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DEMOCRATISING smart city citizenship: Penta helix multi-stakeholders policy framework from the Social Innovation perspective
Abstract
This chapter examines in-depth how the smart cities’ policy approach has been intensively implemented in European cities under the Horizon 2020 programme. Nevertheless, this chapter argues that smart cities’ policy implementations not only reduce the interdependencies among stakeholders to technocratic public-private-partnership (PPP) models but also fail to question the identities of strategic stakeholders and how they prioritise their business/social models. These aspects are increasingly putting democracy at stake in data-driven smart cities worldwide and particularly in European cities and regions. Therefore, this chapter aims to unfold and operationalise multi-stakeholders’ policy frameworks from the Social Innovation perspective by suggesting the ex novo Penta helix framework—including public, private, academia, civil society, and social entrepreneurs/activists—to extend the Triple and Quadruple helix frameworks. This chapter also applies the Penta helix framework comparatively in three follower cities of the H2020-Replicate project: Essen (Germany), Lausanne (Switzerland), and Nilüfer (Turkey).
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This viewpoint paper aims to spark a debate by (i) presenting the need for developing data ecosystems in Europe that meet the social and public good while committing to democratic and ethical standards; (ii) suggesting a taxonomy of data infrastructures and institutions to support this need; (iii) using the case study of Barcelona as the flagship city trailblazing a critical policy agenda of smart cities to show the limitations and contradictions of the current state of affairs; and (iv), ultimately, proposing a preliminary roadmap for institutional and governance empowerment that could enable effective data ecosystems in Europe.
This viewpoint paper draws on lessons learnt in previous publications available in the Sustainability (Calzada, 2018), Regions (Calzada and Cowie, 2017; Calzada, 2019), Zenodo (Calzada and Almirall, 2019), RSA Journal (Calzada, 2019), and IJIS (Calzada, 2020) journals, and ongoing and updated fieldwork about the Barcelona case study stemming from an intensive fieldwork action research that started in 2017. The methodology used in these publications was based on the mixed-method technique of triangulation via action research encompassing (i) in-depth interviews, (ii) direct participation in policy events, and (iii) desk research. The case study was identified as the most effective methodology.
This viewpoint paper, drawing from lessons learnt from the Barcelona case study, elucidates on the need to establish pan-European data infrastructures and institutions—collectively data ecosystems—to protect citizens’ digital rights in European cities and regions. The paper reveals three main priorities proposing a preliminary roadmap for local and regional governments: (i) advocacy, suggesting the need for city and regional networks; (ii) governance, requiring guidance and applied, neutral, and non-partisan research in policy; and (iii) pan-European agencies, leading and mobilising data infrastructures and institutions at the European level.
From the very beginning, this viewpoint paper acknowledges its ambition, and thus its limitations, and clarifies its attempt to provide just an overview rather than a deep research analysis. This viewpoint paper presents several research limitations and implications regarding the scope. The paper starts by presenting the need for data ecosystems, then structures this need through two taxonomies, all illustrated through the Barcelona case study, and finally, concludes with a roadmap consisting of three priorities. The paper employs previous published and ongoing fieldwork findings in Barcelona as a way to lead and thus encourage the proliferation of more cases (CCDR).
This paper presents practical implications for local and regional authorities of the CCDR network. As such, the main three priorities of the preliminary roadmap could help those European cities and regions already part of the CCDR network to establish and build operational data ecosystems by establishing a comprehensive pan-European policy from the bottom-up that aligns with the timely policy developments advocated by the European Commission. This paper can inspire policy-makers by providing guidelines to better coordinate among a diverse set of cities and regions in Europe.
In previous research, data ecosystems were not directly related to digital rights amidst the global digital geopolitical context and, more specifically, were not connected to the two taxonomies (on data infrastructures and institutions) that could be directly applied to a case study, like the one presented about Barcelona. Thus, this viewpoint paper shows novelty and originality by also opening up (based on previous fieldwork action research) a way to take strategic action to establish a pan-European strategy among cities and regions through three specific priorities. This paper can ultimately support practice and lead to new research and policy avenues.
To cite this article:
Calzada, I. and Almirall, E. (2020),
Data Ecosystems for Protecting European Citizens' Digital Rights,
Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, Vol. 14 No. 2.
DOI: 10.1108/TG-03-2020-0047
To access the article:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/TG-03-2020-0047/full/html
This intervention reflects on critical perspectives on algorithms and geographical work on the urban-digital interface to highlight a set of approaches for studying the politics of platform urbanism. In several ways, platforms may be understood as black boxes due to the proprietary nature of algorithms, the secrecy of corporate ownership structures, and the emphasis on confidentiality and privacy in the venture capital industry. While thus raising concerns about scrutiny and accountability, inclinations to “open the black box” of platforms reflect a limited and limiting horizon of political possibility. In a different vein, geographers concerned with the digital-urban interface are working to think about the potential for a counter-politics that is not rooted exclusively in resistance or antagonism. Drawing on these insights, this intervention complements recent work on digital methods by emphasizing tracing, counter-mapping, and proxying as approaches that do not privilege the revelation of visibility so much as potentiality, slipperiness, and movement.
