Deciphering Smart City Citizenship: The Techno-Politics of Data and Urban Co-operative Platforms

Abstract

The hegemonic ‘smart city’ approach in the European H2020 institutional framework is slowly evolving into a new citizen-centric paradigm called the ‘experimental city’. While this evolution incorporates social innovations—including urban co-operative
platforms that are flourishing as (smart) citizens are increasingly considered decision-makers rather than data providers—certain underlying ethical and democratic issues concerning the techno-politics of data remain unresolved.

To cite this article:
Calzada, I. (2018), Deciphering Smart City Citizenship: The Techno-Politics of Data and Urban Co-operative Platforms. RIEV, Revista Internacional de Estudios Vascos/International Journal on Basque Studies 63(1-2):42-81. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.24498.35524/6.

Full text

Europako H2020 erakunde-esparruan, «hiri
adimendunaren» ikuspegi nagusia apurka-apurka
bilakatzen ari da herritarrengan ardaztutako «hiri
esperimentala» deritzon beste paradigma batera.
Bilakaera horrek berrikuntza sozialak ekarri baditu
ere –adibidez, hiri-plataforma kooperatiboak loratzen
ari dira, herritarrek (adimendunek) beren burua datu-
hornitzailetzat baino gehiago erabaki-hartzailetzat
hartzen duten heinean–, datuen teknopolitikarekin
zerikusia duten azpiko arazo etiko eta demokratiko
batzuk konpontzeke daude oraindik.
Giltza-Hitzak: Hiri adimendunak. Living labs. Hiri-
plataforma kooperatiboak. Berrikuntza soziala. Europa.
Datuen teknopolitika. Eskubide digitalak. Penta Helix.
El enfoque hegemónico de “ciudad inteligente” en el
marco institucional europeo H2020 está
evolucionando lentamente hacia un nuevo paradigma
centrado en los ciudadanos llamado “ciudad
experimental”. Si bien esta evolución incorpora
innovaciones sociales, incluidas las plataformas
cooperativas urbanas que están floreciendo a medida
que los ciudadanos (inteligentes) se consideran cada
vez más tomadores de decisiones en lugar de
proveedores de datos, ciertos problemas éticos y
democráticos subyacentes relacionados con la
tecnopolítica de los datos siguen sin resolverse.
Palabras Clave: Ciudades inteligentes. Living labs.
Plataformas cooperativas urbanas. Innovación social.
Europa. La tecnopolítica de los datos. Derechos
digitales. Penta Helix.
L'approche hégémonique de « ville intelligente » dans
le cadre institutionnel européen H2020 évolue
lentement vers un nouveau paradigme centré sur le
citoyen, appelé « ville expérimentale ». Bien que cette
évolution intègre des innovations sociales, y compris
les plates-formes de coopération urbaine florissantes
au fur et à mesure que les citoyens (intelligents) se
considèrent davantage comme des décideurs plutôt
que comme des fournisseurs de données, certains
problèmes éthiques et démocratiques sous-jacents liés
à la technopolitique des données restent non résolus.
Mots-Clés : Villes intelligentes. Living labs. Plates-
formes coopératives urbaines. Innovation sociale.
Europe. La technopolitique des données. Droits
numériques. Penta Helix.
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Deciphering Smart
City Citizenship:
The Techno-Politics of Data and
Urban Co-operative Platforms
Calzada Mugica, Igor
University of Oxford. Urban Transformations ESRC &
Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities, COMPAS
(ESRC Centre on Migration, Policy and Society)
58 Banbury Road, Oxford, OX2 6QS – UK
igor.calzada@compas.ox.ac.uk
www.orcid.org/0000-0002-4269-830X
BIBLID [0212-7016 (2018), 63: 1-2; 44-83]
Reccep.: 2018.01.31
Accep.: 2019.01.09
06-RIEV 63, 1-2_Igor Calzada_Maquetación 1 29/08/19 10:41 Página 45
To cite this article:
Calzada, I. (2018),
Deciphering Smart City Citizenship: The Techno-Politics of Data and Urban Co-operative Platforms.
RIEV, Revista Internacional de Estudios Vascos/International Journal on Basque Studies
63(1-2):42-81. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.24498.35524/6.
To access journal version:
http://www.eusko-ikaskuntza.eus/en/publications/deciphering-smart-city-citizenship-the-techno-politics-of-data-
and-urban-co-operative-platforms/art-24544/
To access to the preprint version:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334672459_Deciphering_Smart_City_Citizenship_The_Techno-
Politics_of_Data_and_Urban_Co-operative_Platforms

1. Introduction: smart city citizenship at stake in the European
city-regional realm
According to billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros, the giant multina-
tional technology firms Facebook and Google have become “obstacles to innovation,
and are a menace to society” (Solon 2018:1). Amid hegemonic rhetoric about the
promises of techno-centric smart cities (Angelo and Vormann 2018), Soros recently
stated at the World Economic Forum that the “days are numbered for the two geek
giants”. Moreover, the digital philosopher Eugeny Morozov has argued that the eco-
nomics of these giants’ data extraction are creating a world in which they build ad-
dictive services to gather citizens’ data to develop artificial intelligence (AI) and
machine learning solutions for the very addiction problem they created (Morozov
2018).
Because of this timely debate, smart city citizenship is at stake in some Eu-
ropean (smart) cities and regions, depending on how they react to the disruption to
the techno-politics of data privacy, literacy, awareness, and ownership in their policies
and communities caused by projects such as Google Urbanism (2018) and the ‘shar-
ing economy’ (exemplified by AirBnB, Uber, Cabify, and Amazon). At present,
Barcelona is an archetypal case of a European city evolving towards a new citizen-
centric paradigm called the ‘experimental city’ (Calzada 2018a; 2018b). This con-
trasts with Toronto, Canada, where a controversial debate about privacy, identity,
and security around data is taking place around the internationally renowned inter-
vention called Sidewalk Labs, designed by Alphabet/Google (Sidewalk Labs 2018).
Although the relationship between technology and the city is long-standing,
only since the 1990s has a clear set of terms or definitions been widely used to
define certain types of approaches to cities and technologies, such as the e-city,
electronic city, intelligent city, u-city, cyber city, and media city. These terms were
developed as a consequence of the Internet and other computing technologies
that spilled into European society and everyday city life. Information and commu-
nication networks began to significantly alter the social and structural life of the
city and heralded new forms of civic governance, deliberation, and participation,
as well as smart city citizenship (Willis and Aurigi 2018). As such, the current de-
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bate about the suitability of a participatory and representative democracy is timely
in the evolution of smart city citizenship and inevitably reflects on citizens’ aware-
ness of (big) data and (big) data’s techno-political and psycho-political implications
(Galparsoro 2017). These implications include transparency as “no longer just a
desirable virtue in politics but an imperative tactic if the aim is to stay clear of dis-
repute” (Castells 2018:101). When Han (2015) denounced transparency, he did
so as a call to action against this core restrictive element of contemporary soci-
eties –people’s slavery to a data-driven lifestyle. He advocates a fundamental im-
perative: the need to allow experimentation in citizens’ lives as an unpredictable
work of art rather than a set of scientific urban rules that fix their lives as pure
hyper-plugged ‘geek’ slavery (Calzada and Cobo 2015).
Smart cities are currently dealing with a remarkable amount of data being
controlled by AI tools and devices owned by multinational corporations. This raises
the question of how a smart city can ensure the privacy, identity, and security of
its citizens while experimenting with intertwined representative and deliberative
democratic public expressions. In response to this question, and closely following
the contours of the smart city citizenship debate, there has been a counter-reaction
fuelled by the interplay of certain multi-stakeholders, highlighting the need for an
ethically transparent data-driven society that reinforces the digital rights of citizens
through accountable data ethics (Han 2013; Susskind 2018). Even more recently,
a wide range of manifests, declarations, and institutional frameworks have em-
bodied this paradigm shift (Access now 2018; Asilomar 2018; Barcelona City
Council 2018; IBM 2018; Montreal Declaration Responsible AI 2018; Telefónica
2018; Universidad de Deusto 2018). Therefore, this article aims to explain how a
smart city could transition towards a more experimental urban approach, which
would require rethinking data transparency, literacy, and democratic accountability
based on a new deal or social contract on digital ethics and data rights.
The growing awareness of digital rights may affect the ethics of stakeholders
(citizens and institutions) particularly through their interplay (helix thinking, Calzada
and Cowie 2017). The unique role of stakeholders and their ethics may determine
the balance experimental cities and regions in Europe strike between political and
democratic endeavours in data-rich environments by changing the minds of unpop-
ular critics of the technocratic smart cities. As a result of the negative side-effects
of big data extraction monopolies in smart cities, the so-called ‘data-opolies’ (Stucke
and Grunes 2017), a new set of research terms and findings are gradually surfacing,
including ‘algorithmic oppression’ (Noble 2018), ‘platform capitalism’ (Srnicek 2017;
Rossi 2018), ‘automating inequality’ (Eubanks 2017), ‘technically wrong’ (Wachter-
Boettcher 2017) and ‘weapons of math destruction’ (O’Neill 2008).
Although the concept of the ‘smart city’ has become the popular in recent
years –even a brand, at least in Europe– the initial techno-centric smart city has
evolved into a socially-constructed and citizen-centred ‘smart city’, which this paper
refers to as the ‘experimental city’ (Evans et al. 2016). The so-called techno-cen-
tric smart city uses resources cleverly and attracts money, corporate power, and
private industry by offering cheap, effective solutions to social and political prob-
lems in a functional, optimised, and safe fashion. However, these smart cities are
not participatory, democratic, sustainable, or fair. This smart city notion employs
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Han’s (2015) notion of predictable and enslaving patterns forced by the ‘digital
and transparent society’, in which the psycho-politics of data plays against indi-
vidual freedom of choice, impoverishing citizens’ lives through their own obsession
with being controlled by big data and measured by numbers.
