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The Techno-Politics of Data and Smart Devolution in City-Regions: Comparing Glasgow, Bristol, Barcelona and Bilbao
Abstract
This paper explores the substantial effect that the critical understanding and techno-political consideration of data are having in some smart city strategies. Particularly, the paper presents some results of a comparative study of four cases of smart city transitions: Glasgow, Bristol, Barcelona, and Bilbao. Likewise, considering how relevant the city-regional path-dependency is in each territorial context, the paper will elucidate the notion of smart devolution as a key governance component that is enabling some cities to formulate their own smart city-regional governance policies and implement them by considering the role of the smart citizens as decision makers rather than mere data providers. The paper concludes by identifying an implicit smart city-regional governance strategy for each case based on the techno-politics of data and smart devolution.
... Potwierdza to bogata literatura zagraniczna z zakresu badań nad rozwojem miast z wykorzystaniem koncepcji inteligentnego wzrostu (m.in. Washburn i inni, 2010;Gibbs i inni, 2013;Neirotti i inni, 2014;Angelidou, 2015;Datta, 2015;Ahvenniemi i inni, 2017;Calzada, 2017;Kummitha i Crutzen, 2017;Beretta, 2018). W Polsce badania nad koncepcją smart city podejmują głównie ekonomiści (np. ...
... Początkowo idea miasta inteligentnego zakładała odgórne kreowanie miasta, ze szczególnym zwróceniem uwagi na rozwiązania technologiczne jako czynnika z jednej strony napędzającego rozwój gospodarczy miast, z drugiej poprawiającego jakość życia w nich (Letaifa, 2015). Obecnie coraz więcej uwagi zwraca się na udział społeczności lokalnych i ich pomysły w kreowaniu miasta (Calzada, 2017). Tym samym władze samorządowe starają się spełnić oczekiwania mieszkańców, tworząc miasta przyjazne do życia (Bruska, 2012). ...
... Szansą na właściwe wykorzystanie tej koncepcji jest odejście od zarządzania miastem zgodne z neoliberalnym modelem polityki miejskiej na rzecz oddolnego kreowania miasta. Potwierdzają to wnioski sformułowane przez I. Calzada (2017), który podaje, że coraz większą uwagę w badaniach nad miastami inteligentnymi powinno się zwracać na partycypację społeczną. W związku z tym należy uznać myśl szkoły refleksyjnej za prawidłową ścieżkę rozwoju miast inteligentnych, która powinna być wybierana przez zarządzających miastami. ...
... This understanding suggests another interpretation of the urban politics that increasingly overlap with metropolitan and city-regional politics with reference to their nation-states. This article aims to present this interpretation by discussing three interlinked factors: "prosperous competitiveness" (Sellers and Walks, 2013), "(smart) devolution" (Scott and Copeland, 2016;Calzada, 2017b), and the "right to decide" (Barceló et al., 2015). ...
... (iii) The third meaning of "(smart) devolution" involves connecting the transitional evolutions of ongoing smart city strategies at the urban scale by examining their effects at the upper levels, such as the metropolitan and city-regional levels. In the three analysed cases, these smart city governance transitions depict bottom-up, participatory, and more democratic representation, which relates closely to our previous theoretical argumentation and preliminary hypothesis (Calzada, 2017b). The working hypothesis is that metropolitanisation processes may reinforce bottom-up smart city practices through devolution at the urban and metropolitan scales (Calzada and Cobo, 2015) by provoking city-regional political responses in favour of further geodemocratic claims and "more to say" in political and urban terms. ...
... Comparative "(smart) devolution" policy analysis Barcelona (Vallbé et al, 2015;Tomàs, 2016) Bilbao (González, 2004) Glasgow ( 6. Smart city governance paradigm and ongoing transitions (Calzada, 2017b) Anti-corporate-uncertain From the private-sector-driven smart city "iBarcelona" (Adler, 2016) to "Barcelona initiatives in technological sovereignty" (BITS). After a large investment in the "smart city strategy" (iBarcelona) (Walt, 2015;Font Monté, 2016), BITS has recently been launched (Morozov and Bria, 2017). ...