There is a growing academic and policy interest in the notion of using cities as ‘living laboratories’ to develop and test responses to the social, environmental, and economic challenges present in contemporary urbanism. These living laboratories are often assumed to function through ‘quadruple helix’ relations between varied actors from the public, private, university, and community sectors. However, empirical research that explores the real-world functioning of these arrangements is comparatively limited. This paper will help address this gap through the case of Newcastle City Futures (NCF) – a university-anchored platform for collaborative urban foresight research, public engagement, and innovation. In particular, the paper will concentrate on a two year period when NCF focused on the facilitation of innovation demonstrator projects guided by the vision of Newcastle upon Tyne developing a post-industrial future as a ‘test-bed city’. Detailed empirical accounts of the development of two demonstrator projects are used to illustrate and analyse processes of cross-sectoral collaboration and engaging the public in co-design. These are used to support the conceptual argument that the presence of the quadruple helix as a form of local innovation system should not be taken as given. Instead the collaborative relationships required for transformational interventions in the future of cities need to be actively constructed by diverse actors and supported by intermediary vehicles such as NCF.
In this special issue on "Democratization beyond the Post-Democratic Turn. Political Participation between Empowerment and Abuse", we have explored changing understandings of participation in contemporary Western representative democracies through the analytical lens of the concept of the post-democratic-turn. We have investigated technology-based, market-based, and expert-led innovations that claim to enhance democratic participation and to provide policy legitimation. In this concluding article, I revisit the cases made by the individual contributors and analyse how shifting notions of participation alter dominant understandings of democracy. I carve out how new and emerging ideas of participation are based on different understandings of political subjectivity; furthermore, how constantly rising democratic expectations and simultaneously increasing scepticism with regard to democratic processes and institutions point to a growing democratic ambivalence within Western societies. Making use of Dahl's conceptualization of democracy, in this article, I review changing understandings of participation in light of their contribution to further democratization. The article shows how under post-democratic conditions the simulative performance of autonomy and subjectivity has become central to democratic participation. It emphasizes that what in established perspectives on democratization might appear as an abuse of participation, through the lens of a post-democratic-turn might be perceived as emancipatory and liberating.
Hamburg participates in the EU-funded research and development project mySMARTlife (mSL) with experiments involving smart city technologies, among others in the field of transportation infrastructure. These experiments are shaped by a public-private consortium in accordance with a call of the EU research and innovation program “Horizon 2020”. They focus on close to the market technologies. The experiments aim at citizen participation. Yet, what technologies are experimented with has been decided and contractually fixed by the consortium beforehand. We explore tensions in this kind of setup, and how entrenched approaches to planning of transportation infrastructure are challenged by new subjectivities, expectations, standards and procedures. From our perspective, it is highly questionable whether a purely expert driven process can produce outcomes that sufficiently reflects local residents’ ideas of sustainable and appropriate changes to urban infrastructures. For this reason, candidate ‘solutions’ for future mobility demands should be exposed to societal deliberation at an earlier stage in their development.
Our exploration of (possible) interplays between such an experimental approach to the shaping of infrastructures and the pre-existing integrated approach to planning has been a modest first step, and more empirical research would be needed to draw solid conclusions. It seems worthwhile to analyse more deeply the in- and exclusiveness of the actor constellations in such processes, the role of coincidences or strategies behind the selection of partners, and a possible gate-keeper function of the process initiator.
The main aim of the paper is to question the viability of measuring social innovation with the current state of knowledge on the one hand, and to make suggestions for better measurement of it on the other. To reach this aim, the literature on the traditional measures of technological innovation and the previous attempts of measuring social innovation is surveyed. Despite relatively narrow scope of the literature mainly originated from the very recent and pioneer experiments, one may argue that the first findings do not present a promising picture for future studies. Therefore, existing trials to measure social innovation have to be critically screened to ascertain problematic areas, and hence, to provide plausible solutions. The problems with social innovation metrics are not only limited with obtaining concrete and trustworthy results, but also extended to statistical, methodological and even conceptual spheres.
In the current push for smart city programs around the world, there is a significant focus on enabling transactions between citizen and government. Though traditionally there have always been transactional elements between government and citizen, for example payment of taxes in exchange for services, or voting in exchange for representation, the rise of modern smartphone and smart city technologies have further enabled micro-transactions between citizen, government, and information broker. We conceptualize how the modern smart city, as both envisaged and enacted, incorporates the citizen not necessarily as a whole actor, but as a series of micro-transactions encoded on the real-time landscape of the city. This transactional citizen becomes counted by smart city sensors and integrated into smart city decision-making through the use of certain preferred platforms. To approach this shift from traditional forms of citizen/city interaction towards micro-transactions, we conceptualize four broad modes of transaction; type (intentional contribution), tweet (intermediated by third party), tap (convened or requested transaction), and pass (ambient transaction based on movement). These four modes are used to frame critical questions of how citizens interact with government in the emerging age of the smart city, and how these interactions impact the relationship between citizen and government, introducing new avenues for private sector influence.
This article proposes a new model of privacy: infrastructural surveillance. It departs from Agre’s classic distinction between surveillance and capture by examining the sociotechnical claims of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) as requiring totalising surveillance of passengers and environment in order to operate. By doing so, it contributes to the ongoing debate on the commodification and platformisation of life, paying attention to the under-explored infrastructural requirements of certain digital technologies, rather than its business model. The article addresses four distinct characteristics of infrastructural surveillance: the aggregation of data, initialisation of protocols limiting possible actions, the prioritisation of distributed modes of governance and the enclosure of the driver in a personalised bubble of sovereign power. Ultimately, unlike previous modes of computer privacy in which activities are being constructed in real time from a set of institutionally standardised parts specified by a captured ontology, we observe the creation of new ontologies.