The smart city is a hyperconnected entity that bypasses human uniqueness,
interaction capacity, and ability to self-organise transformational urban circumstances.
In response to this hegemonic approach to the techno-centric smart city, the citizen-
centric, or experimental, city (based on unpredictable and creative psycho-political
events, according to Han) is emerging through niche experiments that demonstrate
far more nuanced democratic and co-operative service provision models for cities
(Anastasiu 2019; Clamp and Alhamis 2010; Hacking Inside Black Box 2018; Keith
and Calzada, 2018; Goldsmith and Kleiman 2017; Gupta 2014). This evidence re-
veals not only an awareness of data techno-politics and governance frameworks, but
also a pursuit of alternative business models characterised by urban co-operative
platforms, which may open up a new post-GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
wave of social entrepreneurial activity on the European city-regional realm (Calzada
2017; European Data Protection Board 2018; Scholz 2016; Srnicek 2017). One
such context to experiment is the EU’s Horizon H2020 Smart Cities and Communities
Lighthouse programme, which is the focus of the next section.
2. The European smart city policy framework: h2020 smart cities
and communities lighthouse projects
From the institutional and geographic standpoints, the importance of city-regions
in the EU is evident (Calzada 2015): 59% of the EU population lives in metropolitan
areas, which generate 62% of all employment and 68% of the EU’s GDP. Alongside
this trend, the European data economy could grow 18-fold under favourable policy
and legislative conditions and could total 4% of the EU’s GDP by 2020. Europe is
home to many vibrant cities, each with its own unique flavour (Calzada 2016a;
2017). Sprawling metropolises like London, Paris, and Berlin are renowned as
global centres. Conversely, at least half of all EU cities are home to fewer than
100,000 people. In between, city-regional configurations of 1-3 million people
are increasingly shaping daily economic and political scenarios by deeply affecting
citizens’ lives in terms of mobility, energy, employment, migration, democracy, and
connectivity (Calzada and Keith 2018). While cities like Lisbon and Florence radiate
renaissance charm, cities like Barcelona, Amsterdam, Naples, Torino, Bologna, Vi-
enna, Glasgow, Bristol, Helsinki, Utrecht, Dublin, and Brussels are continually ex-
perimenting with new ways to set up city-centric approaches.
The brilliant diversity of Europe’s cities should be treasured. However, the
continent’s city-regions though face shared challenges. Municipalities across Eu-
rope are racing to find solutions to troubles that transcend city limits and national
boundaries. For example, virtually all European cities are grappling with the chal-
lenges of urban air pollution and chronic traffic congestion. Traffic jams cost the
EU around €100bn per year, while EU air quality standards are consistently
breached in more than 130 European cities (European Commission 2016).
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Figure 1. 12 EU H2020 Lighthouse projects. (Source: @SmartCitiesSCIS)
Irudi txarra!
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According to the institutional rhetoric of the European Commission, smart
city technologies are vital to ensure that cities (and by extension, metropolitan
areas and regions) can answer the key social, political, democratic, economic, in-
stitutional, and environmental questions that current and future generations face
(Caragliu, Del Bo, and Nijkamp 2011). The European Commission has invested
€280m to establish the Horizon 2020 (H2020) framework called Smart Cities
and Communities, which encompasses all 12 Lighthouse projects (European Com-
mission 2018). The Lighthouse projects aim to deliver smart technologies to mu-
nicipalities by demonstrating that technologies like electric cars and smart
lampposts can be a cost-effective way of tackling some of the most profound prob-
lems facing city authorities. Since 2014, the 12 Smart Cities and Communities
Lighthouse projects have focused on ensuring that people who live and work in
cities can enjoy the quality-of-life benefits derived from innovative smart technolo-
gies (Figure 1).
In Sønderborg, innovative district heat networks are being established as
part of the SmartEnCity project (2018). In Milan, under the Sharing Cities pro-
gramme (2018), building retrofits are radically improving energy efficiency and re-
ducing CO2 emissions. In Lyon, the Smarter Together programme is introducing
an electric-vehicle car-sharing system and an autonomous driverless electric shut-
tle (2018). San Sebastian’s Replicate programme has installed smart lampposts
in a bid to slash city electricity costs (2018).
In the Basque Autonomous Community (Spain), three relevant projects are
simultaneously taking place in the three capital cities of the city-region: Replicate
in Donostia-St. Sebastian, SmartenCity in Vitoria-Gasteiz, and As-Fabrik in Bilbao
(2018). Alongside these EU-funded projects, in the broad countours of the Basque
city-region, the city of Pamplona-Iruñea was recently awarded the Stardust EU-
project (2018). At the city-regional scale of the Basque Country (Calzada 2015),
gradual efforts are attempting to provide an overarching strategic smart city-re-
gional framework by connecting these lighthouse and strategic projects with a bot-
tom-up network encompassing 232 ‘smart’ municipalities in the Basque
Autonomous Community. This initiative is funded by the Basque regional govern-
ment through the Association of Basque Municipalities entitled EUDEL (Asociación
de Municipios Vascos) via the strategic programme ‘HerriSmartik: Smart Munici-
palities in the Basque Autonomous Community’ (Calzada 2016b).
The H2020 institutional framework is based on the rationale that cities
achieve more when they collaborate. The Lighthouse projects involve cities sharing
technical learning, spreading the risk of investing in new technology, and using
their scale to drive down costs via joint procurement. Technologies tested as part
of the H2020 Smart Cities and Communities Lighthouse programme can then be
implemented on a wider scale at a vastly reduced cost per unit. Evidence suggests
that joint procurement can generate massive cost savings for cities bold enough
to embrace inter-city co-operation. For example, following a reorganisation of re-
gional procurement in Austria in 2001, city authorities achieved savings of 30%
and an administrative workload reduction of 60% (European Commission 2017a).
The Lighthouse projects involve 80 cities across Europe. They demonstrate
the innovative potential of smart city technologies by allowing citizens to avert tur-
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bulent, and many times obscure, extractivist algorithmic governance practices
(Lane 2019; Lanier 2018; Van Der Zwan, Van Doorn, Duivestein and Pepping
2018; Wired 2018). Consequently, local authorities are already imposing certain
data governance imperatives as a result of the GDPR, which took effect in May
2018 (European Data Protection Board 2018).
The future belongs to the European cities and regions that genuinely em-
brace city-to-city learning and attempt to fulfil the promise of smart cities (Coletta,
Evans, Heaphy, and Kitchin 2018; Calzada and Cobo 2015; Calzada 2018b). How-
ever, new social, institutional, and political transitions are required to understand
how some European city-regions face new challenges while avoiding the algorith-
mic control of big corporations. Therefore, the point of departure of this paper re-
volves around three underlying strategic underlying issues for smart cities in the
EU in the years to come.
First, ‘city-to-city-learning’ programmes will likely become the standard
replication strategy in cities rather than pure predictable ‘replicability’. Pure replic-
ability means “the possibility of transporting or copying results from a pilot case
to other geographical areas” (European Commission 2017a:12; European Com-
mission 2018; Bable 2018). At present, the ‘city-to-city-learning’ programme is
being experimentally implemented by the Future of Cities Programme at the Uni-
versity of Oxford in the Replicate Lighthouse project (City2CityLearning 2018). It
is also inspiring the programme HerriSmartik (Calzada 2016b)), which encom-
passes a network of municipalities in the Basque Autonomous Community. The
‘city-to-city-learning’ programme aims to revise the assumption that the city is a
predictable and rational machinery. This issue is not addressed in this paper, but
will be subject of a forthcoming publication.
Second, it is similarly likely that the techno-politics of data will lead to a per-
manent state of monitoring. In the hegemonic and techno-centric approach of
smart cities, citizens are considered pure and passive data providers (Calzada
2018b). The current transition towards more socially-constructed experimental
cities suggests a new role for smart city citizenship: decision-makers co-operatively
setting up platforms to avoid the monopolistic control of extractivist multinationals’
algorithmic governance. These companies have increased citizens’ awareness of
how (big) data disruption could modify urban ecosystems by requiring further reg-
ulations to prevent companies from sensoring, capturing, and monetarising data
with no return to the communities in which they operate. This issue is discussed
in the fourth and fifth sections of this paper.
Third, the potential emergence of urban co-operative platforms (Scholz 2016)
as opposed to the hegemonic platform capitalistic paradigm (Srnicek 2017) may
start an insightful policy debate. Certain transitions are occurring from the hegemonic
techno-centric smart cities’ business models, represented by the H2020 official ap-
proach, to socially-constructed co-operative urban platforms evolving towards ex-
perimental cities. Many European cities are increasingly advocating for the latter.
Some cities are working inside the H2020 funding framework, whereas others are
not. According to recent preliminary findings by the author on the analysis of H2020
fellow/follower cities (Replicate 2018), these cities are welcome to experiment with
new business models beyond the public-private partnership (PPP) framework.
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Hence, the aim of the paper is not to present a list of cities on one or the
other side of this transition, but rather to describe this ongoing transition between
(techno-centric) smart cities and (citizen-centric) experimental cities. However, a
preliminary list of European cities currently driven by a citizen-centric approach in-
cludes Barcelona, Amsterdam, Naples, Torino, Bologna, Vienna, Glasgow, Bristol,
Helsinki, Utrecht, Dublin, and Brussels. Further research is needed on this trend
and to provide further evidence to support this transition.