In recent years, two apparently contradictory but, in fact, complementary socio-political phenomena have reinforced each other in the European urban realm: the re-scaling of nation-states through “devolution” and the emergence of two opposed versions of “nationalism” (i.e., ethnic, non-metropolitanised, state-centric, exclusive, and right-wing populist nationalism and civic, metropolitanised, stateless, inclusive and progressivist-emancipatory-social democratic nationalism). In light of these intertwined phenomena, this paper shows how an ongoing, pervasive, and uneven “metropolitanisation effect” is increasingly shaping city-regional political responses by overlapping metropolitan, city-regional, and national political scales and agendas. This effect is clear in three European cases driven by “civic nationalism” that are altering their referential nation-states’ uniformity through “devolution”. This paper compares three metropolitan (and city-regional) cases in the UK and in Spain, namely, Glasgow (Scotland), Barcelona (Catalonia), and Bilbao (Basque Country), by benchmarking their policy implementation and the tensions produced in reference to their nation-states. Fieldwork was conducted from January 2015 to June 2017 through in-depth interviews with stakeholders in the three locations. Despite the so-called pluri-national and federal dilemmas, this paper contributes to the examination of the side effects of “metropolitanisation” by considering three arguments based on geo-economics (“prosperous competitiveness”), geo-politics (“smart devolution”), and geo-democratics (“right to decide”). Finally, this paper adds to the existing research on metropolitan and city-regional politics by demonstrating why “devolution” matters and why it must be considered seriously. The “metropolitanisation effect” is key to understanding and transforming the current configurations of nation-states, such as the UK and Spain (as we currently know them), beyond internal discord around pluri-nationality and quasi-federalism. This paper concludes by suggesting the term “smart devolution” to promote more imaginative and entrepreneurial approaches to metropolitan and city-regional politics, policies, and experimental democracy within these nation-states. These approaches can identify and pursue “smart” avenues of timely, subtle, and innovative political strategies for change in the ongoing re-scaling devolution processes occurring in the UK and in Spain and in the consequent changes in the prospects for the refoundational momentum in the EU.
... Hungarian settlements followed different paths compared to the general global narrative and to each other as well. Our results support the findings of previous works (see Calzada, 2017;Caprotti & Cowley, 2019) that smart-city thinking cannot be lumped together, especially on the scale of medium-sized cities in Europe, which constitute a specific group. It can be observed, for example, that some developments are not only based on purely 'smart' intentions but on thematically more specific, well-defined local goals and aspirations that started the smart development process (as in the case of Miskolc for the protection of the local environment and joining the green cities movement). ...
... In creating this tool, residents need to become active actors. Furthermore, other city users, such as tourists, should be involved not only as data providers via smart devices but as locally embedded 'experts' (Calzada, 2017), thus increasing the embeddedness of different needs in developments. Nevertheless, as we discussed above in the literature review, residents trust smart devices less; thus, a development policy ought to consider providing information to people and sensitizing them. ...
Smart cities have spawned a global discourse, which is, however, dominated by notions and theories originating from major metropolis regions in the Global North/West, as well as by quantitative approaches. Drawing
on case studies from Hungary, this paper aims to reveal how place-specific factors influence smart-city development and to discover the characteristics of this development in the Hungarian context. For this purpose,
qualitative research methods, namely a content analysis of policy documents and semi-structured expert interviews, were used. Based on the results, we distinguished four development paths: representative, stalled,
organizational model, and focused smart city. Findings broaden the general understanding of smart-city development, providing policy recommendations for the future adaptation of the concept.
... Over the past two decades, "smart-" and "intelligent cities" have risen to prominence as a technological and policy fix for the current (and future) challenges of urban sustainability (Komninos, 2015). Forged at the intersection of urban development, economic growth, and urban technology, "smart" urbanism has travelled the globe as a "fast policy" planning paradigm (Angelidou, 2015;Calzada, 2017;Peck and Theodore, 2015). Cities looking to catalyze urban (re)development and enhance their economic competitiveness have readily embraced "smart" urban technologies and techniques of data-driven governance. ...
... In other words, the use of smart-city interventions, whether technological (chiefly addressing HUP) or social (chiefly addressing SUP), can have a distinct and uneven impact of experiences of spatial peripherality (GUP). Building privileged infrastructure systems may be heralded as a state spatial strategy to enhance the competitiveness and resilience of metropolitan regions (Brenner, 2004;Calzada, 2017); but because urban infrastructures are contested, power-laden elements of the urban fabric, they establish and exacerbate uneven access and uneven geographic development, with risks and failures experienced unequally across urban populations (Graham and Marvin, 2001). In the remainder of this paper, we assess the extent to which smartcity planning currently acknowledges, incorporates, and addresses this essential idea in practice. ...
The “smart city” has risen to global prominence over the past two decades as an urban planning and development strategy. As a broad but contested toolkit of technological services and policy interventions aimed at improving the efficacy and efficiency of urban systems, the “smart city” is subject to several pressing critiques. This paper acknowledges these concerns, but recognizes the potential of “urban intelligence” to enhance the resiliency of metropolitan areas. As such, we focus on an under-researched dimension of smart city urbanism: its application in peripheral urban areas. The paper introduces a threefold typology of: (a) geographic (spatial); (b) hard (material); and (c) soft (social) urban peripherality. Second, it reviews the concept of urban resilience and considers how its central characteristics can inform the objectives and implementation of “smart city” infrastructures and planning. Six European smart city plans are assessed via a qualitative content analysis, to identify the target of smart city actions; the characteristics of urban resilience mobilized; and the spatial focus of planned interventions. The comparative analysis reveals a variegated set of smart-city approaches. Notably, “smart” actions aimed at enhancing social innovation are the most common type of intervention, while overall there remains a strong tendency for smart urbanism to focus on the urban core. We conclude by calling for a research agenda addressing smartness in, of, and for, peripheral urban spaces and communities.
