Beyond Smart and Data-Driven City-Regions? Rethinking Stakeholder-Helixes Strategies

Abstract

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.

Full text

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25
Regions 308 Autumn 2017 Research Notes
planning certainly has an infl uence, but
it is highly fragmented and disjointed.
Moreover, there is discussion of various
forms of tax measures to better manage
land, but the possibility of pursuing a
fundamentally different approach is never
really discussed. The overall result is that
Dublin is anything but an example of ‘the
good geography’ seen by Cox (2017) as
befi tting European contexts.
Footnotes
iNational Asset Management Agency
(NAMA) was established by the Irish
Government in 2009 in order to take
over the non-performing loans of key
banking institutions in Ireland. NAMA
paid €30.2 billion for loans from five
key institutes. The value of these loans
was put at €71.2 billion. Its remit was
to obtain the best fi nancial return for
these loans. This included working with
developers where an agreement could
be reached, or, if not, calling in debt or
carrying out proceedings against debtors
(See Byrne, 2016).
iiSee: https://www.idaireland.com/docs/
publications/IDA_STRATEGY_FINAL
and: http://www.dubchamber.ie/docs/
business-guides/2050-report---edited-
(2)---no-printer-marks.pdf
iiihttp://www.independent.ie/business/
brexit/ida-ireland-needs-to-offer-more-
than-low-tax-rates-to-capitalise-on-
brexit-36186714.html
ivhttps://www.irishtimes.com/topics/
topics-7.1213540?article=true&tag_
company=Cairn+Homes
vhttp://www.independent.ie/business/
personal-fi nance/property-mortgages/
from-lack-of-housing-to-soaring-
rents-how-to-fix-the-housing-crisis-
revealed-36156588.html
Dr. Philip Lawton is an Assistant
Professor in Geography at Trinit y
College Dublin, Ireland. His
research interests are focused upon
the relationship between the eco-
nomic and social transformation of
contemporar y cities.
philip.lawton@tcd.ie
References
Byrne, M. (2016) “Entrepreneurial
Urban ism After the Crisis: Ireland’s
“Bad Ba nk” and the Redevelopment of
Dublin’s Docklands,” Antipode, 48(4),
pp. 899-918.
Byrne, M. and Norris, M. (2017)
“Procyclical Social Housing and
the Crisis of Irish Housing Policy:
Marketization, Social Housing,
and the Property Boom and
Bust,” Housing Policy Debate, DOI:
10.108 0/10511482. 2016.1257999
Cox, K. R. (2017) “Revisit ing ‘the city as
a growth mach ine’,” Cambridge Journal of
Regions, Economy and Society, https://doi.
org/10.1093/cjres/rsx011
Government of Ireland (2017) Ireland 2040:
National Planning Framework (Draft),
Government of Ireland, Dublin
Keil, R. (2002) “Common–Sense”
Neoliberalism: Progressive Conservative
Urban ism in Toronto, Canada,”
Antipode, 34(3), pp. 578-601.
Lawton, P., Murphy, E. and Redmond,
D. (2010) “Examining the role of
‘creative class’ ideas in urban and
economic policy format ion: the case of
Dubli n, Ireland,” International Journal of
Knowledge-Based Development, 1(4), pp.
267-86.
Molotch, H. (1976) “The city a s a grow th
machine: Toward a political economy
of place,” American journal of sociology,
82(2), pp. 309-32.
BEYOND SMART AND DATA-DRIVEN CITY-REGIONS?
RETHINKING STAKEHOLDER-HELIXES STRATEGIES
Igor Calzada, University of Oxford, Urban Transformations ESRC Programme
and Paul Cowie, Future Cities Catapult, UK
Introduction: Beyond Smart
Data-Driven City-Regions?
This paper is a report on the recent special
session of papers presented at the 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.
The focus of the session was to
add to the growing literature taking a
critical view of the hegemonic smart
city discourse. An increasing number
of nuanced critiques of a technology-
deterministic and hyper-connected
understanding of a smart city have
emerged (Calzada and Cobo, 2015).
This position seeks to ask questions
about the power of smartness and who it
serves. Likewise, it seeks to understand
the agents in the smart networks and
assemblages that make up the smart cit y.
Ultimately, we should also ask whether
another urban governance model is
possible, a ‘third way’ of urban experi-
mentation between state and market
(Keith and Calzada, 2017).