This paper makes two contributions to the current literature on smart cities
through the techno-politics of data and urban co-operative platforms. First, it
enhances the current understanding of smart cities beyond techno-deterministic
and data-driven approaches by further examining what smart city citizenship
would mean in European cities. Second, it contributes to understanding two main
factors that make this transition possible: (i) the techno-politics of data and (ii)
urban co-operative platforms. Therefore, this paper can help policy makers, ac-
ademics, private companies, NGOs, civic groups, entrepreneurs, and activists
broaden the implementation of smart city projects by including citizens as deci-
sion-makers from the beginning, as citizens are essential for the democratic
health of European city-regions (Urban Transformations 2018). Ultimately, deci-
phering the smart city citizenship will require a distinction between the hege-
monic techno-centric smart city approach and the new ongoing alternative
intervention approach (the experimental city). The experimental city should blend
the interdependencies between various stakeholders in response to critiques
that the smart city is overly technocratic and instrumental (Cardullo and Kitchin
2018).
Following the general introduction and the policy framework description, this
paper presents a theoretical literature review on the term ‘smart city’ by empha-
sising ten transitions towards the ‘experimental city’ framework. After that, the
fourth section demonstrates that citizens are considered active decision-makers
rather than passive data providers in this ongoing transition. The fifth section dis-
cusses data issues and their techno-political implications for the current under-
standing of the smart city. The sixth section presents the main result of this paper,
which is the notion of ‘experimental cities’ as a transitional citizenship framework
encompassing three structural elements: (i) Urban Living Labs (ULLs), (ii) Data
Commons, and (iii) Urban Co-operative Platforms. Finally, section 7 answers the
three research questions formulated in the following section.
3. Theoretical literature review: transitions from smart cities to
experimental cities
The term ‘smart city’ turns 25 this year. It was introduced in 1992, around the
time of the historic Rio Earth Summit. Typing it into a search engine today will gen-
erate more than 15 million hits. Thus, figures for the smart city ‘market’ appear
similarly impressive. Persistence Market Research forecasts that global growth will
balloon from its current valuation of $622 billion to $3.48 trillion by 2026, a five-
fold increase in just one decade (McClelland 2017; Raconteur 2017).
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The last 20 years of research on the smart city paradigm is fragmented
and contested (Mora et al. 2017). Although it is emerging as a fast-growing topic
of scientific inquiry, much of the knowledge generated about the smart city is
centred on its technological in nature. Therefore, this paper investigates social
and collective intelligence (smart citizenship), cultural artefacts (citizen watchdog
groups), and environmental attributes (systemically sustainable), among other
factors that need to be integrated into the current zeitgeist of urban innovation
involving information communication technology (ICT), which is so far limited to
the term ‘smart city’.
According to Willis and Aurigi (2018), the terms in Table 1 below charac-
terise cities on a spectrum. This spectrum ranges from initial explorations of com-
puting effects on the city (the first cybercities in 1995 envisaged what would
happen when information arteries provided all kinds of information and communi-
cation services to industries and households), through to the virtual city (an online
representation of a real city) and the e-city, which envisaged new forms of gover-
nance and civic participation through online forums. In the first years of the 21st
century, these terms evolved into more city-centred terms, such as the digital city
and u-city or ubiquitous city, which developed from the early internet networks and
the potential of the city as a platform where people could interact and access city
services in a range of ways. This notion that is directly connected with the term
‘experimental city’, which is explained in the sixth section.
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• Cybercities
• City of bits
• Digital metropolis
• Real time city
• Digital places
• Network cities
• Digital city
• Virtual city
• Electronic/e-city
• Mediacity
• Smart city
• Augmented urban spaces
• Urban informatics
• Ubiquitous/u-city
• Sentient city
• Knowledge cities
• Hybrid city
• The city as interface
• Smart urbanism
• Netspaces
• Hackable city
• IoT (Internet of Things) city
Table 1. Smart cities’ related terms from 1995-2016
(Willis and Aurigi 2018:7)
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With the rise of connected technologies of smart sensors and networks, the
term ‘smart city’ was introduced in 2008 to capture these new forms of ‘smart ur-
banism’. These are a selected set of terms that emphasise key stages of develop-
ment, but many more terms exist that represent more nuanced and specific
aspects of technological change and the city. Looking at how terms have developed
over the last 30 years shows that as technology continues to develop, new terms
and labels will be created to reflect the changing nature of technology’s impact on
the urban space and systems.
It is noteworthy that although smart cities (Albino et al. 2015; Krivý 2016;
Ersoy 2017) are already being built, they diverge considerably from the simplistic,
one-size-fits-all, smart-city-in-the-box approach that has dominated mainstream
institutional approaches thus far (UK Government 2016; Díaz-Díaz et al. 2017;
RICS 2017). This raises a number of questions: “(i) for whom and for what purpose
are smart cities being developed? (ii) Are smart cities primarily about, or should
they be about, (ii.1) creating new markets and profit, (ii.2) facilitating state control
and regulation, or (ii.3) improving quality of life while enhancing citizens’ opportu-
nities to participate in democracy?” (Kitchin 2016:7; 2017).
The contemporary smart city cannot be reduced to the economic value that
it generates through partnerships with powerful public and private actors (Rossi
2016; 2018). While the application of new information flows and the development
of smart cities are receiving increasing attention, there is still limited understanding
of the interconnections among hard and smart infrastructures and economic, po-
litical, and social systems on both metropolitan and regional scales. Furthermore,
this conventional paradigm has often failed to deliver practical tools that can help
people better understand and intervene in their daily realities while engaging with
the various stakeholders that are important for European cities and regions. Hence,
a multi-stakeholder approach is required to overcome dataism (Harari 2016a),
understood as the logic that oversimplifies city metabolisms, seeing them as mere
assemblages or systems of data and algorithms (Morozov 2014; Morozov and Har-
vey 2016; Morozov and Bria 2017; 2018; Morozov and Eno 2017) rather than as
ecosystems of citizens (Devisch et al. 2016; Keith and Calzada 2016; Kontokosta
2016). In the sixth section, the importance of the transformational dimension of
the multi-stakeholders’ framework is explained by distinguishing the Triple, Quadru-
ple and Penta Helix frameworks (see Figure 2 and Table 4).
The development and use of the buzzword ‘smart city’ in the planning of
inner cities could be intimately connected to today’s necessary urban transforma-
tions (Calzada 2016a). There is currently a great deal of rhetoric about the impor-
tance of building smart cities, but this rhetoric does not pay attention to the
elements that constitute smart city strategies and policies in diverse contexts
(Kitchin 2016). Technological solutions have often been proposed under the um-
brella of the smart city buzzword without first considering citizens’ needs, their abil-
ity to meet those needs and use the proposed solutions, or their socio-technical
misalignment with the city itself (Campbell 2012; Hajer and Dassen 2014).
Thus, this paper suggests that European city-regions should first unpack or
deconstruct (‘un-plug’) the meaning of smartness in their unique urban realities
(Calzada and Cobo 2015) by asking ten underlying questions about the cities they
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want to create. This exercise is suggested for cities in the EU that are directly or
indirectly influenced by the H2020 Smart Cities and Communities policy frame-
work. As part of that, a wide range of stakeholders in cities and regions are debat-
ing the digital rights of citizens through accountable data ethics. These digital rights
are: (i) the right to be forgotten on the Internet; (ii) the right to be unplugged; (iii)
the right to a person’s own digital legacy; (iii) the right of a person’s personal in-
tegrity to be protected from technology; (iv) the right to freedom of speech on the
Internet; (v) the right to a person’s own digital identity; (vi) the right to the trans-
parent and responsible usage of algorithms; (vii) the right to have a last human
instance in the expert-based decision-making processes; (viii) the right to equal
opportunities in the digital economy; (ix) the consumer rights in e-commerce; (x)
the right to hold intellectual property on the Internet; (xi) the right to universal ac-
cess to the Internet; (xii) the right to digital literacy; (xiii) the right to impartiality on
the Internet; (xiv) the right to a secure Internet.
Safeguarding the digital rights of citizens through accountable data ethics
involves ‘unplugging’ people’s city experience, or making being digitally connected
a smart experience for citizens. The questions below are related to the framework
called ‘Unplugging’ (Calzada and Cobo 2015), which consists of ten transitions.
Thus, each city-region can adopt these ten transitions from the smart cities ap-
proach and apply them to a new paradigm that this paper explores –that of exper-
imental cities (Evans et al. 2016). The ten transitions and questions to move the
smart city from a techno-centric to a citizen-centric approach are:
1. Who: Will the smart city evolve into an urban sphere in which dwellers
have the right to decide whether to be connected? (Morozov 2017)
2. How: Is the city a social interface in which citizens can self-design their
social and everyday needs? (Amin and Thrift 2016)
3. System: Will devices serve citizens more than citizens serve devices?
(Friedewald and Pohoryles 2013)
4. Governance: Is the bottom-up innovation perspective wishful thinking?
(If You Want To 2017; Webb and Mills 2016)
5. Information: In the era of data, is it possible to transition from controlled
to open data-driven models? (Levy 1968)
6. Focus: Do citizens notice the difference between simple social interac-
tions and human ties built on trust? (Shin and Shin 2016)
7. Space: Will citizens observe changes in which context-collapsed information
will be contextualised to enhance social interactions? What are the impli-
cations for the privacy and security of individuals (Carrington 2016; Guerrini
2016)? Context collapse is a term used by academics (Marwick and Boyd
2010) writing about the effects of social media and the contexts they give
rise to. As such, the term refers to an infinite number of contexts collapsing
upon one another into a single moment of recording and having direct con-
sequences for the public and private lives of citizens.
