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