Alongside these meta-critiques of
the smart city, other academics are
exampling the underpinning technol-
ogy and how it is used to structure smart
cities. Many smart technologies rely on
ubiquitous sensing and wholesale data
collection on every aspect of cit y life.
To process this ‘ big data’, algor it hms are
created to identif y patterns and correla-
tions that then determine city policy in
domains as diverse as transport, health-
care, education or crime. The way in
which data is collected, exploited, and
owned should be ethically and politi-
cally challenged by both academics and
policymakers to deliver transparent
democratic accountability in cities and
regions.
Hence, the session emphasised that
smart city-regional designs – in the
way data is managed - have signifi cant
and serious democratic implications

26
Research Notes Regions 308 Autumn 2017
for usability and accessibilit y within
the intended community. The assump-
tion behind many smart city-regional
projects is that everyone owns a smart-
phone and knows how to operate it at
maximum performance. 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 precondi-
tions, taking into account not only the
usability of the technolog y 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 stakehold-
ers in the given community (Calzada,
2017b). Second, around the power
interdependencies between stakehold-
ers, open innovation and new forms of
knowledge are emerging between the
helixes, particularly by pointing out
the role of universities (Goddard and
Kempton, 2016). Third, consequently,
despite the so-called public-private-
partnership governance scheme and the
‘potential’ proactive role of universities,
other urban partnership schemes should
be encouraged and explored in cities
and regions by experimenting with
the agency rather than with merely the
institutional structures.
Amidst the Helix Thinking:
Triple Helix (TH),
Quadruple Helix (QH) and
Penta Helix (PH)?
To assume this challenge, the session
used the lens of the Helix Thinking.
Helix Thinking examines the stake-
holders’ pervasive involvement in the
development of city-regions. The origi-
nal Triple Helix model (TH) (Etzkowitz
and Leydesdorff, 2000), was structured
around university-industr y-government
relations. Building on the TH model of
innovation, the Quadruple-Helix (QH)
also includes the citizen or communit y
that inhabits the smart city-region
within the decision-making processes.
The initial TH model was developed as
a way to conceptualise public innova-
tion and the fl ow of knowledge in open
innovation systems. In those days, it
could be seen as an almost ‘disruptive’
idea. Soon, however, the institutional
arrangements that were established
in the name of TH became more
separated and conventional. Insofar
as the inventions were supposed to be
generated in what has been cal led the
‘knowledge infrastructure’ (by which
is usually meant universities), devel-
oped through the ‘support structure’
(usually tax-fi nanced incubators) and
finally commercialised in the ‘pro-
duction structure’ (private sector as
business-as-usual).
However, due to recent projects and
initiatives in which techno-political
awareness is transforming the conditions
and ownership of data itself, another
extension and updated version of the
Helix Thinking was proposed as the
Penta Helix (PH) (Satyam and Calzada,
2017). The PH framework, in contrast
to the institutional structuralist TH and
QH, is novel in that its contribution
includes (social) entrepreneurs, activists,
assemblers, or bricoleurs as an additional
helix, which emphasizes the active role
of citizenships as an agency of sys-
temic, bottom-up and disruptive social
innovation. Some cities and regions in
Europe are already being self-organised
by following what is called ‘city-as-a-
platform’ (Anttiroiko, 2016). In those
newly emerged contexts, transformative
alliances among the public sector, pri-
vate sector, academia, and civic society
are being fuelled by a fi fth helix, formed
by connecting the previous four. This
fi fth helix is the key driver not only to
transform and democratise the smart
city concept but also to experiment
across institutional boundaries in search
of the urban commons (Oström, 2010).
In this paper, we seek to expand this
understanding of the TH, QH, and PH
frameworks and broaden its application
to include the governance of smart cit-
ies. The governance of cities has always
focused on the physical elements of the
city—its buildings, infrastructure, and
green spaces. It has included regulating
the fl ows and networks that allow the
city to function. Smart city-regions add
an additional layer to this complexity,
that of technology and data. Therefore,
governance is about not only creating
laws and regulations that mediate between
the competing claims to the city and its
resources but also introducing changes to
achieve more democratic communities.