8. Design: How can the design of places and user interactions be improved
to create an ‘ambient commons’ for citizens? The term ‘ambient com-
mons’ (McCullough 2013) refers to the cognitive role of citizens in rela-
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tion to fixed forms of architecture and the city itself when surrounded by
a superabundant flow of ambient information where individual signals in-
creasingly matter less.
9. Socio-political processes: Is a shift occurring in the power dynamics be-
tween stakeholders? (Blanco et al. 2017)
10. Political economy: Will the political economy of the smart city, and the
related techno-politics of the data governance model, be altered by any
changes in stakeholder power relations? (Stucke and Grunes 2017)
Only after unpacking the techno-deterministic view of our cities (‘un-plug-
ging’) can citizens smartly connect (‘plug’) stakeholders into a wide, smart gover-
nance framework by including five types of actors, which this paper presents in
the sub-section 6.2., by introducing the Penta Helix multi-stakeholder framework
(Calzada 2016a, 2017). These stakeholders are the public sector, the private sec-
tor, academia, civic society, and social entrepreneurs/activists. It is necessary to
‘plug’ stakeholders in by setting up a new, complex, multi-stakeholder, city-regional
urbanity to transition towards real smartness in cities and regions. A dynamic power
balance between stakeholders has so far been lacking in the hegemonic, techno-
cratic, and techno-centric version of the smart city (Cowley et al. 2017). Thus, the
distinction among the helixes (groups of stakeholders) is methodological. By using
the Penta Helix multi-stakeholders’ framework, which stems from the social inno-
vation perspective (Calzada 2016a), this paper aims to shed light on the transfor-
mational interplay created by social entrepreneurs/activists (the ‘fifth helix’)
influencing the other stakeholders.
However, the position outlined in this paper avoids a dystopian view. Instead,
it embraces a constructive notion that considers the favourable conditions that
exist for a potential smart city policy agenda based on urban transformations driven
by social innovation and experimentation (Sabato et al. 2017). Likewise, cities
and regions represent powerful places in which to detect emerging processes and
observe spontaneous urban transformations.
To summarise, after the negative side-effects of hyper-connected societies
are minimised, technology-oriented pathways towards smart cities still offer unex-
plored opportunities for experimentation (Han 2015). Thus, European cities and
regions should embrace the transitional experiments already underway in cities
such as Barcelona, Amsterdam, Naples, Torino, Bologna, Vienna, Glasgow, Bristol,
Helsinki, Utrecht, Dublin, and Brussels, among many other niche experiments
going on at the microlevel scale (Calzada 2017; Smarticipate 2016; Urban Trans-
formations 2018).
These ten transitions from the smart city to the experimental city paradigm
lead to three open research questions regarding smart city citizenship, which con-
stitute the core theme of this paper:
1. What prospects exist for alternative funding and alternative business mod-
els for (smart) cities? (Kourtit and Nijkamp 2012)
2. What practical/political interventions have been tried or are possible
among businesses, local governments, academia, communities, and so-
cial entrepreneurs (Penta Helix framework)? (Calzada 2016a)
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3. Is another type of (smart) city possible? That is, is there a ‘third-way’ be-
tween the state and the market that overcomes the PPP framework?
(Keith and Calzada 2017)
4. Rationale: (smart) citizens are active decision-makers rather
than passive data providers
Regarding smart citizenship, this paper asks whether alternatives to the techno-
deterministic approach to smart urbanism (Marvin et al. 2015) are flourishing. In
the last few years, a new way of empowering the smart city through its smart cit-
izens has received increased attention (Hemment and Townsend 2013; Waag
2016). Currently, cities such as Barcelona (Eizaguirre 2016; Eizaguirre and Parés
2018; Blanco et al. 2017) are embracing this new shift to an inclusive, demo-
cratic, and participative smart city by advertising accordingly: “If you’d rather have
smart citizens than smart cities… BITS, ‘Barcelona Initiative for Technological Sov-
ereignty’, will be in your interest” (BITS 2016). The Barcelona Digital Plan mostly
follows Alex Pentland’s (2014:x) principle that city-regions “[need] a ‘New Deal on
Data’ putting citizens in control of data that is about them and also creating a
‘data commons’ to improve both government and private industry”. This is essen-
tially the source of the evolution from the smart city to the experimental city par-
adigm, which produces clear consequences in the political economy of data
governance frameworks and the entrepreneurial urban ecosystem of cities through
the methodological representation of the helixes (Triple, Quadruple, and Penta).
In a recent manifesto, advocates for smart citizens (Waag 2016) suggested
that smart citizens should take responsibility for the places they live and work and
the places they love, value access over ownership and contribution over power,
ask for forgiveness, not permission, appropriate technology rather than accept it
as-is, and provide assistance to those who are less ‘tech savvy’. This set of prin-
ciples shows that there is still a limited understanding of the interconnections be-
tween hard and smart infrastructures, as well as among economic, political, and
social systems on metropolitan and regional scales. Furthermore, this new para-
digm highlights the importance of overcoming the often-failed smart-city-in-a-box
approach by engaging with the various stakeholders in European cities and regions.
In this direction, a study conducted in London called ‘If You Want To’, which
developed “an urban co-operative platform to map, organise and make easily ac-
cessible green services or a sustainable lifestyle” (If You Want To 2017), has for-
mulated an evidence-based view of (smart) citizens who are highly aware of their
role in the world and the impact that even small individual choices may have glob-
ally. According to the preliminary conclusions of this study (Broadbent 2017),
(smart) citizens are contextually aware of the decisions they make in their daily
lives –and the consequences of these decisions– when interacting with the urban
realm. This awareness of both the environmental and social impacts of personal
practices does not, however, translate into a sense of renunciation. On the con-
trary, it translates into a sense of empowerment and commitment to do things
better in a smarter way that can combine personal fulfilment with collective good.
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Hence, this paper aims to rethink the dominant technocratic and technol-
ogy-centric smart city discourse by presenting this new perspective on so-called
smart citizens related to the emerging ‘experimental city’ paradigm. This new ap-
proach focusses not on imagining cities beyond or before technologies, but on ac-
cepting that city-regions are already fundamentally shaped by networked and
mobile ICTs. This approach also focusses on thinking through the consequences
for governance that the promises and realities of smart cities pose (Calzada
2013a). For example, many argue that smart city-regions will inevitably revolve
around generating large amounts of data, and that this in itself will lead to new in-
sights and governance strategies (Gray and Lämmerhirt 2017). However, as Acuto
recently pointed out (2018: 165), “data availability does not immediately translate
into better-informed urban management, nor fairer, greener, and more prosperous
cities”. City-regions are complex and are shaped by a wide variety of actors and
organisations, which often have conflicting positions (Calzada 2015).
Likewise, data generated about individuals in cities and regions are variable,
including personally identifiable information, data exhaust, personal data trails,
and participatory personal data (Leao and Izadpahani 2016). Data about people
is big data in both the cognitive sense and in the social movement sense (Shilton
2016:21). Actually, not all big data are data about people, but data about people
inspire much of the hope and anxiety about their material, emotional and relational
human conditions in an individual and collective way. As such, smart cities rely on
data to provide and refine services that enhance the quality of citizens’ lives, al-
though this may impact personal privacy (Racounteur 2017). Thus, the aim of this
paper is to unpack how citizens are usually framed within smart city initiatives and
to examine the extent to which so-called ‘citizen-centric’ initiatives offer an alter-
native to, or simply reproduce, the actually existing neoliberal smart city.
According to Cardullo and Kitchin (2018), citizens in smart cities are con-
sistent with neoliberal citizenship and its emphasis on personal autonomy and
consumer choice, with individuals performing certain roles and taking responsibility
for their circumstances (entrepreneurial self) and with the marketisation and pri-
vatisation of services and infrastructures (retreat of the state and austerity policy).
While citizen participation is potentially widespread, it is most often framed in a
post-political way that provides feedback, negotiation, participation, and creation,
but in an instrumental rather than normative or political framework. In other words,
citizens are encouraged to help provide solutions to practical issues –such as pro-
ducing an app, providing feedback on a development plan, or performing certain
roles/responsibilities– but not to challenge or replace the fundamental political ra-
tionalities shaping an issue or plan. Instead, most citizens are ‘empowered’ in the
smart city by technologies that treat them as consumers or testers, people to be
steered, controlled, and nudged to act in certain ways, or sources of data that can
be turned into products. That is, citizens are treated as passive data providers.
Citizens in the smart city perform within the bounds of expected and acceptable
behaviour, rather than transgressing or resisting social and political norms as active
decision-makers.
Another strand of the smart city debate emphasises the impact of the near-
universal uptake of smartphones and other hand-held devices as well as the im-
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pact of the internet of things–networks of data-gathering and cloud computing
(Ratti and Claudel 2016). Many people use these devices and networks on a daily
basis, but what this means for city-regional governance and the power-laden rela-
tionships among citizens, governments, and companies remains an open question.
All this makes truly smart city-regional governance (Herrschel and Dierwechter
2015) exceedingly difficult, but at the same time, such governance is a fascinating
and rewarding scale at which to investigate the various meanings and usages of
smartness from the citizens’ perspective. However, according to Tranos and Gertner
(2012) and Leon (2017), the notion of smartness lacks a global inter-urban per-
spective, and, consequently, the gradual corporate acquisition of the smart city
idea has been perpetuating capital accumulation by and among global cities at
the international scale (Gaffney and Robertson 2016).
