Paper at the Users Across Media conference

1. Challenging ’smart’ in smart city
strategies
Jacob Knudsen, Project Developer and Coordinator at VIFIN
(Resource Center for Integration), Municipality of Vejle,
Denmark
Kjetil Sandvik, Associate Professor, Dept. of Media,
Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen

2. Purpose of this paper
• This presentation will challenge this approach to smart city
strategies by proposing that instead of a 'technology first' approach,
we need to introduce the smart citizen in the center of smart city
strategic planning and development.
• Focusing on processes of citizen participation and co-creation as the
main driving force, we introduce a concept of 'smart city at eye
level'.
• The introduction of new media technology and new media uses
need to emerge from a profound understanding of the wants,
needs and abilities of the citizens in the center of these new cross-
media settings and will have to be accomplished in collaboration
with said citizens.
• This presentation will present some basic principles for ‘smart cities
at eye level’ explained through a case of action research based
development of new practices for media use in daycare institutions.

3. Point of departure
• Smart city strategies concern the improvement of
economic and political efficiency and the enabling of
social, cultural and urban development (Hollands 2008)
• Covers a variety of fields from improving
infrastructures, social and cultural development,
resilience strategies (e.g. green energy), improving
schools, social welfare institutions, public and private
institutions etc.
• The 'smart' in smart city strategies implies that these
efforts are accomplished by the introduction and
embedding of smart media technology into the very
fabric of society.

4. Smart city – a little too smart?
• No clear-cut definition: a general concept
provided with specific local meaning:
• Strategies for:
– City delelopment (e.g. attracting high-tech
companies and investments)
– Sector based development (e.g. green energy)
– Intelligent cities: the digitized, automatized city..
• Top-down-strategies

5. Smart City
Digitiza-
tion
strategies
Informat-
ion infra-
structure
Daycare
institut-
ions
Schools
Health
instituti-
ons
Public
service
Architec-
ture
Traffic

6. Smart City
Digitiza-
tion
Life-long
learning
Resiliense
Sustaina-
bilility
Rationa-
lization
Cost-
efficiency
Branding
Empow-
erment

7. Who is setting the agenda?
• Big corporations like IBM,Cisco Systems, Siemens
are playing important roles in providing city
planners with ‘smart city systems’:
• “Several decades from now cities will have
countless autonomous, intelligently functioning
IT systems that will have perfect knowledge of
users’ habits and energy consumption, and
provide optimum service…The goal of such a city
is to optimally regulate and control resources by
means of autonomous IT systems.” (Siemens)
Quoted from Adam Greenfield: Against the Smart City

8. From technology focus to people focus
• How might we use networked technologies to further the
prerogatives so notably absent from the smart-city
paradigm, particularly those having to do with solidarity,
mutuality and collective action?
• How might we inscribe a robust conception of the right to
the city in all of the technological interventions proposed,
including but not limited to those intended to enhance
personal mobility, citizen engagement and processes of
(individual and collective) self-determination?
• And what alternative conceptions of technology in the
urban everyday might support the open, tolerant, feisty,
opinionated character we associate with big-city life?
Quoted from Adam Greenfield: Against the Smart City

9. Clever City services
• Use digital technology to
solve problems
experienced by citizens
• Are built around the
needs of the people
who’s problems they are
trying to solve
• Are as simple as they can
be and easy to explain
• Collect as few data as are
required to solve the
problem for the citizens
• Are not platforms
Manifesto for the Clever City: http://www.theclevercity.net/

10. Clever City services
• Use digital technology to
solve problems
experienced by citizens
• Are built around the
needs of the people
who’s problems they are
trying to solve
• Are as simple as they can
be and easy to explain
• Collect as few data as are
required to solve the
problem for the citizens
• Are not platforms
Manifesto for the Clever City: http://www.theclevercity.net/
To establish a use case it is essential to understand the
‘users’; the human beings who a service is supposed
to help. This means really getting to know those
people. The service should be built around their
needs, not those of the city government or technology
provider.

11. Clever City services
• Use digital technology to
solve problems
experienced by citizens
• Are built around the
needs of the people
who’s problems they are
trying to solve
• Are as simple as they can
be and easy to explain
• Collect as few data as are
required to solve the
problem for the citizens
• Are not platforms
Manifesto for the Clever City: http://www.theclevercity.net/
The Smart City is a top-down all or nothing
proposition. We can start building the Clever City
bottom-up with one lamppost, bus stop or parking
space (and of course one problem). Maybe one day
we will join up all the individual Clever City services
and will have a Smart City. Maybe we never will, but
the Clever City can make a real difference to people’s
lives right now.