As such, it is about mediating between
the various institutional structures and
social agent s existi ng in the city and their
relationship to power, both political and
fi nancial power. The Helix Thinking, in
its variegated forms, allows these fl ows and
institutional assemblages, as well as the
entrepreneurial networks of citizens, to
be interrogated and understood, particu-
larly as they are mediated through sensing
technologies and big data algorithms. As
is shown in Table 1, in the following sec-
tion, we will elaborate comparatively on
the three variegated versions of the Helix
Thinking throughout the summary of the
three papers presented and discussed:
The Conference
Session Debate
The first paper of the special session
considered the role of the university as
an anchor institution within the QH.
This includes examining both its role
as a cultural institution and its physical
inf luence on the built environment of
the city. The next paper took a practical
view of the QH, focusing on how we
Table elaborated by Calzada, 2016
Table 1: Triple Helix, Quadruple Helix and Penta Helix frameworks
Triple Helix
(TH)
Quadruple Helix
(QH)
Penta Hel ix
(PH)
Literature s%TZKOWITHZ
,EYDESDORFF
s'ODDARD s/STROM
s!NT TIRO IKO
s#A LZADA AANDB
Multi-Stakeholders s0UBL IC
s0RIVATE
s!CAD EMIA
s0UBLIC
s0RIVATE
s!CAD EMIA
s#IVIC3OCIET Y
s0UBLIC
s0RIVATE
s!CAD EMIA
s!SSEMBLERS3OCIAL
%NTREPRENEURS
ORAND!CTIVISTS
Paradigm s 000 #IVIC5 NIVERS ITIES 5R BAN#OM MONS
Governance Scheme &
Citizenship Response
)NVI SIBLE#IT IZEN SHIP 2E ACTIVECit izenship 0R OACT IVE#ITI ZENSH IP
Tec hn o- Pol itic s of Dat a Tec hn ocr at ic
Top - Dow n
Inst itutiona lised B ottom-Up Emergent & Complex
Bottom-Up
Rethin king Stakeholders’ Helixes- Strategies

27
Regions 308 Autumn 2017 Research Notes
understand the wicked problems
posed by smart cities and ensure
transparency and legitimacy on the
solutions implemented by the city.
The fi nal paper explores a variation
in the Helix Thinking: It added
a fi fth helix related to and diluted
amidst the previous four helixes of
the QH framework.
In the fi rst paper, Goddard advo-
cated the QH framework to describe
a partnership convened by universi-
ties as key civic institutions with the
capacity to contribute to shaping the
future development of their cities.
He suggested that global knowledge
locked up in universities could be
mobilized to ‘anchor’ the univer-
sity locally in the city by the use of
urban foresight methodologies. In
essence, this approach challenges the
traditional linear models of science
and technology push approach to
city development through research
commercialisation, which have been
embraced by governments through
support of so-called TH partnerships
between the state, universities, and busi-
nesses and the creation of urban science
parks. Thus, the ‘Civic University’ was
suggested as contrasting the traditional
university, insofar as there are strong
overlaps between the three domains of
teaching, research, and societal engage-
ment and the adoption of a holistic view
of city development.
In the next paper, Cowie, recognis-
ing the large amount of data that there is
in cities and regions, noted that the QH
framework includes diverse ways that
citizens can actually benefi t from recent
developments in urban technologies, as
well as how such data-driven smart city-
regions can enable a collaborative culture
of citizen engagement to emerge. Thus,
this paper argued that individuals need
to be engaged on the issue as citizens by
deliberating on the conditions and safe-
guards, as well as consumers by agreeing
or disagreeing to terms of ser vice. It
also explored the heterogenous role of
the citizen and their differentiated and
complex relationship with the smart city
and its technologies. The paper reported
on a prototype innovation toolkit which
aims to open up the process of designing
and delivering smart city projects. Based
on aspects of design thinking and ‘pub-
lic innovation’, it seeks to democratize
the process of smart city development
and move beyond solutions driven by
already experimenting, conscious
or unconciously, from the QH to
PH by hybriding their groups of
entrepreneurs and activists within
the public sphere, private sphere,
academia, and civic society (see
Figure 1). Ultimately, the PH
framework focuses on establishing
data-driven smart city-regions as
ecosystems’ of citizens’ rather than
‘systems’ of systems’.
Final Remark: Squaring
the Circle of the
Stakeholder-Helixes
Strategies?