Recently, however, various research projects across Europe have begun to
investigate alternative pathways to overcome the smartness lock-ins or entrenched
ideas related to the notion of smart citizens. Most seek to develop both critical
analyses and practical suggestions to tackle urban problems, such as pollution,
health, safety, and mobility, through developing and using various types of mobile
and networked data. These projects examine various ways of considering the in-
terlinked notions of smart citizens and data where the so-called smart city ap-
proach has been enacted on the ground. Specifically, the research efforts sought
to unpack and question the following three issues:
1. the types of knowledge gained through the production, distribution, and
use of smart data (PWC 2016);
2. the role data play in the constitution of urban expertise and in mediating
and transforming the relationships among smart citizens, governments,
and companies (NESTA 2015); and
3. the ways in which data-driven knowledge and expertise tackle or repro-
duce inequalities in city-regions among diverse groups of (smart) citizens
by provoking social exclusion patterns driven by toxic side-effects of tech-
nology (Hughes 2016).
Answering these questions shows that certain issues –such as the techno-
politics of data and how smart citizens should be integrated into this realm of gov-
ernance– remain crucial (Calzada 2017; Gray and Lämmerhirt 2017). The smart
city approach is being deconstructed from many angles after having recently satu-
rated policy agendas with very little reflection and being driven by market-based
urban solutions. In response, a new smart-citizen-centric paradigm is being tested
by examining the ‘experimental city.’ These urban experiments are intriguing, because
“[they are] producing a different type of city by offering novel modes of engagement,
governance, and politics that both challenge and complement conventional strate-
gies such as on-going smart city strategies” (Evans et al. 2016:9).
This paper, therefore, explores what is new in the experimental city approach
compared to the smart city approach. Cardullo and Kitchin (2018), based on Arn-
stein’s classic contribution (1968), suggest a remarkable interpretation about the
scaffold of smart citizen participation. However, more nuanced research is required
for context-based applications. Therefore, in an attempt to contrast the two ap-
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proaches and trace the evolution from one paradigm to the other, Table 2 shows
ten transitions:
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Conceptual Transitions Smart Cities Experimental Cities
1. (Smart) citizen
(Keith and Calzada 2016) User/data provider Decision-maker
2. Technopolitics of data
(Louail et al. 2016) Big data Data sovereignty
3. Notion of the city
(European Commission 2016;
Antiroikko 2013) As a market As a platform
4. Personal data ownership
(Morozov 2014) Owned by firms Publicly scrutinized
5. Stakeholder helixes
(Calzada 2016a) Triple or Quadruple
Helix Penta Helix
6. Business models
(Bollier 2016) PPP Urban commons and
urban co-operative
platforms
7. Scalability and replicability
(European Commission 2017a) Based on urban
solutionism
Unpacking urban
problems
8. Algorithmic coding
(Zanouda et al. 2017) IoT sensor networks Citizen-sensing
9. Governance
(Almirall and Wareham 2011) E-government systems Living labs
10. Causality
(Angelo and Vormann 2018) Linear and normative Complex adaptive
systems and emergence
Table 2. From smart cities to experimental
cities (elaborated by the author)
The information provided in Table 2 suggests that smart citizens are becom-
ing the centre of current smart city transformations (Satyam and Calzada 2017).
This argument emphasises three achievements of urban laboratories as new ex-
perimental settings (Karvonen and van Heur 2014): situatedness, change-orien-
tation, and contingency. As such, data science could enable –or not enable–
citizens’ advice regarding the anticipation or even prediction of changes regarding
the issues affecting people every day, which would help cities act sooner to prevent
problems from escalating (NESTA 2015; Gray and Lämmerhirt 2017).
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In short, (smart) citizens (Noveck 2015; Schuurman et al. 2016; Thomas et
al. 2016) are considered decision-makers rather than simple data providers insofar
as their decisions depend on a relational context and on their unique circumstances.
Currently, within the scope of some approaches to experimental cities being imple-
mented under the umbrella of Urban Living Labs (ULLs) interventions/methodologies
(Almirall and Wareham 2011; Leminen 2015; Casual Synthesis Report 2016;
Tõnurist et al. 2017), participants –as citizens– play more of an active role as co-
producers than as mere data providers. However, the techno-politics of data (NESTA
2015), especially its ownership and governance, is an under-explored area of re-
search. The next section discusses this area.
5. Discussion: techno-politics and psycho-politics of data in smart
cities
According to the research firm Gartner (2016), 8.4 billion devices worldwide were
connected to the Internet by the end of 2017, and this is expected to rise to 20.4
billion by 2020. However, as previous sections in this paper highlight, some hesi-
tation persists at the centre of the debate around what Harari (2016b) has de-
scribed as dataism, or the religion or dogma of big data. Thus, what are the real
consequences of big data for (smart) citizens? In response to this open question,
Shilton (2016:21) argued that “uncertainties about how to use increasingly large
sets of personal data are at the center of social debates about the virtues of Big
Data. Not all big data are data about people, but data about people inspire much
of the hope and anxiety bound up in discussions of the term.” Thus, who controls
not only data collection, analysis, storage, and usage, but ultimately ownership?
Table 3, inspired by Shilton’s question, shows the key parameters of the techno-
politics and the psycho-politics of data related to the degree of citizen participation
in today’s cities. Shilton’s interpretation assumes that users with high participa-
tion –smart citizens– can control the reuse of their own data. This assumption is
a reaction to the fast development of the data extractivist practices by which
(smart) citizens should not only be involved in participation processes, but also
gain the knowledge and the ethical quality to engage autonomously in the data
collection processes. The assumption may offer a way to implement data sover-
eignty, ownership, and commons policy frameworks. Hence, these are the key pa-
rameters in today’s cities of the citizen participation in the techno-politics and
psycho-politics of data collection, analysis, storage, reuse, and ownership.
Regarding new sources of data collection, analysis, storage, usage, and
ownership, the major obstacles to fostering a people-centred data design are in
the acquisition, shareability, and licensing restrictions of the obtained data. In this
respect, closer collaboration is needed between computer scientists and social
and political researchers regarding the development of stronger evidence-based
research on how to tackle unexplored data issues. Thus, timely research should
elaborate on the need to consider individuals not only as citizens deliberating on
their material conditions but also as consumers agreeing and disagreeing to the
terms of a service. Basically, this research could advocate for a more human-cen-
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Citizen
Participation
in the Techno-
politics and the
Psycho-politics
of Data
Collection Analysis Storage Reuse Ownership
High
participation
Citizens
own or
control
devices;
data
collection
can be
customized
Raw data
accessible;
citizens can
conduct
their own
analyses
Data stored
on local
devices
Citizens
control
reuse
Citizens
own their
data and
customize
their data
policy
Low
participation
Citizens
aware of
devices;
data
collection
can be
avoided
Citizens
can see
visualizatio
ns or
analysis of
their data
Data in
cloud
storage
with
options for
deletion
Reuse is
restricted
to
aggregated
forms
Data
collectors
use
contracts
to obtain
citizens’
consent
over their
own data
Little to no
participation
Citizens
unaware of
devices;
data
collection
cannot be
avoided
Citizens are
evaluated
or
categorized
without
their
knowledge
Data in
cloud
storage
with no
option for
deletion
Data
collectors
share or
sell data
Data
collectors
own
citizens’
data
Table 3. Citizen participation in the techno-politics and in the
psycho-politics of data collection, analysis, storage, reuse,
and ownership (adapted from Shilton 2016:26)
tred approach to the smart city-one that fosters interplay and interdependencies
among multiple stakeholders.
When Habermas (2015) confronted technocratic and democratic smartness,
he made it possible to generalise a category called smart citizens. As such, citizen
interaction, engagement, involvement, participation, and deliberation are at the
centre of debates around the techno-politics of data. However, how should the dis-
trust, apathy, and open outrage that have become increasingly evident in popular
political attitudes today be addressed? The misalignments between technology and
the social needs of citizens in data generation constitutes a common dilemma
today: will data-driven cities (PWC 2016) and devices continue to serve citizens or
vice versa? In response to this question, different forms of engagement on the part
of smart citizens can be discussed in relation to the techno-politics of data.
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As Morozov (2014) argued, despite the plethora of technological solutions
to social problems, key questions remain unanswered: for example, who gets to
implement data? and what kinds of politics of data do technological solutions
smuggle through the back door? Discussions highlight how seemingly simple calls
for data to be open challenge existing legal norms and have potentially profound
implications for users along the value chain. For example, liability risks might be
passed to the end user of open data, but what if end users cannot bear those
risks? If the internet of things generates continuous monitoring and commonly in-
dividualized data, how should digital scholars theorize, regulate, and show the eth-
ical choices (Hughes 2016) that have emerged around the legal liability
surrounding the ‘ownership of data’?
For a full understanding of the techno-political and psycho-political implica-
tions of the term smart city citizenship (Noveck 2015) and to fully actualise citi-
zens’ capacities as the main drivers of urban transformations, this paper underlines
the need for a deeper transition towards experimental cities. Considering citizens
as users or data providers assumes that personal data comprises a raw material
that citizens take for granted as another element of the market. This should attract
the attention of policy makers, as it involves underlying issues of value as well as
political decisions.
Hence, citizens’ data are intrinsic parts of their urban experience and their
right to the city (Morozov and Harvey 2016). Why, then, are ‘smart citizens’ not
considered pure decision-makers rather than passive data providers? Despite this
willingness to pursue sustainable futures that are more democratic than techno-
cratic, there is still strong inertia obstructing this alternative path. In fact, the cur-
rent round of “urban experimentation differs from previous incarnations, indicating
a specific type of governance fix for a neoliberal system that is struggling to move
towards more sustainable forms of urban development” (Evans et al. 2016:10).