... Data accessibility provided by the internet and allied tools will empower citizen's media and data activists (Gutierrez and Stefania 2017). Devolution policies of states and cities are developed because of these technologies to achieve citizen-centric governance (Calzada 2017). ...
This chapter provides a conceptual understanding of the impact of advanced digital technologies on democracy with a special focus on artificial intelligence (AI). The explanation of the impact of the internet and allied technologies is themed into 1) power at the hands of the state or 2) diffuses from the state. In the current global politics, almost all the major powers of the world are vying for an upper hand in developing advanced digital technologies, especially AI. Among these, AI is the major technological development that brings the dichotomy in state's behaviour pitching surveillance against freedom. Anchored to AI, this chapter provides a good understanding of technology impact on the sustenance of democracy. The chapter concludes by providing a co-protectionist approach in formulating a new conceptual framework for digital democracy.
... Glasgow won its first award in 1990, when it became a European city of culture. Management is guided by the motto, "residents form a city", so it focuses on a model focused on human expectations, requirements and needs (Calzada, 2017). ...
The consumption of limited resources reaches an unbearable limit in limited natural systems. Population growth, urbanization and climate change have a negative impact on natural resources in terms of their quantity and quality. English expert David Attenborough and English Smart Cities have been interested in this issue for a long time. The aim of the article is therefore to identify Smart Cities' best practice in managing limited resources in the UK and to analyze how to manage them. Methods of analysis, synthesis, induction and deduction were used to fulfill the set goal. The main finding is that the limited resource management approaches in the analyzed cities (Milton Keynes, Glasgow and London) are based primarily on elements of education, cooperation and project management. The ecological aspect can not be developed without social adaptation, awareness and participation.
... National governments and technology companies, in choosing to provide resources to some cities and proposals but not others, indirectly define conditions and shape the very parameters of smart city implementation (Hodson et al., 2018). As smart technologies are embedded in the urban fabric, technical standards become de facto laws and technical expertize acquires unintended political powers (Calzada, 2017). Consequently, key political decisions are made by distant actors with no knowledge of the city and no reason to care for it (Allen, 2016). ...
In this paper, a curatorial perspective is developed to draw attention to the notion that smart cities are assembled within a field of relations and thus inevitably connected to constellations of actors, histories, materialities and ideas. In this way, a curatorial perspective informed by diverse disciplines such as art history, critical theory and institutional critique, can be used to reveal the struggles through which fragmented, entangled and shifting constellations of technologies, places and policy ideas are purposely cultivated to prefigure new ways of living in smart cities. Drawing on an in-depth longitudinal case study of Milton Keynes (MK), an English new town founded in 1967, this paper examines how concepts of a smart city were used to draw together, catalyze and possibly (re)configure pre-existing policies, narratives and materialities, i.e. to curate smart city developments. Urban curation, understood as the selection, organization and care for a constellation of elements and their relation to place, is revealed to be profoundly political. Actors with local remits curate urban constellations to render them receptive to smart city agendas while pursuing their contextually defined goals and often resisting those imposed from elsewhere.
... Secondly, there needs to be a set of comparative studies examining how the smart city landscape is taking shape in different cities around the world, making sense of general patterns and localised contingencies (see Karvonen et al., in press). The analyses conducted to date indicate clearly that the creation of smart cities has taken different paths and forms across the globe, with commonalities around the knowledge economy and its supporting infrastructure (Angelidou, 2017;Calzada, 2017;Ersoy, 2017). Dublin largely concurs with its emphasis on the knowledge economy and the advancement of networked digital technologies and sensor arrays, yet the literature also notes alternative paths, such as the post-2015 anti-corporate position of Barcelona's new administration and their notion of technological sovereignty (Galdon, 2017) and the social urbanism and spatial justice approach of Medellín, Colombia (McLaren and Agyeman, 2015). ...
While there is a relatively extensive literature concerning the nature of smart cities in general, the roles of corporate actors in their production and the development and deployment of specific smart city technologies, to date there have been relatively few studies that have examined the situated practices by which the smart city unfolds in specific places. In this paper, we draw on three sets of interviews (n = 114) and ethnographic fieldwork to chart the smart city ecosystem in Dublin, Ireland. We examine how the four city authorities have actively collaborated to frame a disparate and uncoordinated set of information and communication technology-led initiatives, what Dourish terms the ‘accidental smart city’, into an articulated vision of Dublin as a smart city. In particular, we focus on the work of ‘Smart Dublin’, a shared unit established to coordinate, manage and promote Dublin’s smart city initiatives and to drive new economic development opportunities centred on corporate interventions into urban management and living. Our analysis highlights the value of undertaking a holistic mapping of a smart city in formation, and the role of political and administrative geographies and specialist smart city units in shaping that formation.