12. Challenging ’Smart’
• Smart city solutions must be developed in
close collaboration with the citizens
• Smart city solutions must be developed on the
basis of knowledge about the citizens’ wants,
needs and abilities
• Smart city solutions are only smart if they can
be used (seems self-evident, but reality proves
otherwise)

13. Smart City at eye level
• Smart City projects demand knowledge about
its users or they risk making strategies which
creates users who feel excluded by the
development.
• What are the users’ qualifications, needs,
capabilities?
• Empowerment: possibilities for participation,
collaboration and co-creation
• Customization: flexibility, adaptability

14. Basic rules for smart city at eyelevel
• It is all about creating good life - and all initiatives must relate to this basic
effort
• Digital technology is not an end in itself - it is the way it is being used and
is interacting with our lives that matters
• Solutions must be developed in collaboration with the citizens as co-
creative partners (creating empowering frames for this is imperative)
• Cross-media approach: connecting existing media technologies (digital,
analogue) in easy-to-use, creative ways
• Creating larger projects from smaller projects: possible to handle, shape,
and develop in collaborative and co-creative ways
• Perpetual beta way of thinking: focus on processes of never-ending
development, change, temporality
• Creating common spaces for experimentation and exploration:
possibilities for making new discoveries (serendipity)

15. Our project
• Towards a concept of ‘smart city at eye level’
• Challenging the technology-centric approach
• Specific cross media approach: humans first
combined/augmented with other types of media.
– Museums: creating participatory and co-creative
audience experiences
– Learning: creating post-graduate programs in
collaboration with users: customized, adaptable to
work situation
– Play: creating digital media practices with and for
children

16. Top-down
Eye level

17. Methods
• Action based research:
creating and studying at the
same time in collaboration
pedagogues and children
• User-driven and co-creative
development: creating frames
for the children’s own creative
experiments
• Process-oriented: both
development and use
practices are rooted in play
activities (not in end-results:
something to watch or show)

18. iPads decides
Pedagogues decides Children decides
Intended use vs creative use
Skepticism vs open-mindedness Habits vs creativity
Appropriating possibilities Challenging possibilities
Eye level
deve-
lopment

19. Appropriating the media technology
• Beyond the analogue-
digital divide:
• the iPad is just another
creative tool (like paper,
colors, clay...), it is just
another tool for play
(like LEGO bricks) and
may be combined with
other 'play technolo-
gies'.

20. Role of the media
• 1st degree media play: media as content,
language, discourse, aesthetic format create
starting point for creating play (not just
reproduction: reshaping, transforming,
combining to be appropriated by play)
• 2nd degree media play: media (media
technology) functioning as basis for play: the
media as toys, as creative objects with specific
affordances to be included in the play activity.
Kjetil Sandvik: 1st and 2nd degree media play:
the role and meaning of media in children's
play, 2009

21. © Klaus Thestrup, Aarhus University

22. Steps in the smart city at eye level
process: creating new practices
• Learning and exploring
(controlled by
pedagogues): to get
acquainted to the iPad, to
see its possibilities etc. It
is important with
planning and well-defined
frames for all to feel
comfortable (both
pedagogues and children)

23. Steps in the smart city at eye level
process: creating new practices
• Setting the iPad free
(controlled by both
pedagogues and
children): to improvise
and use the iPad in
impulsive ways, letting
children teach children,
insisting on process, not
product oriented

24. Steps in the smart city at eye level
process: creating new practices
• iPad fully integrated in
children's play (control-
led by children): iPads are
used for play, iPads are
inspiring play (maybe
even without being
physically present in the
play activity: moving like
in 'reverse camera',
imagining landscapes as if
using 'green screen' etc.)

25. Concluding remarks
• It is not a matter of replacing top-down with bottom-
up
• Eye-level strategies are about finding a common
ground for collaboration between developers, policy
makers (the ones setting the frames, like the
pedagogues in a daycare institution) and citizens co-
creatively creating and engaging in new practices (like
the children in the daycare institution)
• Focuses on the importance of process, of open-
mindedness towards change, and on key operating
modes like participation, collaboration and co-creation