To sum m a r i s e , w h i le D e a k i n
(2014) considered the TH frame-
work suffi cient to ‘cultivate the
environmental capacity, ecol-
ogy and vitality of those spaces
which the direct democracy of
their participatory governance
open up, add value to and con-
struct’, this special session simply
reacted to this assumption by inviting
the rethinking of an updated version
of the Stakeholder-Helixes Strategies.
This widening of the domain of Helix
Thinking places additional burdens on
the theoretical framework which needs
to be developed to accommodate them.
Despite the approach remaining rather
experimental (Calzada, 2017a), we
have noted a wide and fruitful terrain
to explore and intervene from both the
research and policy perspective. This
can be achieved by collecting initiatives
- not only those ongoing projects related
to the QH framework presented in this
paper, such as ‘civic universities’, but also
those less visible and institutionalised
with a high degree of disruptive and
transformative potential at the com-
munity level. At present, such projects
are being emergently cultivated around
the PH framework in many communi-
ties in Europe and worldwide. As such,
in the short-term, squaring the circle of
the Stakeholder-Helixes Strategies may
imply allowing communities in cities
and regions to fi nd their own way to
tailor and own a data-driven revolution
while empowering their city-regional
endogenous governance through assem-
bling stakeholders’ present interests and
future visions.
Footnote
ihttp://umbrellium.co.uk/initiatives/
urban-innovation-toolkit/
technology and big data. Its open source
format allows col laboration between cit-
ies as wel l as within them.
Finally, in the last paper, Calzada, after
reviewing the evolution from the TH to
the QH, highlighted the need to trans-
form smart cit y practices using the social
innovation perspective by presenting the
PH framework. This variegated version
of the Helix Thinking is suggested given
the overly fi xed and bureaucratic frame-
works, such as those being implemented
at present in the H2020-Smart Cities
and Communities lighthouse projects
funded by the European Commission. In
such projects, besides the market crea-
tion and competitiveness imperatives,
little is left for experimenting among
entrepreneurial networks of individuals
and/or groups among cities and reg ions.
This could be seen, in essence, as the
system ic innovative spark towards tack-
ling the lack of political engagement
and democratic representation of the
whole Helix governance framework
nowadays. The PH framework, thus, is
related to and diluted in the other four
helixes by claiming the need to expand
the understanding of the data-driven
smart ‘city-as-a-platform’ and focusing
on the identifi cation of the urban assets
as ‘urban commons’, overcoming the
conventional public-private partnership
governance model. He provided exam-
ples—such as Mondragon (Spain), Kaos
Pilot (Denmark) and Team Academy
(Finland)—of how some universities are
Figure 1: Penta Helix Multi-stakeholder
framework
Source: Calzada, 2017a

28
Research Notes Regions 308 Autumn 2017
Introduction
Urban and regional
authorities in
advanced indus-
trialised countries
are turning to a
new generation of
global infrastruc-
ture public-private
partnerships (PPPs) in order to lever-
age private investment for social and
transportation infrastructure projects.
Increasingly such PPPs involve consortia
of international construction companies
and investment fi rms, which raise capi-
tal from global equity and bond markets
in order to cover extra costs required
for the fi nancing, delivery and opera-
tion of regional infrastructure projects.
National and provincial governments
in different countries have, in turn,
promoted new PPP arrangements as
part of wider efforts to stimulate the
growth of major city-regional agglom-
erations. At the same time, different
geopolitical visions and representations
of city-regionalism are often enrolled
in the various efforts of economic and
political actors to draw down future
infrastructural investments and realise
domestic and international economic
development agendas. However, very
little research has been conducted on the
relationship between global infrastruc-
ture PPPs and city-regional governance
processes. Stronger conceptual links
therefore need to be drawn between the
fi nancing and delivery of infrastructure
and the corresponding geopolitical
processes operating around city-regions.
Previous research suggests that the
rise of city-regionalism potentially
threatens the established geopolitical
authorit y of the nation-state (Scott,
2001; Jonas and Moisio, 2016).
However, little is known about the role
of collective provision of infrastructure
in shaping city-regional geopolitical
processes and outcomes. This research
investigates the claim that competition
to attract global private investment
for regional infrastructure projects is
an increasingly influential factor in
the geopolitical orchestration of city-
regionalism both domestically and
internationally.
Case studies of city-regionalism have
been conducted in different countries in
order to investigate the variegated char-
acter of geopolitical processes at work.