Smart city is an entrepreneurial city. There is a bidirectional relationship between entrepreneurship and smart cities. First, entrepreneurs initiate technological interventions that help cities undergo socio-technical transitions and become smart cities. Second, the technologies being adopted in cities generate data which then helps enterprises to explore new opportunities. However, despite the potential of this bidirectional relationship, this connection has been less explored. In order to fill the gap, this paper reviews the extant literature in the field to contextualize the role that entrepreneurship plays in building smart cities and how smart cities influence entrepreneurial business models. I referred to 479 papers published until June 2017 on smart cities and 35 papers out of those related to entrepreneurship using the method of clustered content analysis. This article contributes towards increasing our understanding of this bidirectional relationship, and opens up research avenues for future researchers to take up in order to add to the knowledge in the field of smart cities.
With contemporary development of digital technology and smart cities initiatives, citizen co-production has created a new government-citizen interface. However, it remains inconclusive whether such citizen-government collaboration has achieved the fundamental goal of improving service quality for citizens. In this research, we tested the relationship between e-participation as a form of co-production and service performance, using multiple large longitudinal datasets from a smart city mobile platform. The results of the analysis show that citizen e-participation, in providing service feedback, is positively associated with the clearance rate of urban service requests in subdistrict service units, after controlling for various factors. We also found that the effect size of e-participation on service performance varies between different types of city services. E-participation has a stronger relative influence on complex problems that may involve multiple agencies, than with simple routine services.
The idea that the city belongs to all individuals inhabiting the urban space is grounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the New Urban Agenda, and it is referred to as “right to the city” or “rights in the city.” This article discusses how human rights relate to the city and its inhabitants, examines the meaning of the right to the city and human rights in the city in today’s urban environment, and deliberates how to transform cities into spaces that reflect fundamental human rights principles. By looking at the situation of marginalized groups in cities, the article focuses on the questions of how to build inclusive, fair, and accessible cities and how to eliminate inequalities seen in urban communities. Because technology is often cited as one way to foster integration of marginalized communities, special attention will be given to the smart city and the opportunities and challenges presented by information and communication technologies (ICTs) for human rights, accessibility, and inclusion. Using the case of persons with disabilities as an illustration, the article argues that urban development needs to be fundamentally transformed to live up to human rights standards. Only a multi-stakeholder urban design process will produce truly inclusive urban spaces that fulfill the right to the city.
The number of publications on social innovations has significantly increased over the past decades. Meanwhile even policy-makers build their hopes on socially innovative solutions and their ‘transformative power’. However, what is still needed is a better understanding of the processes and mechanisms of social innovations. This Special Issue focuses in particular on the genesis of social innovations in the context of urban development and planning. It addresses a research gap by systematically drawing the attention to the fact that innovative ideas often meet resistance or conflict and that the implementation of novel practices is hindered. The article gives a short introduction to the current state of research in the field. It explains the many-facetted concept of social innovation, defines how socially innovative urban development and planning can be understood in this context and discusses how the role of conflicts can be described. The article not least gives an overview of the contributions. The articles show that institutional friction and resistance are normal concomitants of innovation processes. This does not mean that conflicts necessarily result in the failure or delay of socially innovative developments. In cases where they are constructively processed, they rather lead to progress.
The smart city has been both celebrated for opening up decision-making processes through responsive digital infrastructures, and criticised for turning citizens into mere nodes of socio-technical networks under corporate or government control. In line with these depictions, smart city politics is often analysed as a struggle between aspirations for bottom-up participatory democracy and authoritarian control. Drawing on ethnographic research on an Amsterdam project which encourages citizens to collect and share air quality data, we problematise this vertical reading of smart city politics. The project mobilises both republican citizenship and cybernetic citizenship, each assuming different logics regarding the ways in which citizens negotiate urban life by means of data and sensing technologies. While republican citizenship emphasises citizens’ sovereignty, cybernetic citizenship emphasises their immersion into informational environments. We demonstrate how, depending on specific situated interests and forms of engagement, both kinds of citizenship feed into appealing visions of urban life for different actors.
In the last decade, several smart cities throughout the world have started employing Internet of Things, big data, and algorithms to nudge citizens to save more water and energy, live healthily, use public transportation, and participate more actively in local affairs. Thus far, the potential and implications of data-driven nudges and behavioral insights in smart cities have remained an overlooked subject in the legal literature. Nevertheless, combining technology with behavioral insights may allow smart cities to nudge citizens more systematically and help these urban centers achieve their sustainability goals and promote civic engagement. For example, in Boston, real-time feedback on driving has increased road safety and in Eindhoven, light sensors have been used to successfully reduce nightlife crime and disturbance. While nudging tends to be well-intended, data-driven nudges raise a number of legal and ethical issues. This article offers a novel and interdisciplinary perspective on nudging which delves into the legal, ethical, and trust implications of collecting and processing large amounts of personal and impersonal data to influence citizens’ behavior in smart cities.
In recent years, critical scholarship has drawn attention to increasing power differentials between corporations that use data and people whose data is used. A growing number of scholars see digital data and information commons as a way to counteract this asymmetry. In this paper I raise two concerns with this argument: First, because digital data and information can be in more than one place at once, governance models for physical common-pool resources cannot be easily transposed to digital commons. Second, not all data and information commons are suitable to address power differentials. In order to create digital commons that effectively address power asymmetries we must pay more systematic attention to the issue of exclusion from digital data and information commons. Why and how digital data and information commons exclude, and what the consequences of such exclusion are, decide whether commons can change power asymmetries or whether they are more likely to perpetuate them.