... Secondly, there needs to be a set of comparative studies examining how the smart city landscape is taking shape in different cities around the world, making sense of general patterns and localised contingencies (see Karvonen et al., in press). The analyses conducted to date indicate clearly that the creation of smart cities has taken different paths and forms across the globe, with commonalities around the knowledge economy and its supporting infrastructure (Angelidou, 2017;Calzada, 2017;Ersoy, 2017). Dublin largely concurs with its emphasis on the knowledge economy and the advancement of networked digital technologies and sensor arrays, yet the literature also notes alternative paths, such as the post-2015 anti-corporate position of Barcelona's new administration and their notion of technological sovereignty (Galdon, 2017) and the social urbanism and spatial justice approach of Medellín, Colombia (McLaren and Agyeman, 2015). ...
While there is a relatively extensive literature concerning the nature of smart cities in general, the roles of corporate actors in their production, and the development and deployment of specific smart city technologies, to date there have been relatively few studies that have examined the situated practices as to how the smart city as a whole unfolds in specific places. In this paper, we chart the smart city ecosystem in Dublin, Ireland, and examine how the four city authorities have actively collaborated to progressively frame and mobilise an articulated vision of Dublin as a smart city. In particular, we focus on the work of ‘Smart Dublin’, a shared unit established to coordinate, manage and promote Dublin’s smart city initiatives. We argue that Smart Dublin has on the one hand sought to corral smart city initiatives within a common framework, and on the other has acted to boost the city-region’s smart city activities, especially with respect to economic development. Our analysis highlights the value of undertaking a holistic mapping of a smart city in formation, and the role of political and administrative geographies and specialist smart city units in shaping that formation.
... The strategy establishes collaboration channels among government, industry, academia and citizens(Angelidou, 2016;Bakici et al., 2012; Barcelona Smart City official website, 2016).Harrison (2017) notes a misalignment of the city's strategy with the reality and needs of Barcelona's urban population -actually, the initiative faced opposition from specific neighborhood associations and raised 'splintering urbanism' concerns(March & Ribera-Fumaz, 2016). However, Barcelona's smart city initiative is currently in the process of transitioning from a more of top-down to a bottom-up one(Calzada, 2017), using tools and methodologies such as smart districts, open collaborative spaces, infrastructures and open data. To implement the strategy, a major organizational reform took place, resulting in the creation of the 'Urban Habitat Department' (the 'smart city' department). ...
Smart city criticism concentrates on conceptual and methodological ambiguity, corporate driven utopian visions, overlooking citizen and other stakeholder potential, ‘splintering urbanism’, and lack of long term vision for sustainable urban development adapted to local needs. Inspired by this critical discourse, this paper aims to present smart city planning and development shortcomings on the basis of applied experience and, further, use this experience to create a new theoretical construct about shortcomings to smart city planning and development. Nine individual smart city cases (Barcelona, Stockholm, Chicago, Rio de Janeiro, PlanlT Valley, Cyberjaya, Masdar, Songdo International Business District, Konza) are explored on the basis of selected published material and in-depth case studies, highlighting the challenges and shortcomings that appeared during their development and implementation. Subsequently, the identified shortcomings are synthesized and assessed critically across contextual and strategic levels, uncovering underlying causal relationships. The findings are used to create a new theoretical construct, comprising two paths to shortcomings towards smart city planning and development.
... Consequently, technology audits are necessary to reveal just how fl exible, usable, and accessible these mundane technology designs are for different targeted stakeholders. From these daily-life routines of citizens, data-driven smart city-regions need to consider three democratic preconditions, taking into account not only the usability of the technology but also the impact at the community level: First, techno-politics of data has emerged as a prominent topic of debate for urban development insofar as we reconsider the different role of specifi c stakeholders in the given community (Calzada, 2017b). Second, around the power interdependencies between stakeholders, open innovation and new forms of knowledge are emerging between the helixes, particularly by pointing out the role of universities (Goddard and Kempton, 2016). ...
The EU Framework Programme Horizon 2020 (H2020), under its Smart City and Communities (SCC) scheme, encourages European cities and regions to activate their given social and economic structures. Although, it goes without saying that the transformation of smart cities seems to be rather difficult as long as socially innovative restructurating does not take place among stakeholders.
Based on a current H2020 SCC project, this paper sheds some light on the theoretical contributions of the triple and quadruple multi-stakeholder helix approaches. As such, it advocates that social innovation could rarely entirely flourish among stakeholders simply because the stakeholders’ structures show a fixed interdependence, far enough to contribute to a real transformation based on experimental governance and the urban commons.
