Framing smart cities

Rob KitchinNIRSA, National University of Ireland Maynooth

Smart cities

• Lots of definitions of smart cities. Generally encompass three dynamics:• Instrumentation and regulation

• Cities composed of ‘everyware’: ICT infrastructure, devices, sensors, software, big data

• Cities become knowable and controllable in new, dynamic, reactive ways; improved models and simulations for future development

• More efficient, competitive and productive service delivery

Urban big data

• Directedo Surveillance: CCTV,

drones/satelliteo Digitisation of millions of

documents, films, audio recordings

• Automatedo Automated surveillanceo Digital deviceso Sensed and scanned data o Interaction and transactional datao IoT (Internet of things) and M2M

(machine to machine)

• Volunteered o Social mediao Sousveillance/wearableso Crowdsourcingo Citizen science

Single systems

Integrated, city & sector wide

Smart cities

• Lots of definitions of smart cities. Generally encompass three dynamics:• Instrumentation and regulation

• Cities composed of ‘everyware’: ICT infrastructure, devices, sensors, software, big data

• Cities become knowable and controllable in new, dynamic, reactive ways; improved models and simulations for future development

• More efficient, competitive and productive service delivery

• Policy, development and governance• Advances in ICT reconfiguring human capital, creativity, innovation,

education, sustainability, governance• Cities as competitive, entrepreneurial, knowledge-driven systems

• Social innovation, civic engagement and hactivism• ICT provides means for transparent and accountable governance, new forms

of civic participation, better informed citizens

• First two largely underpinned by neoliberal visions of market-led and technocratic solutions to city governance and development

• Third is a counter-weight for some, alternative for others

Smart ...

• Economy • entrepreneurship, innovation, productivity, competiveness

• Government• e-gov, open data, transparency, accountability, evidence-

informed decision making, better service delivery• Mobility • intelligent transport systems, multi-modal inter-op, efficiency

• Environment• green energy, sustainability, resilience

• Living• quality of life, safety, security, manage risk

• People• more informed, creativity, inclusivity, empowerment,

participation

The promise of smart cities

• Technology can be deployed to tackle pressing issues• The city becomes knowable and controllable in new

ways, enabling new forms of operational governance• Better information; more transparency and

accountability; enhanced participation in city life• Improved models and simulations for future

development• More efficient, competitive and productive service

delivery; better run and cost effective cities• Stimulate creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship

and economic growth• Enhance quality of life

Seven critiques of smart cities

1. Ahistorical, aspatial and homogenizing

• One size fits all approach• Fails to recognize history, culture, context,

local sense of place, politics, governance, diversity, etc

• Often idealised imaginary of green field development rather than complexities of established communities, competing interests and legacy infrastructure

• Treats cities as a generic market for smart city solutions

2. The politics of urban data

• smart city data portrayed as being objective and non-ideological.

• likewise, the algorithms used to process these data are positioned as neutral and non-ideological in their formulation and operation, grounded in scientific objectivity

• presents an image of being politically benign and commonsensical

• however, data do not exist independently of the ideas, techniques, technologies, people and contexts that conceive, produce, process, manage, analyze and store them

• data are situated, contingent, relational, and framed and used contextually to try and achieve certain aims and goals.

• technical and managerial issues concerning measurement, sampling frame, handling, veracity (accuracy, fidelity), uncertainty, error, bias, reliability, calibration, lineage

3. Technocratic governance and solutionism

• all aspects of a city can be measured and monitored and treated as technical problems that can be addressed through technical solutions

• underpinned by an ‘instrumental rationality’ and practices ‘solutionism’: that is, there is a belief that complex open systems can be disassembled into neatly defined problems that can be solved or optimized through computation

• all that is required to understand, manage and fix the issues a city faces -- in rational, logical and impartial ways -- is sufficient data and suitable algorithms

• top-down approach: marginalizes other forms of governance and is technically rather than citizen focused

4. Neoliberal political economy & corporatisation of governance

• overly driven by corporate interests who are using it to capture government functions as new market opportunities.