Resumen Ilustramos aquí cómo se puede implementar el concepto de Triple Hélice a nivel municipal estableciendo un intermediario entre la ciencia, la economía, la administración pública, y la sociedad civil. Estudiamos aquí el caso de Bielefeld 2000plus, una iniciativa fundada para tal propósito, que revela la manera en que ciertos conflictos y desafíos inter-organizativos pueden canalizarse de manera eficiente por un actor intermediario. Además, Bielefeld 2000plus sirve como un prototipo que utilizamos para derivar un modelo teórico de un intermediario que es, a la vez, producto y plataforma de empresarios institucionales. A partir de las literaturas que examinan intermediarios en la Triple Hélice, así como emprendedores institucionales, presentamos aquí un Modelo de Intermediario Multifuncional (IMf) que actúa como un emprendedor institucional, con todas las ventajas y desventajas de tener múltiples funciones. Este modelo IMf es nuestra contribución para los investigadores de los procesos de la Triple Hélice así como para los profesionales que buscan establecer intermediación efectiva en ecosistemas de innovación.
This paper presents an analysis of interviews, focus groups and workshops with employees in the technical administration in the municipality of Copenhagen in the year after it won a prestigious Smart City award. The administration is interpreted as a ‘most likely’ to succeed in translating the idealised version of the smart city into a workable bureaucratic practice. Drawing on the work of Orlikowski and Gash, the empirical analysis identifies and describes two incongruent ‘technological frames’ that illustrates different ways of making sense of data and the smart city within this single organisational unit. One is called the experimentalist’s credo and it is characterised by inspiration from the development of an Internet of Things as well as a readiness to learn from the open source community in software development. The other is called the data-owners vocation and it is characterised by a more situated approach that interprets data as strategic and political. It is argued that the existence of these frames provides two insights relevant for the literature on smart cities. First, they illustrate that one should be careful not to reify the smart city as a phenomenon that can be criticised in generic terms. Second, they suggest that even if there exists a transition toward the implementation of a technocratic smart city paradigm across public administrations, this paradigm is not unique in its focus on markets and evidence in governance.
Against the backdrop of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) taking effect in the European Union (EU), a debate emerged about the role of citizens and their relationship with data. European city authorities claim that (smart) citizens are as important to a successful smart city program as data and technology are, and that those citizens must be convinced of the benefits and security of such initiatives. This paper examines how the city of Barcelona is marking a transition from the conventional, hegemonic smart city approach to a new paradigm—the experimental city. Through (i) a literature review, (ii) carrying out twenty in-depth interviews with key stakeholders, and (iii) actively participating in three symposiums in Barcelona from September 2017 to March 2018, this paper elucidates how (smart) citizens are increasingly considered decision-makers rather than data providers. This paper considers (i) the implications of the technopolitics of data ownership and, as a result, (ii) the ongoing implementation of the Digital Plan 2017–2020, its three experimental strategies, and the related seven strategic initiatives. This paper concludes that, from the policy perspective, smartness may not be appealing in Barcelona, although the experimental approach has yet to be entirely established as a paradigm.
To obtain the full article in open access:
http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/10/9/3252
To cite this article:
Calzada, I. (2018), (Smart) Citizens from Data Providers to Decision-Makers? The Case Study of Barcelona. Sustainability 10(9): 3252. DOI: 10.3390/su10093252. Special Issue: Big Data Research for Social Sciences and Social Impact.
This article conceptualises the European smart city as an assemblage of peripheral smart city network practices and central smart city project practices. Both practices are primarily geared towards the pursuit of ‘smartness’ a prestigious urban adjective that, in the European context, often means receiving an award or large grant from Europe. This article focuses on smart city projects that received European funding, and explores why, how and with what effect for citizen participation these projects are shaped by specific visions for European cities in general, and for European smart cities in particular. It does so by situating these ideas within the intersecting political-economic ambitions of those able to grant ‘smart’ (European Research and Innovation Schemes) and those needing to pursue it (post-crisis municipalities). It then illustrates how this political economy results in a discursive production logic that explains why so many smart city projects, that were or want to be successful in European grant applications, tend to exclude the perspective and interests of citizens. The article consequently proposes that politicians, city makers and scientists, who so laudably (cl)aim to position and treat citizens as key stakeholders in European smart cities, reflect more explicitly on their own roles in preserving and challenging this production logic.
While scholars critique the first-generation of the corporate smart city for failing to deliver on social agendas and authentically respond to the needs of residents, many point to a potential to move beyond narrow environmental and economic objectives and tackle social issues. But concrete empirical evidence of this potential is visibly lacking. In parallel, researchers have brought attention to the emergence of the so-called 'smart city 2.0'. This is framed as a decentralised, people-centric approach where smart technologies are employed as tools to tackle social problems, address resident needs and foster collaborative participation. This contrasts to the techno-economic and centralised approach of the dominating first-generation 'smart city 1.0', which is primarily focused on diffusing smart technologies for corporate and economic interests. Utilising this dichotomy as an analytical framework, this paper examines Aizuwakamatsu Smart City in Fukushima, Japan to understand to demonstrate how a smart city can be framed and implemented as a tool for tackling endogenous social challenges. Findings unearth a myriad of novel approaches to utilising data and ICT to respond to resident needs, improve livelihoods and widely share smart city benefits. Yet they also point to a need to transcend polarised discourses of the smart city 1.0 verses the smart city 2.0 and appreciate the messy reality of hybrid and on-the-ground smart cities and the coexistence of contrasting yet complementary visions and approaches.
This paper examines a transformative tourism case study driven by local entrepreneurship in the coastal and post-violence/peripheral village of Zumaia, in the Basque Country (Spain). This paper aims at addressing an innovative methodology called ‘Tourism Living Lab through Multistakeholders’ Penta Helix framework’ in response to a globalised trend of increasing visitors. The result shows democratic tourism policy-making practices at the local level, including (i) a participatory strategic formulation process (ii) by fostering a local entrepreneurial ecosystem to overcome ‘tourism-phobia’ (iii) while renewing local identity (iv) through bridging social capital for a new post-violence era in the Basque Country.