Hence, this paper will present the Penta Helix multi-stakeholder framework referring to the transformative alliance between the public sector; the private sector; the academia, science, and technology sector; and the civic society. Ultimately, especially the novel approach of this paper will be to include the fifth helix: social entrepreneurs, activists, bricoleurs, brokers, and/or assemblers. This paper will attempt to define and locate the profile of this fifth helix as the key element to activating a real socially innovative transformation in smart cities’ understanding and practices.
This paper will be based on ongoing fieldwork research by presenting conclusions from some European cities and regions. Within the realm of this paper, social innovation could be presented as a methodological policy tool that could make effective systemic transformations in smart city institutional projects.
Decarbonising heat is critical for achieving climate change targets and reducing CO2 emissions. The U.K. Government has outlined actions to support the decarbonisation of heat, emphasising the importance of a place-based approach and undertaking action at localised scales. This paper focuses on Greater Manchester, a city region in North West England, with a strategic vision of achieving carbon neutrality by 2038. To support the achievement of this vision, Local Area Energy Plans (LAEPs) have been developed for the city region’s 10 local authorities with this providing a useful case study for understanding the challenges of implementing localised, place-based domestic heat decarbonisation actions. Drawing upon 34 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders associated with Greater Manchester’s low-carbon agenda, this paper discusses the disjuncture between Greater Manchester’s vision for domestic heat decarbonisation and the implementation of the actions outlined. Three sites have been identified where the disjuncture between the strategic vision and its implementation materialises. Each of these sites of disjuncture – priorities and needs, procurement, and shifting heating expectations and practices – are discussed in turn. The disjuncture present is shown to exclude certain members of society from engaging in decarbonisation practices, and acts as a barrier to the achievement of Greater Manchester’s vision for domestic heat decarbonisation. This paper advances understandings on the barriers to achieving place-based decarbonisation visions, and furthers the conceptualisation of ‘just transitions’. The identification of sites of disjuncture can be applied to other strategic visions and their implementation.
The paper focuses on the importance of e-democracy and the introduction of ICT in democratic processes, which in the age of computerization has a significant impact on the development of e-participation in developed societies. Based on comparisons of e-participatory tools in Austria, Croatia, Italy, and Slovenia, we want to show the current situation at both the local and national levels. It should be emphasized that with the development of e-participation tools, Croatia and Italy are ahead, while Austria and Slovenia are lagging behind the current trends in the development of e-participation. The reasons for this are mainly due to a lack of confidence in online security and a decline in interest for e-democracy, especially in Slovenia.
This paper is centred on the levels of participation in digital municipal platforms, and its goals are threefold: (1) to assess the normative aspirations and limitations of policy makers and key actors in the municipality with regard to the smart resident idea, with a focus on participation and privacy; (2) to assess and categorise levels of participation in varied social and geographic contexts in the city; and (3) to assess the possible link between participation and privacy practices among users. Empirically, this paper studies the practices of the inhabitants of Tel Aviv-Yafo City, with a focus on the use of digitised services provided by the municipality and the use of the celebrated project ‘Digi-Tel’ – a digital card that offers to the inhabitants of the city services, discounts, targeted information and benefits around the city. The assessment of the inhabitants’ practices is based on a survey that was conducted in four neighbourhoods with different socio-economic, ethnic and geographical characteristics. The survey is supplemented with interviews of prominent figures in the Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality to understand their views on participation and privacy. The paper concludes with a discussion of the varied profiles of the users and non-users of digital platforms in the city, revealing their complex approach to participation in the digital age.
This paper is a report on the recent special session of papers presented at the Regional Studies Association (RSA) Annual Conference in Dublin, entitled ‘Beyond Smart & Data-Driven City-Regions: Rethinking Stakeholder-Helixes Strategies’. The session was a collaboration between the Urban Transformations ESRC programme at the University of Oxford and the Future Cities Catapult.
Calzada, I. (2018), Political Regionalism: Devolution, Metropolitanisation and the Right to Decide. In Anssi Paasi, John Harrison and Martin Jones (eds), Handbook on the Geographies of Regions and Territories. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing. pp. 231-242. DOI: 10.4337/9781785365805.00029. ISBN: 9781785365799. https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781785365799/9781785365799.00029.xml
In response to policy-makers’ increasing claims to prioritise ‘people’ in smart city development, we explore the publicness of emerging practices across six UK cities: Bristol, Glasgow, London, Manchester, Milton Keynes, and Peterborough. Local smart city programmes are analysed as techno- public assemblages invoking variegated modalities of publicness. Our findings challenge the dystopian speculative critiques of the smart city, while nevertheless indicating the dominance of ‘entrepreneurial’ and ‘service user’ modes of the public. We highlight the risk of bifurcation within smart city assemblages, such that the ‘civic’ and ‘political’ roles of the public become siloed into less obdurate strands of programmatic activity.