To open a new path of reflection and action based on Ostrom’s influential
thoughts on the commons (Ostrom 2010; Urban Transformations 2018), which
have been analysed and adapted by Subirats (2012), this paper suggests break-
ing away from the individualistic vision conceived by the capitalist tradition. Subi-
rats and Rendueles (2016) noted that this vision has progressively transferred
the idea of rights to individual people. The resulting prevailing view is that only
privatisation leads to growth (Mazzucato, 2018). However, Bollier (2016) argued
that historically rooted individualisation processes are increasingly shaping peo-
ple’s communal conditions insofar as inter-subjectivity matters between them
(Borch and Kornberger 2015). This notion could be fully applied to ‘smartness’
to explore an emerging paradigm that has not yet been established-the experi-
mental city.
In a serious attempt to transition from the smart city to the experimental
city, a deeper analysis of the techno-politics of data is needed to interpret the role
of smart citizens as decision-makers rather than data providers. This notion is likely
to be influenced by new conceptual explorations and empirical analyses of the
urban commons (Bollier and Helfrich 2016) being applied to data (i.e., ‘data com-
mons’). To describe this current transition, this paper briefly presents three Euro-
pean projects on participatory smart cities that reconceptualise smart citizens as
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decision-makers rather than data providers: HackAIR Project (2016), Flamenco
Project (Flanders Mobile Enacted Citizen Observatories) (2016), and City of Things
(2016). Together, these projects mark a transition from the smart city to the ex-
perimental city through their analyses of the techno-politics of data.
HackAIR is a social innovation project (Calzada 2013b; Sabato et al. 2017)
and open technology platform for citizen observatories of air quality. The project
focusses on citizen engagement and related strategies, such as crowdsourcing
(citizens as sensors), distributed intelligence (citizens as basic interpreters), par-
ticipatory science (citizens as participants in data collection), and extreme collab-
orative science (citizens as participants in defining problems and analysing data).
The call to transition from the conception of citizens as data providers to citizens
as decision-makers has provoked a powerful debate on the ethical dimensions of
participatory innovative technologies.
The Flamenco project has developed this theme further, exploring how citi-
zens can be empowered to tailor their own observatories based on participatory
sensing and citizen science principles. An inter-disciplinary team is working on the
applicability of the project from the perspectives of computer science and social
science.
The City of Things project explores the experimental dimensions of data-dri-
ven living labs. These dimensions are related to multi-stakeholder co-creation
processes for business, user design, prototyping, and product development. Basi-
cally, these are open innovation processes that aim to connect to the user expe-
rience during the product design process (West and Bogers 2016).
These projects demonstrate that what was once novel has become re-
ceived wisdom. It is now common sense to suggest that the nature of the me-
tropolis demands forms of knowledge that transcend the old boundaries that
once divided the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. It has be-
come almost self-evident that a model of knowledge production where knowl-
edge is produced in the academy and then exported to city hall and local
governance structures is inadequate for the metropolitan challenges of the 21st
century. Instead, the world has moved towards a stronger sense of co-production
between research and practice. The idea that the questions arise in the real
world, but the answers are found in the academy, is less plausible than ever. At
its worst, the smart agenda, particularly as represented in journalistic accounts,
can look like the return of technocratic determinism, through the back door,
whereby all urban ills are resolved through scientific solutions. Such naïve argu-
ments are, in reality, often the belief of second-rate technocrats and third-rate
academic critics.
Interestingly, the complex and open systems of urban life are being disrupted
by rapid social change and powerful economic forces (Keith and Calzada 2017).
Recognising that such change is unpredictable in its disruptive form and uneven
in its social consequences, one function of academic research is to speculate,
test, map, and trace how disruptive technologies restructure the relationship be-
tween the individual and the city (Han 2015). The smart citizen at the heart of the
new city needs to understand both the emancipatory potential and the divisive
consequences of different moments of disruptive innovation. As described in the
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next section, the function of Urban Living Labs (ULLs) (Karvonen and van Heur
2014) as forms of urban governance that act entirely as proxies among stake-
holders is to show the choices at stake rather than to provide singular solutions to
problems. How citizens make these choices then becomes a mediation of scientific
expertise and deliberative democracy.
This section has highlighted how data-driven issues present new pathways
for conducting research and implementing policy (Zanouda et al. 2017). However,
to unpack data (‘un-plug’), the underlying social, ethical, and political implications
of the technical capacity to store and distribute information through the power of
data science must be considered. Dystopian visions and technocratic utopias alike
demand rigorous scrutiny in research and public debate to optimise the chance of
shaping a better future city.
Concerning the ethical, psychological, and political dimensions of the own-
ership of data, urban experiments are gaining traction in cities all over the world
as a way to stimulate alternatives and steer change (Caprotti and Cowley 2016).
Policy makers, designers, private companies, and third sector organisations are
initiating innovations to test alternative visions of local economic development, so-
cial cohesion, environmental protection, expansion of the creative sector, the evo-
lution of policy, service delivery, infrastructure provision, academic research, and
more. The concept of experimentation feeds on the attractive notions of innovation
and creativity (both individual and collective), while reframing the focus of sustain-
ability from distant targets and government policies to concrete and achievable
actions that can be undertaken by a wide variety of urban stakeholders in specific
places. The ability of urban experiments to be radical in their ambitions while lim-
ited in their scope underpins a vibrant debate in both the policy and academic
worlds regarding the ability of such experiments to initiate genuine change. Are
these activities extensions of business as usual, spatially limited, and captured by
a familiar cast of dominant interests? Or can they generate real alternatives and
stimulate profound transformation?
To explore these questions, the next section reflects on the promises and
perils of experimentation as an increasingly alternative framework of urban gover-
nance that is moving beyond the structural mistakes of the so-called smart city,
which has been the dominant mode thus far.
6. Results: experimental cities as a transitional citizenship phase?
This section is divided into three sub-sections that discuss the three structural el-
ements of the experimental city. In the first sub-section, (smart) citizens are situ-
ated within the milieu of the ULLs as a way in which experimentation occurs within
the city. The second sub-section examines whether the commons can offer any
alternative to PPPs by pursuing a ‘third-way’ of governing urban assets and enabling
(smart) citizens to provide services themselves. The third sub-section explores the
extent to which considering (smart) citizens as decision-makers or citizen makers
in the broader realm of the city could create a potential ecosystem of urban co-
operative platforms as alternatives to capital-based forms of business.
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6.1. Experimenting Within the City: Urban Living Labs (ULLs)
In smart city and smart specialisation strategy (S3) policy discourses (European
Commission 2016, 2018), governance interventions have been proposed in Eu-
ropean cities and regions without appropriately considering the stakeholders, their
multiple expectations, and their visions of a possible and desirable urban future.
As such, smart technological solutions have not always focussed on how tech-
nologies are used by (smart) citizens, and at times, the smart city’s modes of gov-
ernance have been misaligned with citizens and stakeholders.
In this context, to understand the inter-dependent challenges and opportu-
nities for different stakeholders, this papers focusses on the dynamics of urban
complexity, experimental research, and alternative policy approaches to cities and
regions. This section is an invitation to rethink urban Europe based on the notion
of an experimental laboratory that produces research and policy interventions.
ULLs, exemplified by networks such as the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL
2017), enact projects that include active user involvement, real-life settings, multi-
stakeholder participation, multi-method approaches, and co-production.
In contrast, the smartness of some European urban strategies is dominated
by a technological discourse centred on data aggregation represented by early
adopter H2020 Lighthouse projects (round 2014), such as Triangulum, Remour-
ban and, Growsmarter (see Figure 1), which allows the city-region to be managed
by a fixed public–private partnership governance model. Nonetheless, in the com-
plex multi-stakeholder urbanity that is flourishing around Europe, the shortcomings
of the contemporary city must not be forgotten (Calzada 2016a).
Paralleling the mainstream approach of smart cities, urban laboratory ini-
tiatives, generally placed under the loose banner of ULLs (Urry 2014; Gascó 2017),
have been increasingly emerging in the newest H2020 Lighthouse projects from
the 2015 to 2017 (see Figure 1). They are seen as an approach to speeding up
socio-technological innovation that involves multi-stakeholders in co-production
processes and as a form of collective urban governance and experimentation within
the city that addresses the sustainability challenges and opportunities created by
urbanisation. Currently, the ways that city innovation policies propose highly spa-
tially specific and potentially transformative stakeholder-helix strategies (Triple,
Quadruple, or Penta) are worth examining. These policies recognise that strategies
are cross-sectoral, involving the research base, private capital, and public expen-
diture of civil society. In the next sub-section, the suitability of expanding from
Triple and Quadruple Helixes to the Penta Helix is described by suggesting that cit-
izens require an active and entrepreneurial role among fixed institutional settings
to ensure their full capacity as a system’s transformers and as democratisers of
urban life (Calzada and Cowie 2017).
The enormous potential for experimental forms of governance in many Eu-
ropean city-regions is expressed by on-going ULL initiatives, such as the Urban Liv-
ing Partnership (Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Newcastle, and York) (Urban
Transformations 2017), JPI Urban Europe (2017), and many international pro-
grammes, such as ENoLL (2017), Mistra Urban Futures (2017), BMW Guggen-
heim Urban Labs (2017), Urban Lab + (2017), the Guangzhou International
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Award for Urban Innovation (2017), Rockefeller 100 resilient cities (2017), GUST
snapshots (2017), and urb@exp (2017).