To cite this article:
Calzada, I. (2019), Local Entrepreneurship Through a Multistakeholders’ Tourism Living Lab in the Post-Violence/Peripheral Era in the Basque Country. Regional Science, Policy and Practice 11(3), 451-466. In the Special Issue ‘Local Entrepreneurship and tourism: policies and practices in peripheral areas’. DOI: 10.1111/rsp3.12130.
This article suggests the Entrepreneurial Discovery Process (EPD) that underlies Research and Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation (RIS3) is not so much caught in the transition from the Triple to the Quadruple Helix, as rooted in a division within civil society. In particular, rooted in a division within civil society, over public trust in the EDP and around the democratic deficit of RIS3. Over public trust in the EDP and around the democratic deficit of RIS3 as a transgression, which centers attention on the participatory governance of science and technology, which is regressive in nature and whose knowledge economy seeks to overcome such limitations as part of the search for sustainable regional growth that serves civil society.
The paper begins with an examination of three ideal types citizenship which are not necessarily mutual exclusive. The first type is national citizenship, typically associated with ethno-nationalism. The second form is social citizenship or ‘welfare citizenship’ refers to the creation of social rights and is closely connected to civil-society institutions rather than to the state or market. The third form of citizenship identifies the citizen with participation in the work force emphasizing self-reliance and autonomy. In this discussion, I argue that with economic globalization and the development of neo-liberal strategies the various forms of citizenship have converged towards a new model of passive citizenship in which the state is or has withdrawn from commitment to full employment and the provision of social security, especially universal provision of welfare services, and civil-society institutions have been eroded. The result is the emergence of the apolitical,isolated citizen as consumer. The fourth model of citizenship presupposes a consumer society, a weak state and the decline of civic institutions, where the passive citizen becomes a consumer of privatized goods and services. The rise of a fourth model of citizenship – the consumer-citizen – can be interpreted as a logical consequence of financialization.
This paper is a report on the recent special session of papers presented at the Regional Studies Association (RSA) Annual Conference in Dublin, entitled ‘Beyond Smart & Data-Driven City-Regions: Rethinking Stakeholder-Helixes Strategies’. The session was a collaboration between the Urban Transformations ESRC programme at the University of Oxford and the Future Cities Catapult.
Aim/Purpose: Countries today strategically pursue regional development and economic diversification to compete in the world market. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are at the crux of this political strategy. The paper reviews how HEIs can propel regional socio-economic growth and development by way of research innovation and entrepreneurship.
Background: Offering an academic perspective about the role of HEIs using the Penta Helix innovation network for business and social innovation, the paper discusses opportunities and challenges in gestating an innovation culture. It likewise seeks, identifies and details strategies and workable programs.
Methodology: Best-practice innovation campaigns initiated by Omani HEIs in collaboration with capstone programs organized by the government were parsed from selected local and international literature. The study includes a causal analysis of innovation information contained in 40 out of 44 published OAAA Quality Audit reports about HEIs from 2009 to 2016. The best-practice programs serve as success indicators and will be used as a field metric effect a Penta Helix blueprint for innovation.
Contribution: The paper discusses how HEIs can engender, nurture, drive, and sustain innovation and entrepreneurial activity by using an innovation strategic blueprint like the Penta Helix model. It gathers together the recent historical attempts at promoting innovation by HEIs. It likewise suggests the creation of a network channel to allow key players in the innovation network to share innovation information and to collaborate with each other. Furthermore, it contributes to the development of innovation culture in HEIs.
Findings: Expectations run high in academia. For one, universities believe that all innovations embryonically begin within their halls. Universities–too–believe it is naturally incumbent on them to stimulate and advance innovation despite that most innovation programs are initiated by the government in Oman. HEI engagement is perceivably still weak. HEIs have yet to come out as a strong leading force in promoting systems of innovation. There is clear awareness of the need to adopt leading-edge practices in innovation strategy and management, curriculum and assessment, staff support and reward systems, funding and ICT infrastructure, research commercialization and IP management, and community engagement.
Recommendations for Practitioners: There is need to conduct more in-depth analyses about the synergy and partnerships between key players of the Penta Helix model. A large-scale survey will help completely reveal the status and impact of innovation practices in the region and among HEIs.
Recommendation for Researchers: There is need to conduct more in-depth analyses about the synergy and partnerships between key players of the Penta Helix model. A large-scale survey will help completely reveal the status and impact of innovation practices in the region and among HEIs.
Impact on Society: The paper hopes to influence policy. It fully intends to convince policymakers increase the adoption of strategic interventions. The paper is not a theoretical description of the problem. It suggests several concrete courses of action.
Future Research: The paper has seen the need to measure the effectiveness of the current innovation practices among key players in the innovation network and how these practices advance Oman’s knowledge economy. We propose a Likert-based bottom-up engagement metric.
Calzada examines in this chapter the ways in which the hegemonic approach to the “smart city” is evolving into a new intervention category, called the “experimental city.” While this evolution presents some innovations, mainly regarding how smart citizens will be increasingly considered more as decision makers than data providers, likewise, some underlying issues arise, concerning the hidden side and ethical implications of the techno-politics of data and the urban commons. These issues engage with multi-stakeholders, particularly with the specific Penta Helix framework that brings together private sector, public sector, academia, civic society, and entrepreneurs. These innovations in urban life and its governance will inevitably bring us into debate about new potential models of business and society, concerning, for instance, the particular urban co-operative scheme employed.
