Citizen’s Right to the Digital City


Book Description

Edited by thought leaders in the fields of urban informatics and urban interaction design, this book brings together case studies and examples from around the world to discuss the role that urban interfaces, citizen action, and city making play in the quest to create and maintain not only secure and resilient, but productive, sustainable and viable urban environments. The book debates the impact of these trends on theory, policy and practice. The individual chapters are based on blind peer reviewed contributions by leading researchers working at the intersection of the social / cultural, technical / digital, and physical / spatial domains of urbanism scholarship. The book will appeal not only to researchers and students, but also to a vast number of practitioners in the private and public sector interested in accessible content that clearly and rigorously analyses the potential offered by urban interfaces, mobile technology, and location-based services in the context of engaging people with open, smart and participatory urban environments.




The Right to the Smart City


Book Description

Globally, Smart Cities initiatives are pursued which reproduce the interests of capital and neoliberal government, rather than wider public good. This book explores smart urbanism and 'the right to the city', examining citizenship, social justice, commoning, civic participation, and co-creation to imagine a different kind of Smart City.




Citizens in the 'Smart City'


Book Description

This book critically examines ‘smart city’ discourse in terms of governance initiatives, citizen participation and policies which place emphasis on the ‘citizen’ as an active recipient and co-producer of technological solutions to urban problems. The current hype around smart cities and digital technologies has sparked debates in the fields of citizenship, urban studies and planning surrounding the rights and ethics of participation. It also sparked debates around the forms of governance these technologies actively foster. This book presents new socio-technological systems of governance that monitor citizen power, trust-building strategies, and social capital. It calls for new data economics and digital rights for a city founded on normative ideals rather than neoliberal ones. It adopts a normative approach arguing that a ‘reloaded’ smart city should foster citizenship as a new set of civil and social rights and the ‘citizen’ as a subject vested with active and meaningful forms of participation and political power. Ultimately, the book questions the utility of the ‘smart city’ project for radical municipalism, proposing a technological enough but more democratic city, an ‘intelligent city’ in fact. Offering useful contribution to smart city initiatives for the protection of emerging digital citizenship rights and socially accrued benefits, this book will draw the interest of researchers, policymakers, and professionals in the fields of urban studies, urban planning, urban geography, computing and technology studies, urban politics and urban economics.




Smart City Citizenship


Book Description

Smart City Citizenship provides rigorous analysis for academics and policymakers on the experimental, data-driven, and participatory processes of smart cities to help integrate ICT-related social innovation into urban life. Unlike other smart city books that are often edited collections, this book focuses on the business domain, grassroots social innovation, and AI-driven algorithmic and techno-political disruptions, also examining the role of citizens and the democratic governance issues raised from an interdisciplinary perspective. As smart city research is a fast-growing topic of scientific inquiry and evolving rapidly, this book is an ideal reference for a much-needed discussion. The book drives the reader to a better conceptual and applied comprehension of smart city citizenship for democratised hyper-connected-virialised post-COVID-19 societies. In addition, it provides a whole practical roadmap to build smart city citizenship inclusive and multistakeholder interventions through intertwined chapters of the book. Users will find a book that fills the knowledge gap between the purely critical studies on smart cities and those further constructive and highly promising socially innovative interventions using case study fieldwork action research empirical evidence drawn from several cities that are advancing and innovating smart city practices from the citizenship perspective. Utilises ongoing, action research fieldwork, comparative case studies for examining current governance issues, and the role of citizens in smart cities. Provides definitions of new key citizenship concepts, along with a techno-political framework and toolkit drawn from a community-oriented perspective. Shows how to design smart city governance initiatives, projects and policies based on applied research from the social innovation perspective. Highlights citizen's perspective and social empowerment in the AI-driven and algorithmic disruptive post-COVID-19 context in both transitional and experimental frameworks




The City at Eye Level


Book Description

Although rarely explored in academic literature, most inhabitants and visitors interact with an urban landscape on a day-to-day basis is on the street level. Storefronts, first floor apartments, and sidewalks are the most immediate and common experience of a city. These "plinths" are the ground floors that negotiate between inside and outside, the public and private spheres. The City at Eye Level qualitatively evaluates plinths by exploring specific examples from all over the world. Over twenty-five experts investigate the design, land use, and road and foot traffic in rigorously researched essays, case studies, and interviews. These pieces are supplemented by over two hundred beautiful color images and engage not only with issues in design, but also the concerns of urban communities. The editors have put together a comprehensive guide for anyone concerned with improving or building plinths, including planners, building owners, property and shop managers, designers, and architects.