The notion of ULLs is normally attributed to Professor William Mitchell of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). MIT Living Labs (2017) aimed to
bring together interdisciplinary experts to develop, deploy, and test –in actual living
environments– new technologies and strategies for design that respond to this
changing world. People from the outside world were invited into living laboratories
where ethnographers and other researchers observed how they used newly in-
vented information technology. Popularised in the USA, the notion generated trac-
tion in Europe; its diverse practices complicated what different actors believed the
lab concept entailed. There have been numerous attempts to define a ULL, but
there is no firm consensus in the literature. So, in what ways are ULLs, as the new
experimental initiatives of the applied social sciences, the correct –or at least a
feasible– type or scale of intervention? According to Spilhaus (1964:1141), “the
city is a completely interacting system and thus, the experiment must be a total
system. Nobody knows the answers to city living in the future, and, when answers
are unknown, experiment is essential.”
Despite the lack of consensus on the definition and building of ULLs in the
emerging body of relevant policy initiatives and research (Keith and Calzada 2017),
the following questions can explore how notions of experimentation inform new
ways of urban living:
1. What does the integration of inter-disciplinary and place-based knowledge
practices mean? How can urban studies bring together expertise in areas
such as computing, mapping, politics, economics, digital anthropology,
spatial analysis, and urban planning?
2. How can policy-makers address multi-stakeholder helix strategies? What
‘are’ the roles of the private sector, public authorities, academia, civil so-
ciety, and entrepreneurs/activists in these ULL initiatives? What ‘should’
these roles be?
3. How can ULLs transcend the current governance constraints of the smart
specialisation policy agenda in Europe?
4. What makes the ULL approach attractive and novel?
5. How are ULL initiatives being operationalised in contemporary urban gov-
ernance initiatives for sustainability and in low carbon cities?
6. What prospects are there for alternative funding and alternative business
models for cities and regions in Europe?
7. What are the practical and political interventions needed within multi-
stakeholder approaches, and what are the potential concerns about data
techno-politics?
8. Is another urban governance model possible–a ‘third-way’ between state
and market? (OECD/KIPF 2016)
To operationalise the transition from the understanding of (smart) citizens
as decision-makers rather than data providers, the next sub-section explores the
notion of the urban commons, particularly through data commons, as related to
the strategic role of institutions, in fostering regional ecosystems of experimenta-
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tion that engage the public sector, the private sector, academia, civic society, and
social entrepreneurs/activists in the Penta Helix framewok (see Figure 2). This en-
deavour focusses on experimentalism rather than smartness, which can help ex-
amine how urban governance requires considering the data commons beyond PPP.
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Figure 2. Penta Helix multi-stakeholder framework
(Calzada and Cowie 2017)
6.2. Experimenting with the Data Commons: The Penta Helix Multi-
Stakeholder Framework
According to Karvonen and van Heur (2014), the experimental city approach cham-
pions the promise of experimental processes to promote urban innovations related
to environmental protection, social cohesion, capitalist expansion, the development
of the creative sector, policy improvements, infrastructure provision, academic re-
search, and more. It is important to recognise that the notion of the experimental
city is related to a wider discursive field that includes Triple-Helix early formations,
applied innovation, engaged research, transdisciplinarity, living laboratories, and
the co-production of knowledge. As such, experimental urbanism (Amin and Thrift
2016) taps into ideas of urban change as inherently multi-disciplinary, data-inten-
sive, and embedded in place.
While the smart city approach was forged with an impetus towards urban-
solution-driven fixes (European Commission 2016), the experimental city is based
on three steps that unpack urban practices (Latour 1983:166):
“first, social scientists must capture the interests of non-scientists outside
of the laboratory (in the field); second, they must collect information on real-world
problems in the field and introduce this information into the controlled conditions
of the laboratory to facilitate experimentation; and third, social scientists must ex-
tend the laboratory into wider society by carefully re-introducing the experimental
results back into the field.”
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Thus, by emphasising the active role of (smart) citizenship, this paper in-
cludes the notion of the data commons in this narrative, as the rhetoric of the
smart city has been entirely based on the idea of PPP. Regarding the techno-politics
and the psycho-politics of data and the transition towards a more experimental
city approach, it is important to understand that the debate over the data com-
mons (Borch and Kornberger 2015; Foster and Iaione 2016) coincides with great
technological changes that demand and invite urban scholars and practitioners to
work both from a scientific perspective (to increase the capacity for innovation and
cross-fertilisation) and from a social perspective (to ensure processes of social
change and transformation). The data commons thus go beyond state-market re-
lations (Subirats 2012). As such, at this stage of the paper, it is important to revisit
the final research question. Is another type of city possible, that is, a ‘third-way’
between the state and the market, a city not dominated by PPP? A political debate
is gathering around these ever-more-frequent conflicts that do not find an ade-
quate response in the traditional market-state dichotomy (Blanco et al. 2017).
What is the answer to this governance challenge?
Bollier and Helfrich (2016) suggest that cities are at a crossroads insofar
as (smart) citizens could use the ideas of the data commons to retain control of
the services that matter to them and to ensure that these services work for the
people of the city, not just for businesses or the bureaucracy. However, the data
commons could be abstract in its outcomes (Borch and Kornberger 2015). At this
preliminary stage, the urban governance model should be evolving, which means
that there should be a necessary transition from the Triple and Quadruple Helixes
to the Penta Helix (Calzada 2016a). The prospect that the experimental city can
overcome the limitations of the smart city offers a plethora of strategies for includ-
ing more voices in the governance equation.
According to Lewontin (2000) and Leydesdorff and Fritsch (2006), the Triple
Helix framework (made up of private/industry, public/government, and academia/uni-
versity) enabled researchers to study the knowledge base of an urban economy in
terms of civil society’s support for the evolution of cities. However, dynamic and
pervasive social innovation processes are not included in this analysis insofar as
the definition of smart city governance only considers the fixed structure fuelled “by
academia, industry, and government” (Deakin 2014:7). Even the recurring obses-
sion with developing a full list of indicators using the Triple Helix for ‘smart city per-
formance’ (Lombardi et al. 2012; Michelucci et al. 2016) depicts this narrow vision,
which fails to notice any pervasive and inter-dependent power interactions among
stakeholders that ultimately defines the governance outcome.
The experimental city must include methodologically civic society (Quadruple
Helix) and consider entrepreneurs/activists (Penta Helix) as part of the transition
from the smart city approach. Deakin (2014:1) considers the Triple Helix framework
sufficient to “cultivate the environmental capacity, ecology and vitality of those
spaces which the direct democracy of their participatory governance open up, add
value to and construct”. However, this paper examines further connections between
entrepreneurship and policy experimentation, as Sabato et al. (2017:18) sug-
gested, by avoiding “narrow interpretations of social innovation”, which could rein-
force ongoing dynamics of welfare state retrenchment instead of its re-activation.
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Given the current multi-stakeholder dynamics taking place in European cities
and regions under the policy framework of H2020 Smart Cities and Communities
(Figure 1), transformative alliances among the public sector, the private sector,
academia, and civic society should eventually include the fifth helix, embodied by
social entrepreneurs and activists (i.e., intermediaries, bricoleurs, brokers, and/or
assemblers), as the main driver of change. Further research is needed to explore
the profiles, motivations, modes of interaction, and transformative conditions of
this type of invisible but highly-influential stakeholder in the socio-economic and
cultural life of the city (see Table 4 and Figure 2) (Calzada and Cowie 2017).
Recent projects, such as Smart Urban Intermediaries (2018), are clearly
exploring this path-complementing the active role of social entrepreneurs and ac-
tivists in local neighbourhoods as an integral part of the civic society. Nevertheless,
it is worth distinguishing them methodologically as social entities. Conflating civic
society (4th helix) and the social entrepreneurs and activists (5th helix) would leave
out a powerful collective intelligence in communities that can nurture socially in-
novative processes based on local experimentation to tackle social inequalities.
Triple Helix by itself does not suffice to activate unpredictable and experimental
dynamics due to the fixed and technocratic nature of the interplay among stake-
holders. Similarly, the Quadruple Helix, as it shown in Table 4, cannot leverage any
intrinsic transformational reaction by itself, since it is based on an institutionalised
bottom-up process, where citizens react passively to suggested initiatives.
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Table 4. Rethinking Stakeholders’ Helix Strategies
Rethinking Stakeholders’ Helix Strategies
Triple Helix (TH) Quadruple Helix (QH) Penta Helix (PH)
Literature
• Etzkowitz and
Leydesdorff
2000
• Goddard and
Kempton 2016 • Ostrom 2010
• Anttiroiko 2016
• Calzada 2017,
2018b
Multi-
Stakeholders
• Public
• Private
• Academia
• Public
• Private
• Academia
• Civic Society
• Public
• Private
• Academia
• Civic Society
• Assemblers: (Social)
Entrepreneurs or/and
Activists
Paradigms PPP Civic Universities Urban Commons
Governance
Scheme and
Citizenship
Response
Invisible and
Passive
Citizenship
Reactive and Passive
Citizenship Proactive
Citizenship
Techno-Politics
of Data
Technocratic
Top-Down Institutionalised
Bottom-Up Emergent and Complex
Bottom-Up
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As processes based on Quadruple Helix framework have revealed, the ini-
tiatives are pushed by institutions, resulting in poor or even inexistent mobilisation.