This article investigates how “social innovation” made its way onto the European Union (EU) agenda and how this notion has been creatively used to advance distinct policy goals. It does so by analysing the resources the EU provided to promote social innovation over the period 2006–2014. Three main conclusions arise. First, between 2006 and 2010 the label social innovation was rarely used, although several EU instruments and processes supported it. Second, throughout 2009–2010, the European Commission’s Bureau of European Policy Advisers played a key agenda setting role in flagging social innovation on the eve of the Europe 2020 Strategy. Consequently, and third, since 2010 social innovation has been explicitly mainstreamed into the EUs new growth strategy. This phase is characterized by a stronger emphasis on “social entrepreneurship” and “social experimentation”. As a result, social innovation has become an important tool in the European Semester’s focus on the reform of the welfare state.
The past decade has seen an explosion in what is popularly known as the “sharing economy,” perhaps most visibly in the realm of transport. Digital “shared mobility” platforms like Uber, Car2Go, and Mobike, as well as emerging, more sophisticated “mobility-as-a-service” platforms which coordinate multiple discrete services into a single portal, have risen to prominence as modes of reworking everyday urban transport in cities of North America, Europe, and East Asia in particular. This paper aims to explore the driving forces and concrete expressions of this platformization of urban mobility, as a particularly diverse and volatile component of a broader platform urbanism. Based on the construction and analysis of a database consisting of 200 urban mobility platforms drawn from across the globe, we highlight five key trajectories of platform formation, focusing on the firms, institutions, and social interests that have fueled the growth of this sector, and the modes of infrastructural organization, spatial formation, and governance that they entail. We further highlight the fragility of this particular form of “spatial fix,” and the prospects for a more redistributive form of platform urbanism. We conclude by reflecting on implications for future research.
This article examines how social innovation (SI) research can co-produce transformative change in cities. A key challenge is to diffuse and sustain SIs in ways that transform the relational webs that constitute local spaces and their governance. The relational approach to SI is conceptually promising in this respect, but its foundations and practices need to be further developed. Therefore, I develop a relational ‘theory–methods package’ of practice theory and action research. By co-producing immediately usable insights, experiences and artefacts in the daily practice of SI, this approach enables researchers to gradually create conditions for a transformative trajectory of learning and change in urban governance. I critically appraise four research practices in the context of SI in Dutch urban governance and reflect on the transformative potential of this relational theory–methods package.
Questioning the purely business-orientated, technology-centred use of the term ‘innovation’, research on social innovation has gained momentum in recent years. While significant progress has been made as regards the theoretical foundation of social innovation, the ‘ecosystem’ facilitating respective innovative activities remains rather vague and ambiguous. Most research informing our understanding draws on related but distinct concepts, such as Regional Innovation Systems (RIS). Following on from this debate, this article reflects on common features and differences between social innovation and other forms of innovation, and the resulting requirements for a Social Innovation Ecosystem (SIES). Drawing on data from the two European research projects, SIMPACT and SI-DRIVE, the article reflects on SIES from the perspective of RIS as an analytical framework, and strategic and management concept. It is argued that, due to a multiplicity of social innovation activities and their local embeddedness, no best solution for SIES exists. We posit that establishing a SIES necessitates (1) a mode of governance that integrates actors from civil society, and the social, economic and academic field; (2) social innovation hubs, labs and transfer centres as intermediaries that accelerate social innovation activities; and (3) the integration of different modes of innovation in transformational innovation strategies.
Social innovation is on the rise as a mode of governance through which to address societal challenges. Seeking to empower SI initiatives, researchers and policy makers are concerned with the development of supportive “ecosystems”. This concept usefully calls attention to the distributed nature of SI agency, but many questions remain on the kinds of network constellations involved. This contribution unpacks the “SI ecosystems” concept, specifying how the empowerment afforded through SI networks rests on (1) local embedding, (2) transnational connectivity and (3) discursive resonance. Charting the variety of network constellations as studied in an international comparison of 20 transnational SI networks, a typology of SI ecosystems is constructed. Distinguishing five SI ecosystem ideal-types ranging from loosely integrated and locally focused co-creation hubs to globally connected and widely resonating political movements, the typology informs a differentiated approach to their understanding and development.
Platform cooperativism proposes to create an alternative to the corporate sharing economy based on a model of democratically owned and governed co-operatives. The idea sounds simple and convincing: cut out the corporate middleman and replace Uber with a service owned and managed by taxi drivers themselves, create a version of Airbnb run by cities, or turn Facebook into a platform democratically controlled by all users. This article discusses the ambivalences of platform cooperativism, exploring both the movement’s potentials to subvert digital capitalism from the inside and the risk of being co-opted by it. Platform cooperativism aims to foster social change by creating a People’s Internet and replacing corporate-owned platforms with user-owned co-operatives. It yokes social activism with business enterprise. As a result, the movement is shaped by tensions and contradiction between politics and enterprise, democracy and the market, commons and commercialisation, activism and entrepreneurship. This article explores these tensions based on a Marxist perspective on the corrosive powers of capitalist competition on the one hand and a Foucaultian critique of entrepreneurialism on the other. It concludes with a reflection on the politics of platform cooperativism, drawing out problematic implications of an uncritical embrace of entrepreneurialism and highlighting the need to defend a politics of social solidarity, equality and public goods.
