3. “While technology is a powerful tool able to help improve urban
infrastructure, citizen engagement is essential to make cities truly
sustainable and liveable”
“Tailoring these [smart city] tools to the various needs and
abilities of different stakeholders in a smart city environment is
crucial in order to enable an effective and efficient usage, or
even any usage at all.”
“We believe that the role that citizens will play in the near
futures will be crucial. Top-down governance approaches are
gone for good and we need to shift the relation between city
governments and residents taking it one step further”
5. Challenges
• Top-down with a preset outcome
• Grenoble, Nantes > fablabs torched
• Utrechtse Heuvelrug
• Against smart lamp posts
• Usual suspects
• Based in social and community
work
• Lacking democratic legitimacy
6. Democratic deficit of smart cities
• Citizens do not know the concept nor the practices
• Rarely a election issue
(Amsterdam 2018: “big data is just the latest fad of hipsters”)
• Framed as operational issues not as political ones
• Civil servants lack a public brief or “policy without a polity”
• “no generally accepted rules and norms according to which
politics is to be conducted and policy measures are to be agreed
upon.”
Maarten Hajer (2003). Policy without polity? Policy analysis and the institutional void.”
Policy Sciences, 36(2), p.175-195.
7. ≠ Smart
Mechelen:
forgot to claim ownership of
the data
Veldhoven:
sensors to find out why
people do not come to the
centre of town
Amsterdam
Scraping Facebook profiles to find
problem youth
9. Data walks
• Smart city is invisible
• Raising awareness through walking
• What do you see, who owns it, what happens with, would you like more say
in it?
• You may see it, but that doesn’t help yet
• “Individual responsibility, instead of societal one”
• Urban Design Challenge
• Further reading in Sociale Vraagstukken, 5 september 2018
10. Data dialogue
• Personalized benefit and reintegration policy
• Linking CBS and municipal data
• How do people on benefit feel about the usage of their data?
• Privacy? They know everything about me
• Who is allowed to see my files?
• Why so repetitive, why so many mistake?
• Municipality cannot even handle normal data
• No automation please
• Artikel 17 Participatiewet contradicts the GDPR
• Further reading in Sociologie Magazine, june 2018.
11. Urban data game: Jouw buurt, jouw data
• Survey-game > data walk
• Knowledge, attitude, behavior
• Outcome for respondent > how do you share your data?
• awareness
12. Two models of democracy
Participatory
• Neighborhood
• Select group of people
• Do it yourself
• Based on practice
• Predictable outcomes
Representative/electoral
• Municipality
• Everyone
• Delegate
• Based on information
• Uncertain outcomes
Which one?
13. Further reading
Engelbert, J., Van Zoonen, L. & F. Hirzalla (2018). Excluding citizens from the
European Smart City: the discourse practices of pursuing and granting
smartness. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, available online first
Van Zoonen, L. (2017). Burgers en bestuurders in de slimme stad. Rotterdam
Lezing, 29 mei 2017.
Van Zoonen, L. (2016). Privacy concerns in smart cities. Government Information
Quarterly, 33(3), 472-480.
Van Zoonen, L., Hirzalla, F., Engelbert, J., Zuijderwijk, L. & L. Schokker (2017).
Seeing more than you think: a data walk in the city. Bang The Table.
Community Engagement Blog