Digital and Smart Cities


Book Description

Digital and Smart Cities presents an overview of how technologies shape our cities. There is a growing awareness in the fields of design and architecture of the need to address the way that technology affects the urban condition. This book aims to give an informative and definitive overview of the topic of digital and smart cities. It explores the topic from a range of different perspectives, both theoretical and historical, and through a range of case studies of digital cities around the world. The approach taken by the authors is to view the city as a socially constructed set of activities, practices and organisations. This enables the discussion to open up a more holistic and citizen- centred understanding of how technology shapes urban change through the way it is imagined, used, implemented and developed in a societal context. By drawing together a range of currently quite disparate discussions, the aim is to enable the reader to take their own critical position within the topic. The book starts out with definitions and sets out the various interpretations and aspects of what constitutes and defines digital cities. The text then investigates and considers the range of factors that shape the characteristics of digital cities and draws together different disciplinary perspectives into a coherent discussion. The consideration of the different dimensions of the digital city is backed up with a series of relevant case studies of global city contexts in order to frame the discussion with real world examples.




Smart Citizens, Smarter State


Book Description

Government “of the people, by the people, for the people” expresses an ideal that resonates in all democracies. Yet poll after poll reveals deep distrust of institutions that seem to have left “the people” out of the governing equation. Government bureaucracies that are supposed to solve critical problems on their own are a troublesome outgrowth of the professionalization of public life in the industrial age. They are especially ill-suited to confronting today’s complex challenges. Offering a far-reaching program for innovation, Smart Citizens, Smarter State suggests that public decisionmaking could be more effective and legitimate if government were smarter—if our institutions knew how to use technology to leverage citizens’ expertise. Just as individuals use only part of their brainpower to solve most problems, governing institutions make far too little use of the skills and experience of those inside and outside of government with scientific credentials, practical skills, and ground-level street smarts. New tools—what Beth Simone Noveck calls technologies of expertise—are making it possible to match the supply of citizen expertise to the demand for it in government. Drawing on a wide range of academic disciplines and practical examples from her work as an adviser to governments on institutional innovation, Noveck explores how to create more open and collaborative institutions. In so doing, she puts forward a profound new vision for participatory democracy rooted not in the paltry act of occasional voting or the serendipity of crowdsourcing but in people’s knowledge and know-how.




Citizenville


Book Description

“A fascinating case for a more engaged government, transformed to meet the challenges and possibilities of the twenty-first century.” —President William J. Clinton A rallying cry for revolutionizing democracy in the digital age, Citizenville reveals how ordinary Americans can reshape their government for the better. Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor of California, argues that today’s government is stuck in the last century while—in both the private sector and our personal lives—absolutely everything else has changed. Drawing on wide-ranging interviews with thinkers and politicians, Newsom shows how Americans can transform their government, taking matters into their own hands to dissolve political gridlock even as they produce tangible changes in the real world. Citizenville is a timely road map for restoring American prosperity and for reinventing citizenship in today’s networked age.




The Hackable City


Book Description

This open access book presents a selection of the best contributions to the Digital Cities 9 Workshop held in Limerick in 2015, combining a number of the latest academic insights into new collaborative modes of city making that are firmly rooted in empirical findings about the actual practices of citizens, designers and policy makers. It explores the affordances of new media technologies for empowering citizens in the process of city making, relating examples of bottom-up or participatory practices to reflections about the changing roles of professional practitioners in the processes, as well as issues of governance and institutional policymaking.




The Smart Enough City


Book Description

Why technology is not an end in itself, and how cities can be “smart enough,” using technology to promote democracy and equity. Smart cities, where technology is used to solve every problem, are hailed as futuristic urban utopias. We are promised that apps, algorithms, and artificial intelligence will relieve congestion, restore democracy, prevent crime, and improve public services. In The Smart Enough City, Ben Green warns against seeing the city only through the lens of technology; taking an exclusively technical view of urban life will lead to cities that appear smart but under the surface are rife with injustice and inequality. He proposes instead that cities strive to be “smart enough”: to embrace technology as a powerful tool when used in conjunction with other forms of social change—but not to value technology as an end in itself. In a technology-centric smart city, self-driving cars have the run of downtown and force out pedestrians, civic engagement is limited to requesting services through an app, police use algorithms to justify and perpetuate racist practices, and governments and private companies surveil public space to control behavior. Green describes smart city efforts gone wrong but also smart enough alternatives, attainable with the help of technology but not reducible to technology: a livable city, a democratic city, a just city, a responsible city, and an innovative city. By recognizing the complexity of urban life rather than merely seeing the city as something to optimize, these Smart Enough Cities successfully incorporate technology into a holistic vision of justice and equity.