This paper gives an overview of over two decades of research projects on the study of the relationship between local development and social innovation (SI) made by the international action research network coordinated by the first author and funded by the European Commission. It explains the need to study the relationships between local development and opportunities for human development, and the aspirations for an epistemological turn, away from local growth to local development, and from disciplinary to inter- and trans-disciplinary perspectives. Using a chronological overview, the paper concentrates on questions related to the specific objectives of the projects and their epistemological (ontological, theoretical, methodological and validation) challenges. It explains how by meeting these challenges, over the years the network built a Social Innovation Action Research framework that can now be used as a reference for mutual enrichment between different approaches in SI action research.
The significance of social innovations for successfully meeting social, economic, political and environmental challenges of the twenty-first century is recognized not only by stakeholders on the local, regional and even national level but also within the Europe 2020 strategy and on a global scale. However, despite this growing awareness, for a long time a sustained and systematic analysis of social innovation, its theories, characteristics and impacts was missing. In this setup, the paper seeks to contribute to a common theoretical ground in social innovation theory by elaborating on a comprehensive concept of social innovation grounded in social theory and discusses consequences for social innovations in the urban context. The paper starts with an outline of theoretical foundations of social innovation and investigates the relationship between social innovation and social change. It then discusses the consequences of a comprehensive concept of social innovation for the local level, highlighting its multi-sectoral perspective. Social innovation ecosystems are introduced as an emerging theoretical approach and heuristic model especially for urban social innovation. Here, results of a global mapping conducted by the international research project SI-DRIVE provide empirical insights into the diversity and current state of social innovation initiatives.
The paper addresses the problem of democratic legitimacy of smart cities as a system of governance networks. Using data collected during a 2-year research project, such as the qualitative analysis of reports and documents and semi-structured interviews with key informants, the paper elaborates an Index of Democratic Smart Governance and applies it to four European smart cities: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Turin, and Vienna. Results show that smart cities are anchored in principles of democratic representation, but the link between political institutions and the general public is not entirely developed due to the lack of mechanisms truly fostering citizens’ participation and voicing.
This paper builds on institutional theory to understand the role that the institutional environment plays in emerging economies which encourage citizens to create Internet of Things (IoT)-based interventions. The research included a field-based study in Hyderabad, a south Indian smart city, using a qualitative explorative research methodology. The research found that, although a supportive regulatory environment helps to create a positive regulatory and cognitive institutional context, normative institutions continue to discourage the positive environment that this context has created. Such a scenario may lead to a 'talent-in and talent-out' situation that reduces the entrepreneurial potential of the cities. Thus, city governments in emerging economies need to focus on building not only a regulatory environment, but also create a conducive environment for the key stakeholders in the ecosystem to encourage and promote citizen-led IoT interventions that would result in building inclusive smart cities.
The Smart City is a fuzzy concept, which integrates numerous characteristics, components and dimensions. These characteristics are challenged in the academic literature, especially the technocentric approach and the central position of private companies. Moreover, the lack of proper conceptualisation pushes cities to claim themselves ‘smart’. Finally, there are few rigorous analytical or statistical analyses of the concept and its application to territories. Therefore, this paper studies how Belgian municipalities understand the concept of Smart Cities in 2016. Based on the groundwork of literature on Smart Cities and the results of a survey of 113 Belgian municipalities, a typology of four understandings of the Smart City (technological, societal, comprehensive and non-existent) is elaborated. The results also show that municipalities with no understanding of the Smart City concept or with a technical understanding are mostly located in small and rural municipalities. This could be a sign of rejection of the phenomenon in this context. Conversely, medium and large-sized municipalities mostly develop a societal or comprehensive understanding. Therefore, this study highlights a dichotomy of understanding and acceptance of the concept of the Smart City between peripheral (rural and small size municipalities) and central municipalities (urban, medium and large size municipalities).
This short piece acts as a coda to this journal’s special issue on “Smart Cities and Innovative Technologies.” First, it provides a retrospective view of the origins of the smart city concept. The paper, secondly, presents the most recent perspectives on the new interpretations of the smart city notion. It then provides a commentary on the potential directions for a better reconceptualization of smart cities to evade a most likely urban ecocide. Lastly, the short communication concludes by asking two critical questions: (a) Will urban scholars, planners, designers, and activists be able to convince urban policymakers and the general public of the need for a post-anthropocentric urban turnaround? (b) How do the public, private, and academic sectors along with communities pave the way for post-anthropocentric cities and more-than-human futures?
The smart city is an increasingly popular topic in urban development, arousing both excitement and skepticism. However, despite increasing enthusiasm regarding the smartness of cities, the concept is still regarded as somewhat evasive. Encouraged by the multifaceted character of the concept, this article examines how we can categorize the different dimensions often included in the smart city concept, and how these dimensions are coupled to innovation. Furthermore, the article examines the implications of the different understandings of the smart city concept for cities' abilities to be innovative. Building on existing scholarly contributions on the smartness of cities and innovation literature, the article develops a typology of smart city initiatives based on the extent and types of innovations they involve. The typology is structured as a smart city continuum, comprising four dimensions of innovation: (1) technological, (2) organizational, (3) collaborative, (4) experimental. The smart city continuum is then utilized to analyze empirical data from a Norwegian urban development project triggered by a critical juncture. The empirical data shows that the case holds elements of different dimensions of the continuum, supporting the need for a typology of smart cities as multifaceted urban innovation. The continuum can be used as an analytical model for different types of smart city initiatives, and thus shed light on what types of innovation are central in the smart city. Consequently, the article offers useful insights for both practitioners and scholars interested in smart city initiatives.
