Being a ‘citizen’ in the smart city:

Up and down the scaffold of smart citizen

participation

Paulo Cardullo & Rob Kitchin

National University of Ireland Maynooth

@kiddingthecity @robkitchin

Presented at Association of American Geographers conference, Boston, April 7th 2017

The Smart City

• Generally encompass three dynamics:

• Instrumentation and regulation

• Economic policy and development

• Social innovation, civic engagement and hactivism

• Many cities have smart city offices and programmes (e.g.,

Smart Dublin)

• Well organised epistemic community and advocacy coalition

operating across scales

• Strong policy mobility between cities

• Utilises a set of interrelated digital technologies

Smart City technologies

Domain Example technologies

Government E-government systems; online transactions; city operating systems; performance management systems; urban dashboards

Security and emergency services

Centralised control rooms; digital surveillance; predictive policing; coordinated emergency response

Transport Intelligent transport systems; integrated ticketing; smart travel cards; bikeshare; real-time passenger information; smart parking; logistics management; transport apps

Energy Smart grids; smart meters; energy usage apps; smart lighting

Waste Compactor bins and dynamic routing/collection

Environment Sensor networks (e.g., pollution, noise, weather; land movement; flood management)

Buildings Building management systems; sensor networks

Homes Smart meters; app controlled smart appliances

Civic Various apps; open data; volunteered data/hacks

Citizens?

• But how are citizens framed within and treated by smart

city programmes and technologies?

• Initial critique of smart cities was that their framing and

operation was top-down, technocratic, instrumental

• Aimed at controlling and disciplining citizens, as well as

producing and reinforcing neoliberal logics of urban

management

• That is, the smart city serves the interests of states and

corporations more than it does citizens

• The response was to reframe smart cities as ‘citizen-

centric’ or ‘citizen-focused’

• But what does that mean in practice?

Citizens?

• In this paper we deploy

a modified version of

Sherry Arnstein’s ladder

of citizen participation

(1969) to consider the

extent to which smart

cities are ‘citizen-

centric’

• We then deploy our

conceptual schema to

evaluate smart city

initiatives in Dublin and

whether they produce

‘smart citizens’

Form and Level of Participation

Citizen Power Citizen Control

Delegated Power

Partnership

Tokenism Placation

Consultation

Informing

Non-participation Therapy

Manipulation

Critique of Arnstein’s ladder

• ‘Simplification’ which reduces the diversity of participatory

situations to eight rungs

• Forms of participation ordered in a way that demarcates

relative value and utility

• Foregrounds power and control, rather than other factors such

as outcomes (e.g., improving quality of life) or nature/quality

of citizen experience

• Just because citizen’s have control of a service does not mean

that it will be any more inclusive

• Higher rungs are time-consuming and more likely to ‘fail’

• Role of ‘the expert’ and domain-level expertise in delivery

city services

• While we appreciate these concerns, we believe a modified

version of the ladder still provides a useful heuristic

Form and Level of Participation

Role Citizen

Involvement Ideology/

Politics Modality Examples

Citizen Power

Citizen Control

Leader/ Member

Ideas, Vision, Leadership

Rights, Citizenship, Deliberative Democracy, Commons

Inclusive, Bottom-up, Collective, Autonomy,

Empowering, Experimental

OSM, Code for Ireland

Delegated Power

Decision-maker

Civic Hacking, SBIR/Pre-

commercial procurement Partnership Co-creator

Suggest, Negotiate

Participation, Co-creation

Tokenism

Placation Proposer

Top-down, Civic

Paternalism, Stewardship,

Empty Rhetoric, Bound-to-succeed

Challenge workshops

Consultation Participant Feedback

Civic Engagement

CIVIQ

Information Recipient

Browse, Consume

Dublinked, Dublin

Dashboard

Neoliberal Freedom

Choice

Resident Capitalism,

Market

Smart District

Consumer Smart

meters/apps

Non-Participation

Therapy Learner Patient

User

Education, Steered, Nudged,

Controlled

Stewardship, Technocracy, Paternalism

Smart Dublin

Manipulation Traffic control

Conclusions

• Our aim in this paper has been to systematically unpack conceptually the diverse ways citizen participation is being conceived and enacted in the smart city

• Smart city initiatives largely position citizens as users, recipients or consumers, rather than as participants, co-creators, decision-makers, or as owners

• Programmes and technologies are largely underpinned by an ethos of stewardship (for citizens) and civic paternalism (deciding what is best for citizens) rather than by rights, citizenship, and deliberative democracy

• The question posed by Arnstein in 1969 remains relevant – how should citizens participate in smart cities?

• Indeed, there remains a number of pressing normative questions concerning the configuration, purpose, governance, and politics of smart cities and how they propose to produce ‘smart citizens’

• Need to re-imagine & re-make smart cities/citizenship

Background

http://progcity.maynoothuniversity.ie

@progcity

Rob.Kitchin@nuim.ie

@robkitchin

https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/people/rob-kitchin