Furthermore, neither the Triple nor the Quadruple Helix frameworks can articulate
a deeper transformational democratic disruption entirely led and governed by a
collective intelligence. However, data-driven sensitive urban environments require
the valuable role of intermediaries as social entrepreneurs and activists (i.e., trans-
formers and bricoleurs). Ultimately, it is essential to bring back the social ties that
modern hyper-connected societies have dramatically diluted through the spread
of data-rich fragmented environments. Therefore, it is vital to rethink multi-stake-
holders’ helix strategies that rely on the techno-political awareness of data. Yet
this cannot occur while taking for granted the valuable role of proactive stakehold-
ers who set up new collective connections based on the interplay among a diverse
set of interests, imaginaries, and practices (Lombardi et al. 2011; Poppen and
Decker 2018).
Hence, in the laboratory context, experiments regarding the data commons
should ensure the complete representation of diverse voices from each helix. This
would reflect a wide range of voices in a community without relegating any to in-
stitutional settings. The inherent instability of an experimentally driven city provides
a mechanism for co-evolution and a capacity to process the transition from the
smart city approach. Often, the dynamics of social innovation (Calzada 2013b)
have been forgotten by those fostering urban change.
6.3. Experimenting Towards Urban Co-operative Platforms? The City as
a Platform and (Smart) Citizens as Maker Citizens
Ultimately, the third structural element of the experimental city is the understanding
of the city as a platform (Anttiroiko 2013, 2016) and of (smart) citizens as ‘maker
citizens’ (Levy 1968; The Atlantic 2015; European Commission 2017b). Local au-
thorities provide a wide range of services, including users’ involvement in product
development and citizens’ right to bring up their concerns to in open innovation
systems. Forms of participation may vary-some are nominal, some are transfor-
mative. More transformative modes of participation are associated with opening
public data sets for public use free of charge and are related to the open source
and user innovation movements (Smarticipate 2016). On the whole, these modes
reflect the increasing intersection between the Penta Helix, driven by (social) en-
trepreneurs/activists, and the experimental notion of the data commons.
The inclusion of the fifth helix, broadly understood as those agents playing
the role of transformational intermediaries (i.e., bricoleurs, brokers, or assemblers)
in pursuit of social entrepreneurship and activism, connects directly to these early
adopters with an ethical awareness of data and social justice. These agents are
ultimately the source of the collective and experimental disruption, as Srnicek ar-
gued (2017:128): “More radically, we can push for post-capitalist platforms that
make use of the data collected by these platforms in order to distribute resources,
enable democratic participation, and generate further technological development.
Perhaps today we must collectivise the platforms”. Additionally, these agents could
initiate a new generation of co-operative platforms including (i) co-operatively
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owned online labour brokerages and market places, (ii) city-owned platform co-
operatives, (iii) producer-owned platforms, (iv) union-backed labour platforms, (v)
co-operatives from within, and ultimately, (vi) the platform as protocol (Scholz
2016). Will experimenting with data in cities pushed by the fifth helix mean evolving
from ‘platform capitalism’ (Srnicek 2017) to ‘co-operative platforms’ (Scholz
2016)? Who will begin this ‘platform revolution’ and how will this happen (Parker
et al. 2016)?
To some extent, a balance between private and public interests is comple-
mented by other activities that could be considered the seeds of the experimental
city in the realm of the data commons. As such, there are inherent asymmetries
in the levels of engagement of firms and citizens, and these asymmetries are com-
pensated for by welfare structures. Understanding the city as a platform may be a
less controversial view of how to legitimise urban laboratories while redistributing
capital and reducing inequalities at the neighbourhood level through the ‘Robin-
Hood effect’ (Louail et al. 2016), enabling citizens to build and use the data plat-
forms and make their own decisions based on urban co-operatives, as in Barcelona
(Morozov and Bria 2018; Urban I-Lab 2018; Digital Social Innovation 2018; La
Borda 2015).
In the realm of the experimental city, (smart) citizens should play a transfor-
mative role as decision-makers. In addition, the way some cities are evolving to-
wards the power of the maker culture is related to the emergence of citizens as
makers. The initiatives Barcelona and Amsterdam are implementing based on the
‘decentralised citizens owned data ecosystem’ fuelled by ‘blockchain’ technology
through the Decode EU project are remarkable (Decode 2018). Taking the lead
on this experimental strategy, Barcelona has set up Decidim.barcelona as a par-
ticipatory process allowing data and algorithmic transparency for their (smart) cit-
izens (Decidim 2018). The offline and online co-operative urban platforms are
blended in a new ‘data commons’ strategy through ULLs, as ‘Maker District Poble-
nou’ is illustrating with a network of FabLabs (Maker District Poblenou 2018). Like-
wise, other cities, such as London, have established a network of makers in diverse
disciplines (Open Workshop Network 2017), which creates further experimentation
in the city.
Although this type of experimentalism resonates with entrepreneurial models
of socio-economic systems, which have been implemented in different parts of
the world for decades, some models in the realm of co-operativism have also been
heavily researched (Dildorth 2014; Wanyama 2014). According to the ILO
(2002:2), a co-operative is “an autonomous association of people united volun-
tarily to meet their ‘common’ economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations
through jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprises”. This is the case
of the Mondragon co-operatives in the Basque Country (Spain) (Calzada 2013b;
Clamp and Alhamis 2010; Gupta 2014), a paradigmatic business model far from
the capitalistic business-as-usual type that includes the Penta Helix multi-stake-
holder framework at the city-regional level, thus driving economic efficiency, terri-
torial development, and social cohesion.
Even this model, however, shows some inherent contradictions that require
further analysis. Mondragon co-operatives have been facing two complementary
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crises for a number of years. The pressure of the global markets is undermining
the cohesive model based on local employment, as the crisis in the Fagor flagship
firm showed some years ago. As a result of the first crisis, the governance model
has revealed a hierarchical conflict between the top management and the workers.
The most substantial lesson learned (Calzada 2013b) has also raised an unre-
solved question: how can regionally rooted co-operative principles and values sur-
vive, be updated and re-activated in the 21st century? By refounding a new type
of co-operative entrepreneurship based on start-ups and spin-offs? Could these
co-operatives be established by network-driven millennials/entrepreneurs under
organisational frameworks based on open innovation, which would be sustainable
but strongly fixed? To sum up, there is a need for an updated urban co-operative
platform version based on inter-dependent metropolitan inclusiveness and region-
ally rooted social capital.
In conclusion, this paper questions whether the establishment of an ecosys-
tem of urban co-operative platforms could begin a movement towards experimental
cities. Some of the hypotheses presented in this paper (including the evolution of
citizens as decision-makers, increasing awareness of the smart city’s techno-po-
litical and psycho-political implications, growing interdependence among stake-
holders, and the trend towards urban laboratories) create pathways towards urban
co-operative platforms in energy, mobility, and ICTs-three sectors defined by the
Smart City and Communities H2020 policy framework, while the smart city ap-
proach is developing increasingly more sophisticated business models in European
neighbourhoods (Müller and Rommel 2010), cities (Calzada 2018b), and regions
(Cooperatives Europe 2017).
7. Conclusion
This paper examined the ongoing transition of the notion of (smart) citizens from
data providers (extracted from the smart city dominant paradigm) to decision-mak-
ers (according to the emergent experimental city alternative paradigm). To conclude
this paper, the three research questions are answered:
1. What prospects exist for alternative funding and alternative business mod-
els to move beyond smart cities by establishing the new paradigm of ex-
perimental cities?
In the current experimental realm, the way in which some urban experi-
ments are modifying the ownership of capital –and in parallel, the own-
ership of data– could offer interesting pathways to establishing alternative
funding and business models based on the awareness and ownership of
data. Unlike those who argue that data privacy is not an issue because
“people are happy to give away their personal data if it makes their life
easier or more fun” (Raconteur 2017:6), new business models may arise
based on community-based and community-controlled data that could
follow more democratic socio-economic models, such as co-operative
platforms/firms for self-managing urban issues.
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2. What practical/political interventions have been tried or are possible
among businesses, local governments, academia, communities, and so-
cial entrepreneurs?
In light of some smart city interventions, ULL experiments highlight new
interdependencies among stakeholders while fostering ecosystems of en-
trepreneurial starts-up and SMEs. However, as Foster and Iaione
(2016:1) suggest from the perspective of the city as a ‘commons’, “col-
laborative and polycentric governance strategies should recognise that
private ownership rights must sometimes yield to the common good or
community interest”. Nonetheless, this paper presents the Penta Helix
multi-stakeholder framework as a policy tool by pointing out the active
role of the fifth helix, which includes social entrepreneurs, activists,
bricoleurs, brokers, and assemblers.
3. Ultimately, is another type of (smart) city possible –that is, a ‘third-way’
between the state and market– that could overcome the PPP framework?
So far, PPP has been the primary model reinforcing the alliance between
the state and market. As Hall (2015:3) notes, “PPP are used to conceal public
borrowing, while providing long-term state guarantees for profits to private com-
panies”. However, several cities and regions, such as Barcelona, Amsterdam,
Naples, Torino, Bologna, Vienna, Glasgow, Bristol, Helsinki, Utrecht, Dublin, and
Brussels, among many others, (Calzada 2017) are currently undertaking experi-
mental approaches that are likely to open up a ‘third-way’, led by urban co-oper-
ative platforms in the European city-regional realm (Mazzucato 2018).
However, smartness may not be appealing after being seen as technocratic,
while the experimental approach has yet to be entirely established as a paradigm,
so the open question here is how (smart) citizens will be able to decide, control,
govern, and manage their urban futures by being both conscious of their rights to
the city and aware of their duties in the processes of city making.
Disclosure statement
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
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