Smart City policies have attracted relevant attention and funding over the last few years. While the time seems now ripe to conclude that such policies have a positive impact on urban economic growth, the picture is much less clear when looking at the microfoundations of this effect. In this paper we look at the urban innovation impact of Smart City policies. In fact, typical Smart City projects imply the involvement not only of major multinational corporations, along with local public authorities, but also of local companies, typically with the aim to translate general technological solutions to the local needs. A new data set collected for these analyses comprises data on Smart City features for 309 European metropolitan areas, Smart City policy intensity, and urban innovation outputs. The latter are proxied by calculating total patent applications to the European Patent Office between 2008 and 2013. Patent counts also include technologically narrower classes, namely high-tech, ICT, and specific Smart City technologies patent applications. Propensity Score Matching estimates suggest that cities engaging in Smart City policies above the EU average also tend to patent more intensively. This effect is stronger for high-tech patents, while decreases for more narrowly defined technological classes. This last result suggests possible technological spillovers from technologies directly involved in Smart City policies.
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):00-00. DOI: [Forthcoming]
This paper develops a critical understanding of the smart city by investigating the values and ideas that underpin this concept and how they are translated into practice. It suggests that, despite private companies and municipalities promoting the smart city as a revolutionary utopia, this utopia is, on the contrary, an expression of the neoliberal ideology. The case study of the Italian city of Genoa shows that the smart city utopia acts as a generator of a collective imaginary while promoting the interests of business elites and diverting the attention away from urgent urban problems, such as urbanization. The neoliberal ideology influences the framing of these problems by favoring business-led technological solutions rather than political and long-term urban planning. The study suggests that this business-led utopia has important implications in terms of accountability of the actors involved.
Recent literature on social innovation highlights its conceptual ambiguity and emphasizes how technology has contributed to the renovation of this 200 year old practice, calling for more sector-specific research. Addressing this call, this paper examines how social innovation fits in the urban sustainability discourse and in what way it empowers urban citizens and their communities towards serving their interests. The findings with respect to 29 cases of social innovation initiatives for sustainability across 9 domains suggest that a large spectrum of sustainability challenges and topics are addressed by existing initiatives, which in turn can refer to different urban spatialities. For each initiative we examine the social innovation process, focusing on the types of involved organizations, the underlying innovation mechanisms as well as the use of technology. In terms of citizen empowerment, we examine the empowerment mode, the main beneficiaries of the innovation, as well as the specific outcome of the initiative. Following this analysis, we arrive to the identification and description of four primary citizen profiles in social innovation for sustainable urban development. We close by calling for further research into the perception, behavior and needs that are associated with the identified citizen profiles and their communities.
It cannot be assumed that technological innovations and social innovations are desirable per se. An innovation usually has positive as well as negative impacts on people, making its normative assessment a major research challenge. This has become increasingly recognized in the innovation literature. At the same time, subjective well-being (SWB) research has developed and matured largely independently of innovation studies. This paper puts forward a general conceptual framework of the (social) innovation – SWB nexus as a step towards the development of a unified normative “well-being theory of innovation” that applies to all types of innovation, e.g. social as well as technological innovation. Its main feature is the inclusion of multiple direct and indirect SWB impacts of processes as well as of outcomes. The framework can act as a focussing device that raises awareness of the many potential SWB impacts of innovation. SWB impacts should be used as an additional metric in the assessment of innovation, complementing other assessment approaches. © 2017 The European Association for the Advancement of the Social Sciences
Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are increasingly seen as a way of innovating the production and management of public services. However, the question of what drives innovation in partnerships has so far received only limited attention. Drawing on network governance and collaborative innovation literature, this article presents the findings from a survey among 260 Danish PPPs. The study shows that while innovation training has a significant effect on achieving innovation in PPPs, factors such as trust and institutional support only affect some innovation types. The findings demonstrate the importance of individual innovation skills and a differentiated understanding of innovation outcomes in PPPs.
Big data is driving the use of algorithm in governing mundane but mission-critical tasks. Algorithms seldom operate on their own and their (dis)utilities are dependent on the everyday aspects of data capture, processing and utilization. However, as algorithms become increasingly autonomous and invisible, they become harder for the public to detect and scrutinize their impartiality status. Algorithms can systematically introduce inadvertent bias, reinforce historical discrimination, favor a political orientation or reinforce undesired practices. Yet it is difficult to hold algorithms accountable as they continuously evolve with technologies, systems, data and people, the ebb and flow of policy priorities, and the clashes between new and old institutional logics. Greater openness and transparency do not necessarily improve understanding. In this editorial we argue that through unravelling the imperceptibility, materiality and governmentality of how algorithms work, we can better tackle the inherent challenges in the curatorial practice of data and algorithm. Fruitful avenues for further research on using algorithm to harness the merits and utilities of a computational form of technocratic governance are presented.
The author argues that the development of the so-called buzzword smart city and its use in planning inner cities are intimately bound up with required current urban transformations. In this attempt to deconstruct or unplug the buzzword, this paper shows a sample of the current EU smart city H2020 universe by focusing on four projects the author is engaged in. The conclusion of the article revolves around the necessity to plug stakeholders in by setting up a new, complex, multi-stakeholder, city-regional urbanity as a way to transit towards real smartness in cities and regions. To plug in, or connect, stakeholders, one should consider: the interdependencies among them; the need of democratic mechanisms to manage data; the need to scale up urban solutions to metropolitan/city-regional levels; the intent to provide comparative evidence-based data; and finally, the tendency to establish not only quantitative but also qualitative rankings and city dashboards that will enable adaptability rather than replicability.
To cite the article:
Calzada, Igor (2016). (Un)Plugging Smart Cities with Urban Transformations: Towards Multi-Stakeholder City-Regional Complex Urbanity? URBS. Revista de Estudios Urbanos y Ciencias Sociales, 6(2), 25-45.