Challenging ’smart’ in smart city strategies

Jacob Knudsen, Project Developer and Coordinator at VIFIN (Resource Center for Integration), Municipality of Vejle,

DenmarkKjetil Sandvik, Associate Professor, Dept. of Media,

Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen

Purpose of this paper

• This presentation will challenge this approach to smart city strategies by proposing that instead of a 'technology first' approach, we need to introduce the smart citizen in the center of smart city strategic planning and development.

• Focusing on processes of citizen participation and co-creation as the main driving force, we introduce a concept of 'smart city at eye level'.

• The introduction of new media technology and new media uses need to emerge from a profound understanding of the wants, needs and abilities of the citizens in the center of these new cross-media settings and will have to be accomplished in collaboration with said citizens.

• This presentation will present some basic principles for ‘smart cities at eye level’ explained through a case of action research based development of new practices for media use in daycare institutions.

Point of departure• Smart city strategies concern the improvement of

economic and political efficiency and the enabling of social, cultural and urban development (Hollands 2008)

• Covers a variety of fields from improving infrastructures, social and cultural development, resilience strategies (e.g. green energy), improving schools, social welfare institutions, public and private institutions etc.

• The 'smart' in smart city strategies implies that these efforts are accomplished by the introduction and embedding of smart media technology into the very fabric of society.

Smart city – a little too smart?

• No clear-cut definition: a general concept provided with specific local meaning:

• Strategies for:– City delelopment (e.g. attracting high-tech

companies and investments)

– Sector based development (e.g. green energy)

– Intelligent cities: the digitized, automatized city..

• Top-down-strategies

Smart City

Digitiza-tion

strategies

Informat-ion infra-structure

Daycareinstitut-

ions

SchoolsHealth

instituti-ons

Public service

Architec-ture

Traffic

Smart City

Digitiza-tion

Life-longlearning

Resiliense

Sustaina-bilility

Rationa-lization

Cost-efficiency

Branding

Empow-erment

Who is setting the agenda?

• Big corporations like IBM,Cisco Systems, Siemens are playing important roles in providing city planners with ‘smart city systems’:

• “Several decades from now cities will have countless autonomous, intelligently functioning IT systems that will have perfect knowledge of users’ habits and energy consumption, and provide optimum service…The goal of such a city is to optimally regulate and control resources by means of autonomous IT systems.” (Siemens)

Quoted from Adam Greenfield: Against the Smart City

From technology focus to people focus

• How might we use networked technologies to further the prerogatives so notably absent from the smart-city paradigm, particularly those having to do with solidarity, mutuality and collective action?

• How might we inscribe a robust conception of the right to the city in all of the technological interventions proposed, including but not limited to those intended to enhance personal mobility, citizen engagement and processes of (individual and collective) self-determination?

• And what alternative conceptions of technology in the urban everyday might support the open, tolerant, feisty, opinionated character we associate with big-city life?

Quoted from Adam Greenfield: Against the Smart City

Clever City services• Use digital technology to

solve problems experienced by citizens

• Are built around the needs of the people who’s problems they are trying to solve

• Are as simple as they can be and easy to explain

• Collect as few data as are required to solve the problem for the citizens

• Are not platforms

Manifesto for the Clever City: http://www.theclevercity.net/

Clever City services• Use digital technology to

solve problems experienced by citizens

• Are built around the needs of the people who’s problems they are trying to solve

• Are as simple as they can be and easy to explain

• Collect as few data as are required to solve the problem for the citizens

• Are not platforms

Manifesto for the Clever City: http://www.theclevercity.net/

To establish a use case it is essential to understand the ‘users’; the human beings who a service is supposed to help. This means really getting to know those people. The service should be built around their needs, not those of the city government or technology provider.

Clever City services• Use digital technology to

solve problems experienced by citizens

• Are built around the needs of the people who’s problems they are trying to solve

• Are as simple as they can be and easy to explain

• Collect as few data as are required to solve the problem for the citizens

• Are not platforms

Manifesto for the Clever City: http://www.theclevercity.net/

The Smart City is a top-down all or nothing proposition. We can start building the Clever City bottom-up with one lamppost, bus stop or parking space (and of course one problem). Maybe one day we will join up all the individual Clever City services and will have a Smart City. Maybe we never will, but the Clever City can make a real difference to people’s lives right now.