This paper explores the substantial effect that the critical understanding and techno-political consideration of data are having in some smart city strategies. Particularly, the paper presents some results of a comparative study of four cases of smart city transitions: Glasgow, Bristol, Barcelona, and Bilbao. Likewise, considering how relevant the city-regional path-dependency is in each territorial context, the paper will elucidate the notion of smart devolution as a key governance component that is enabling some cities to formulate their own smart city-regional governance policies and implement them by considering the role of the smart citizens as decision makers rather than mere data providers. The paper concludes by identifying an implicit smart city-regional governance strategy for each case based on the techno-politics of data and smart devolution.
Henri Lefebvre talked of the “right to the city” alongside a right to information. As the urban environment becomes increasingly layered by abstract digital representation, Lefebvre's broader theory warrants application to the digital age. Through considering what is entailed by the urbanization of information, this paper examines the problems and implications of any “informational right to the city”. In directing Tony Benn's five questions of power towards Google, arguably the world's most powerful mediator of information, this paper exposes processes that occur when geographic information is mediated by powerful digital monopolies. We argue that Google currently occupies a dominant share of any informational right to the city. In the spirit of Benn's final question—“How do we get rid of you?”—the paper seeks to apply post-political theory in exploring a path to the possibility of more just information geographies. Henri Lefebvre parle d'un “droit à la ville” comme allant de pair avec le droit à l'information. Alors que de plus en plus de représentations numériques abstraites se superposent à l'environnement urbain, la théorie générale de Lefebvre mérite d'être appliquée à l'ère du numérique. En se penchant sur les enjeux de l'urbanisation de l'information, cet article analyse les difficultés et les implications d'un “droit informationnel à la ville”. Après avoir posé à Google, le vecteur d'information le plus puissant du monde, les cinq questions que Tony Benn avait adressées aux détenteurs de pouvoir, le texte expose les processus dérivant de l'intermédiation de l'information géographique par de puissants monopoles numériques. Il montre que Google occupe actuellement une position dominante dans tout droit informationnel à la ville. Dans l'esprit de la question finale de Benn—“Comment peut-on se débarrasser de vous?”—cet article vise à appliquer la théorie post-politique afin d'explorer les voies vers des géographies informationnelles plus équitables.
This paper discusses the forms and social implications of citizen engagement in government-sponsored participatory innovation platforms designed to serve urban economic renewal. Discussion starts with a review of smart city discourse, which in the context of economic development policy translates into cities' need to support innovativeness by creating smart environments, including facilitated participatory innovation platforms. Platform thinking is gaining prominence in economic renewal as it enables the utilisation of collective intelligence that emanates from the diversity of citizens and other stakeholders involved in local innovation processes. Real-life examples of urban platformisation discussed in this paper include enabler-driven innovation platforms and living labs in two Finnish cities, those of Helsinki and Tampere. Discussion centres on three cases, which involve different target groups in participatory innovation processes: Helsinki Living Labs (users), Demola (students) and Koklaamo (residents). Platforms are used to support both urban revitalisation and economic development, of which the former is based primarily on representative and the latter on instrumental mode of participation. If participatory platforms become a norm in local governance, it will mark a transition from party politics, expert dominance and siloed bureaucracy to public engagement which supports citizens' efforts to produce local public services and to build their own city. In the Nordic welfare society context democratic culture, welfarism and redistributive policy provide support to the emergence of participatory innovation platforms by strengthening social inclusion, taming the growth machine, and easing the tensions between pro-growth and anti-growth coalitions. To summarise, the challenge to cities in different societal contexts is to find locally adjusted ways to facilitate platformisation, and through platform-based citizen engagement support inclusive local economic development, which can be seen as a 'soft strategy' for easing social polarisation, socioeconomic segregation and intra-national inequalities.
This article draws upon the literature on governance so as to analyze substantive consequences of citizen participation in urban policies. Nevertheless, we believe that such analysis must take into account public policy’ ability to incorporate complexity. In order to do so, we suggest the notion of "integrality". Thus, understanding cities as urban assemblies made up of multiple versions of reality leads us to rethink the notion of politics. Subsequently, the idea of public action is developed offering new, hybrid and non modern concepts of political subjects and democracy.
Purpose
– In recent years, the term “smart city” has attracted a lot of attention from policy makers, business leaders and citizenship in general. Although there is not a unique definition of what a smart city is, it is generally accepted that “smart” urban policies refer to local governments’ initiatives that use information and communication technologies in order to increase the quality of life of their inhabitants while contributing to a sustainable development. So far, “smart city” approaches have generally been related to top-down processes of technology diffusion. The purpose of this paper is to present a broader view on “smart” initiatives to analyze both top-down and bottom-up dynamics in a smart city. The authors argue that these two perspectives are complementary and its combination can reinforce the collaboration between different city stakeholders. Top-down and bottom-up initiatives are not opposed forces but, on the contrary, can have a synergistic effect on the innovation capacity of the city. Both perspectives are illustrated by providing examples of different “smart” aspects in the city of Barcelona: smart districts, open collaborative spaces, infrastructures and open data.