• promoting the marketisation of public services and the hollowing out of the state wherein city functions are administered for private profit

• potentially creates a technological lock-in or corporate path dependency that beholden cities to particular technological platforms and vendors over a long period of time, creating monopoly positions

5. Buggy, brittle, hackable urban systems

• smart cities takes two open, highly complex and contingent systems -- cities and digital systems -- and binds them together

• creates environments which are inherently buggy and brittle and are prone to viruses, glitches, crashes, and security hacks

• as systems become ever more complicated, interconnected and dependent on software, producing stable, robust and secure devices and infrastructures becomes more of a challenge

• new systems lead to the discontinuation of analogue alternatives, meaning that if they fail there are no alternatives until the system is fixed/rebooted

6. Profound social, political, ethical effects

• panoptic surveillance and erosion privacy (in its diverse forms)• social sorting • control creep• anticipatory governance

7. Reinforce power geometries & inequalities

• smart cities are the vision of certain vested interests• they serve the interests of certain

constituencies• they control/regulate other populations• actively marginalize/dispossess some

Conclusion

• A smart city is not a vision of a future city; they already exist in practice in a multitude of forms

• There’s much debate about what constitutes a smart city and often a disconnect between discourse and actually existing smart urbanism

• Nevertheless, smart city technologies and networked urbanism hold much promise

• They also pose a number of challenges and risks• The pace of development and rollout is well ahead of

reflection and critique• Yet we will live with the cities we produce for many years• There’s an urgent need to interrogate the vision and

implementation of smart cities to ensure we favourably balance the positives in favour of the negatives

Rob.Kitchin@nuim.ie@robkitchin

http://www.nuim.ie/progcity@progcity

Kitchin, R., Lauriault, T. and McArdle, G. (2015) Knowing and governing cities through urban indicators, city benchmarking and real-time dashboards. Regional Studies, Regional Science 2: 1-28

Kitchin, R. (2015) Making sense of smart cities: addressing present shortcomings. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 8: 131-136

Kitchin, R. (2015) Spatial big data and the era of continuous geosurveillance. DIS Magazine

Kitchin, R. (2014) The real-time city? Big data and smart urbanism. GeoJournal 79(1): 1-14.

Privacy

• Surveillance Watching, listening to, or recording of an individual’s activities• Interrogation Various forms of questioning or probing for information• Aggregation The combination of various pieces of data about a person• Identification Linking information to particular individuals• Insecurity Carelessness in protecting stored information from leaks and improper

access• Secondary Use Use of information collected for one purpose for a different purpose

without the data subject’s consent• Exclusion Failure to allow the data subject to know about the data that others

have about her and participate in its handling and use, including being barred from being able to access and correct errors in that data

• Breach of confidentiality Breaking a promise to keep a person’s information confidential

• Disclosure Revelation of information about a person that impacts the way others judge her character

• Exposure Revealing another’s nudity, grief, or bodily functions• Increased Accessibility Amplifying the accessibility of information• Blackmail Threat to disclose personal information• Appropriation The use of the data subject’s identity to serve the aims and interests of

another• Distortion Dissemination of false or misleading information about individuals• IntrusionInvasive acts that disturb one’s tranquillity or solitude• Decisional Interference Incursion into the data subject’s decisions regarding her

private affairs

Data type Data collected by Uber android app

Accounts log email log

App Activity name, package name, process number of activity, processed id

App Data Usage Cache size, code size, data size, name, package name

App Install installed at, name, package name, unknown sources enabled, version code, version name

Battery health, level, plugged, present, scale, status, technology, temperature, voltage

Device Info board, brand, build version, cell number, device, device type, display, fingerprint, IP, MAC address, manufacturer, model, OS platform, product, SDK code, total disk space, unknown sources enabled

GPS accuracy, altitude, latitude, longitude, provider, speed

MMS from number, MMS at, MMS type, service number, to number

NetData bytes received, bytes sent, connection type, interface type

PhoneCall call duration, called at, from number, phone call type, to number

SMS from number, service number, SMS at, SMS type, to number

TelephonyInfo cell tower ID, cell tower latitude, cell tower longitude, IMEI, ISO country code, local area code, MEID, mobile country code, mobile network code, network name, network type, phone type, SIM serial number, SIM state, subscriber ID

WifiConnection BSSID, IP, linkspeed, MAC addr, network ID, RSSI, SSID

WifiNeighbors BSSID, capabilities, frequency, level, SSID

Root Check root status code, root status reason code, root version, sig file version

Malware Info algorithm confidence, app list, found malware, malware SDK version, package list, reason code, service list, sigfile version