Challenging ’Smart’

• Smart city solutions must be developed in close collaboration with the citizens

• Smart city solutions must be developed on the basis of knowledge about the citizens’ wants, needs and abilities

• Smart city solutions are only smart if they can be used (seems self-evident, but reality proves otherwise)

Smart City at eye level

• Smart City projects demand knowledge about its users or they risk making strategies which creates users who feel excluded by the development.

• What are the users’ qualifications, needs, capabilities?

• Empowerment: possibilities for participation, collaboration and co-creation

• Customization: flexibility, adaptability

Basic rules for smart city at eyelevel

• It is all about creating good life - and all initiatives must relate to this basic effort

• Digital technology is not an end in itself - it is the way it is being used and is interacting with our lives that matters

• Solutions must be developed in collaboration with the citizens as co-creative partners (creating empowering frames for this is imperative)

• Cross-media approach: connecting existing media technologies (digital, analogue) in easy-to-use, creative ways

• Creating larger projects from smaller projects: possible to handle, shape, and develop in collaborative and co-creative ways

• Perpetual beta way of thinking: focus on processes of never-ending development, change, temporality

• Creating common spaces for experimentation and exploration: possibilities for making new discoveries (serendipity)

Our project

• Towards a concept of ‘smart city at eye level’• Challenging the technology-centric approach• Specific cross media approach: humans first

combined/augmented with other types of media.– Museums: creating participatory and co-creative

audience experiences– Learning: creating post-graduate programs in

collaboration with users: customized, adaptable to work situation

– Play: creating digital media practices with and for children

Top-down

Eye level

Methods

• Action based research: creating and studying at the same time in collaboration pedagogues and children

• User-driven and co-creative development: creating frames for the children’s own creative experiments

• Process-oriented: both development and use practices are rooted in play activities (not in end-results: something to watch or show)

iPads decides

Pedagogues decides Children decides

Intended use vs creative use

Skepticism vs open-mindedness Habits vs creativity

Appropriating possibilities Challenging possibilities

Eye leveldeve-

lopment

Appropriating the media technology

• Beyond the analogue-digital divide:

• the iPad is just another creative tool (like paper, colors, clay...), it is just another tool for play (like LEGO bricks) and may be combined with other 'play technolo-gies'.

Role of the media• 1st degree media play: media as content,

language, discourse, aesthetic format create starting point for creating play (not just reproduction: reshaping, transforming, combining to be appropriated by play)

• 2nd degree media play: media (media technology) functioning as basis for play: the media as toys, as creative objects with specific affordances to be included in the play activity.

Kjetil Sandvik: 1st and 2nd degree media play: the role and meaning of media in children's play, 2009

© Klaus Thestrup, Aarhus University

Steps in the smart city at eye levelprocess: creating new practices

• Learning and exploring(controlled by pedagogues): to get acquainted to the iPad, to see its possibilities etc. It is important with planning and well-defined frames for all to feel comfortable (both pedagogues and children)

Steps in the smart city at eye levelprocess: creating new practices

• Setting the iPad free (controlled by both pedagogues and children): to improvise and use the iPad in impulsive ways, letting children teach children, insisting on process, not product oriented

Steps in the smart city at eye level process: creating new practices

• iPad fully integrated in children's play (control-led by children): iPads are used for play, iPads are inspiring play (maybe even without being physically present in the play activity: moving like in 'reverse camera', imagining landscapes as if using 'green screen' etc.)

Concluding remarks

• It is not a matter of replacing top-down with bottom-up

• Eye-level strategies are about finding a common ground for collaboration between developers, policy makers (the ones setting the frames, like the pedagogues in a daycare institution) and citizens co-creatively creating and engaging in new practices (like the children in the daycare institution)

• Focuses on the importance of process, of open-mindedness towards change, and on key operating modes like participation, collaboration and co-creation