Design/methodology/approach
– To illustrate the arguments, the authors analyze the case of the city of Barcelona providing examples of top-down and bottom-up initiatives in four different smart city aspects: smart districts, open collaborative spaces, infrastructures and open data. The research method is based on a case study (Yin, 1984). The primary data consisted on interviews to city council representatives as well as managers of local public institutions, like economic development offices, and local organizations like for instance coworking spaces. The authors interviewed also specialists on the innovation history of the city in order to validate the data. In addition, the authors used secondary data such as reports on the 22@, and documentation on the Barcelona innovation policies, as well as doing a compilation of press articles and the online content of the institutional webpages. All together, the authors have followed a data triangulation strategy to seek data validation based on the cross-verification of the analyzed data sources.
Findings
– The analysis suggests that the top-down and bottom-up perspectives are complementary and their combination can reinforce the collaboration between different city stakeholders. Top-down and bottom-up initiatives are not opposed forces but, on the contrary, can have a synergistic effect on the innovation capacity of the city. Both perspectives are illustrated by providing examples of different “smart” aspects in the city of Barcelona: smart districts, open collaborative spaces, infrastructures and open data.
Research limitations/implications
– Nevertheless, the analysis has its limitations. Even if the authors have emphasized the importance of the bottom-up initiatives, citizens do not have often the resources to act without governmental intervention. This is the case of services that require high-cost infrastructures or regulatory changes. Also, as it usually happens in the case of disruptive technology, it is hard for citizens to understand the possibilities of its use. In these cases, firms and institutions must play an important role in the first phases of the diffusion of innovations, by informing and incentivizing its use. It is also important to note that some of the emerging usages of technology are confronted to legal or regulatory issues. For instance, distributed and shared Wi-Fi networks might be in opposition to economic interests of internet providers, that often difficult its expansion. It is also the case of services of the sharing economy that represent a menace to established institutions (like the tensions between Uber and taxi companies, or Airbnb and hotels). In these cases, city halls like it is the case in Barcelona, tend to respond to these emergent uses of technology by regulating to ensure protection to existing corporate services.
Practical implications
– In conclusion, the transformational process that leads a city to become a smart city has to take in consideration the complexity and the plurality of the urban reality. Beyond considering citizens as being users, testers or consumers of technology, local administrations that are able to identify, nourish and integrate the emerging citizens’ initiatives would contribute to the reinforcement of a smart city reality.
Originality/value
– The contribution of the paper is to go beyond the generalized technologic discourse around smart cities by adding the layer of the citizens’ initiatives.
The notion of the ‘urban laboratory’ is increasingly striking a chord with actors involved in urban change. Is this term simply a metaphor for urban development or does it suggest urbanization by substantially different means? To answer this question, we review the work of science and technology studies (STS) scholars who have empirically investigated laboratories and practices of experimentation over the past three decades to understand the significance of these spaces of experimentation in urban contexts. Based on this overview of laboratory studies, we argue that urban laboratories and experimentation involve three key achievements — situatedness, change-orientation and contingency — that are useful for evaluating and critiquing those practices that claim to be urban laboratories. We conclude by considering some future directions of research on urban laboratories.
Open innovation, taken from the fields of business strategy and technology development, can offer planners fresh insights into their own practice. Open innovation, like citizen participation, goes outside the boundaries of the organization to find solutions to problems and to hand ideas off to partners. A key technique for open innovation is “crowdsourcing,” issuing a challenge to a large and diverse group in hopes of arriving at new solutions more robust than those found inside the organization. The differences between citizen participation and Internet-based crowdsourcing are discussed. Crowdsourcing case studies are provided as a means for extending an emerging literature.
Information and communication technology is changing the way in which cities organise policymaking and urban growth. Smart Cities base their strategy on the use of information and communication technologies in several fields such as economy, environment, mobility and governance to transform the city infrastructure and services. This paper draws on the city of Barcelona and intends to analyse its transformation from a traditional agglomeration to a twenty-first century metropolis. The case of Barcelona is of special interest due to its apparent desire, reflected by its current policies regarding urban planning, to be considered as a leading metropolis in Europe. Hence, an assessment of the Smart City initiative will cast light on the current status of Barcelona’s urban policy and its urban policy of Barcelona and its future directions. This article analyses Barcelona’s transformation in the areas of Smart City management; drivers, bottlenecks, conditions and assets. First, it presents the existing literature on Barcelona’s Smart City initiative. Then, the case study analysis is presented with the Barcelona Smart City model. After describing this model, we further explore the main components of the Smart City strategy of Barcelona in terms of Smart districts, living labs, initiatives, e-Services, infrastructures and Open Data. This paper also reveals certain benefits and challenges related to this initiative and its future directions. The results of the case study analysis indicate that Barcelona has been effectively implementing the Smart City strategy with an aim to be a Smart City model for the world.