This research note reports initial fi nd-
ings from studies undertaken in Helsinki
City Region in Finland, Seattle-Tacoma
City Region in the USA, and Shanghai
and the Yangtze River Delta Reg ion
in China. The research has involved
interviews and col laborations with local
researchers and stakeholders involved in
the planning, fi nancing and deliver y of
regional infrastructure.
Helsinki City Region,
Finland
The provision of infrastructure and
services has traditionally involved close
collaboration bet ween the Finnish state
and municipalities, which enjoy broad
constitutional autonomy. It does not
come as a revelation then that, until
quite recently, only a handful of infra-
structure projects in Finland have used
PPPs to leverage private funds from
global investors. Nonetheless, new PPP
models have started to attract interest
from investors due to mounting pressure
on public budgets as well as growing
national political recognition of the
CITY-REGIONALISM AND THE COLLECTIVE PROVISION OF
INFRASTRUCTURE: A GEOPOLITICAL PERSPECTIVE
Andrew E.G Jonas, University of Hull, UK
References
Antt iroiko, A. V. (2016) “City-As-A-Platform:
Towards Citizen-centre Platfor m
Governance,” RSA Winter Conference
2016 on New Pressures on Cities and Regions,
London.
Calzada, I. (2017a) “From Sm art Cities to
Experimental Cities?” in V. M. Giorgino
and Z. D. Walsh (Eds.) Co-Designing
Economies in Transition: Radical Approaches in
Dialogue with Contemplative Social Sciences,
Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Calzada, I. (2017b) “The Techno-Politics
of Data and Smart Devolution in City-
Regions: Comparing Glasgow, Bristol,
Barcelona, and Bilbao,” Systems, Vol. 5 No.
1, pp. 1-18.
Calzada, I. and Cobo, C. (2015) “Unplugging:
Deconstructing t he Smart City”, Journal of
Urban Technology, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 23-43.
Deak in, M. (2014) “Sm art cities : the state-of-
the-art and governance challenge”, Tr ipl e
Helix, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 1-16.
Etzkowitz, H. and Leydesdorff, L. (2000) “The
dynamics of innovation: from National
Systems and ‘Mode 2’ to a Triple Helix of
universit y-industr y-government relations,”
Research Policy, Vol. 29, pp. 109-123.
Goddard, J. and Kempton, L. (2016) The
Civic University: Universities in leadership and
management of place. RR2016/01. University
of Warwick: Warwick.
Keith, M. and Calzada, I. (2017) European
Urban Living Labs As Experimental City-to-
City-Learning Platforms. Bridging European
Urban Transformations Workshop Series
ESRC in Brussels [Online]. Available:
http://www.urbantransformations.ox.ac.
uk/blog/2017/european-urban-living-
labs-as-experimental-city-to-city-learning-
platforms/
Oström, E. (2010) “Beyond Markets and
States: Polycentric Governa nce of
Complex Economic Systems”, Tran snat ion al
Corporations Review, Vol. 2 No. 2, pp. 1-12.
Dr Igor Calzada is a Lecturer
and Researcher at the Urban
Transformations ESRC, University of
Oxford/COMPAS, Strathclyde and
Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His main
research interests include: devolution,
city-regions (www.cityregions.org) and
smart cities (www.replicate-project.eu).
Igor is a Member of the RSA’s Smart
City-Regional Governance network.
igor.calzada@compas.ox.ac.uk
Dr Paul Cowie is an ESRC/Future
Cities Catapult Fellow at Newcastle
University and ESRC Urban
Transformations Portfolio. Project Team
Newcastle City Futures, U K (http://
www.newcastlecityfutures.org/). His
main research interests include: the
governance of smart cities (http://
futurecities.catapult.org.uk/), citizen
engagement and the future of planning.
paul.cowie@ncl.ac.uk

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in coastal development scenarios and related policy formation
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Transitions in the Coastal Zone and the papers present the current
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In our In Depth, Christina Beatty and Steve Fothergill take a critical
look at the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy concluding that it is
unlikely to redress the regional inequalities that have arisen from a
legacy of industrial decline and job loss emanating in the early 1980’s
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This issue also marks the ending of an era, being the last issue of
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team launch the on-line version of Regions[MXLXLIMRXIRXMSRSJQEOMRK
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