In this article I explore how theoretical metaphors about the contemporary rescaling of the capitalist economy are used by local policy actors to justify an entrepreneurial urban policy. I develop a new theoretical concept (scalar narrative), suggest an analytical approach (cultural politics of scales) and give evidence of a particular case (Bilbao). The article is structured in the following way. First, I briefly review the literature on politics of scales and contribute to the debate with an approach that incorporates elements from cultural political economy and interpretative policy analysis. Within this approach I mobilize the concept of ‘scalar narrative’ that has already been suggested in the literature but not fully explored. I then put this approach into practice with a particular case study, Bilbao, a city in the north of Spain, which has recently gone through extensive urban regeneration, where I describe the appropriation of three scalar narratives by the policymakers. To show this I draw from empirical work done in Bilbao that looks at statutory and strategic planning documents as well as urban marketing literature and interviews with key informants.
This article introduces the special issue on the increasing role of cities as a driver for (open) innovation and entrepreneurship. It frames the innovation space being cultivated by proactive cities. Drawing on the diverse papers selected in this special issue, this introduction explores a series of tensions that are emerging as innovators and entrepreneurs seek to engage with local governments and citizens in an effort to improve the quality of life and promote local economic growth.
Crowdfunding, the raising of capital from a large and diverse pool of donors via online platforms, has grown exponentially in the past five years, spurred by the rise of Kickstarter and IndieGoGo. While legislative attention in the US has turned to the potential to use crowdfunding as a means of raising capital for companies, less attention has been paid to the use of crowdfunding for civic projects - projects involving either directly or indirectly, the use of government funds, assets or sponsorship, which may include the development of public assets. This project analyzes the subgenre of civic crowdfunding from three perspectives. First, it provides a comprehensive quantitative overview of the subgenre of civic crowdfunding, its most common project types and its geographic distribution. Second, it describes three edge cases, projects that, while uncommon, demonstrate the current limits, aspirations and potential future path of the subgenre. Third, it analyzes the historical and intellectual paradigms within which civic crowdfunding projects and platforms are operating: whether they are best located within the historical context of community fundraising, participatory planning, entrepreneurial culture or a combination of the three. In addressing these questions, the thesis will explore the potential benefits and challenges of using crowdfunding as a means of executing community-oriented projects in the built environment, and offer proposals for how public and non-profit institutions can engage with crowdfunding to realize civic outcomes.
Open innovation has received substantial business attention as a means of providing firms in hyper-competitive environments with the ability to create a stream of new products and services. For open innovation, organizing external sources correctly is a critical capability; current literature suggests that external sources should be organized either as collaborative communities or as competitive markets. While firms have generally been slow to adopt open innovation, many cities in the U.S. and Europe have been quick to embrace it—providing needed field-based experience on how to organize external sources. Based on our examination of six cities opening their data for innovation, we found that while cities often started with one or the other approach to organizing their external sources, each approach was inadequate in ways that could potentially be addressed by the addition of the other approach. Thus, we conclude with an integrated approach in which the needs of the entire ecosystem of sources and supporters of innovation are organized to address both competitive and community needs.
Public involvement is a central concern for urban planners, but the challenge for planners is how best to implement such programs, given many difficulties inherent in the typical public involvement process. The medium of the Web enables us to harness collective intellect among a population in ways face-to-face planning meetings cannot. This article argues that the crowdsourcing model, a successful, Web-based, distributed problem solving and production model for business, is an appropriate model for enabling the citizen participation process in public planning projects. This article begins with an exploration of the challenges of public participation in urban planning projects, particularly in the harnessing of creative solutions. An explanation of the theories of collective intelligence and crowd wisdom follows, arguing for the medium of the Web as an appropriate technology for harnessing far-flung genius. An exploration of crowdsourcing in a hypothetical neighborhood planning example, along with a consideration of the challenges of implementing crowdsourcing, concludes the article.
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s city-region is already the UK's most economically productive To cite this article [AOM]: Calzada, I., The Techno-Politics of Data and Smart Devolution in Cities-Regions: Comparing Glasgow Special Issue 'Smart Cities and Regions as Systems of Innovation'. Systems
- In Bristol
- West
- England
In Bristol, the West of England's city-region is already the UK's most economically productive
To cite this article [AOM]: Calzada, I., The Techno-Politics of Data and Smart Devolution in Cities-Regions: Comparing Glasgow, Bristol,
Barcelona, and Bilbao. Systems Journal (ISSN 2079-8954). Special Issue 'Smart Cities and Regions as Systems of Innovation'. Systems
2017, 5(1), 11; doi: //
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