Paper forReimagining Australian via Disability and Media: Technologies, mobility, and representations panel,

International Australian Studies Association (INSA) conference, 7-9 Dec 2016, Fremantle

Gerard Goggin/@ggoggin University of Sydney

Reimagining Disability and Digital Technology in Urban Australia:

Driverless Cars, Smart Cities, and the Future of Mobility

• Public culture & everyday life, in Australia is reconfigured through social imaginaries, practices, experimentation, design with technology.

• This re-imagining & remaking of Australian life via technology engages disability

• critical disability perspectives provide us with insights into how technology & reimagining of Australia.

• My focus is the technology dreaming unfolding in urban Australia ( also implicates non-metropolitan, rural, and remote Australia)

• Where does disability fit into such visions of smart cities?

• How does smart cities relate to social transformations of disability & accessibility, design & rights?

‘Newcastle is transitioning from a primarily industrial base to one that boasts a broader diversity of economic foundations. … It will leverage the smart city movement to improve liveability, sustainability and economic diversity, develop local innovation, build international profile and attract talent and inward investment to our city. ’

‘Newcastle Smart City Initiative’

‘Knowledge Economy & the Rise of the Creative Class’

‘a smart city will in simple terms bring together technology, government and society … • Use physical infrastructure in a highly efficient way to support strong economic, social, cultural development • Effectively and promptly address change through innovating, learning and adapting • Leverage open innovation processes and e-participation to better engage with the community at the local level, encouraging community participation and collaboration • Support and leverage strong knowledge and social networks and voluntary organisations in a low-crime setting to achieve the preceding characteristics’

Fremantle’s Economic Development Strategy 2015-2020

’Fremantle’s offer … Fremantle’s economy is more resilient and sustainable, and exhibits a greater number of smart city characteristics resulting in increased innovation and creativity among a growing knowledge-based workforce.’

Fremantle’s Economic Development Strategy 2015-2020

No mention of ’smart city’, or technology; although many good goals & initiatives on inclusion, information & communication in appropriate formats

smart cities are rather like parenthood, who could argue with

their benefits?

Smart cities (magic of digital tech + cities) =

all existing & future needs of cities instantly met!!!

The problem we face is that smart cities – in their recent incarnation – have been imagined by particular interests (corporate; tech; govt);

Add to which many of the powerful ‘social imaginaries’ of digital technology (‘the sharing economy’, ‘citizen sensor’, ‘data for social good/development’) assume use of proprietary commercial platforms (AirBnB; Facebook; Academic.edu)

In the meantime, many important needs & goals of actual present & future cities, their people & environments, have been left off the agenda – e.g. social & human services; sustainability (despite lip service given to it); social justice; social participation; and social inclusion

No mention of inclusion, accessibility, or universal design, or equity (except in sense of capital equity) in Fed govt Smart Cities plan of April 2016

Measuring Australia’s Digital Divide 2016 report

‘For people with disability, digital inclusion is low, but improving steadily. People with disability have a low level of digital inclusion (44.4, or 10.1 points below the national average). However, nationally, their inclusion has improved steadily (by 2.6 points since 2014), outpacing the national average increase (1.8 points).’Definition of ‘disability’: ‘Disability: people in this category receive either a disability pension, or the disability support pension’ (p. 7)Thomas, J, Barraket, J, Ewing, S, MacDonald, T, Mundell, M & Tucker, J 2016, Measuring Australia’s Digital Divide: The Australian Digital Inclusion Index 2016, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, for Telstra.

Given absence of social justice/disability rights, we are in

process of ‘retrofitting’ smart cities planning – to make sure they actually address the lives that all of us lead – and wish to lead – in

the places where we live

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/04/smart-city-rio-songdo-masdar

‘ … self-congratulatory nature of the smart city … what do we actually mean by the term, and precisely what elements go into making up a smart city? What underlying ideological assumptions are made by invoking the concept, and what are its central social contradictions and problems?’

Robert G. Hollands, ‘Critical Interventions in the Smart City’, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society (2014)

‘Large scale visions of the smart city that are presented in many academic research papers and corporate marketing materials seem in direct contrast to the ways in which citizens envision it. The citizen’s vision and sense of scale is a perspective that is largely absent from [this] literature … our paper seeks to introduce the concept of smaller, more tangible interventions in the city that have the potential to be more meaningful for citizens’Vanessa Thomas et al., ‘Where’s Wally? In Search of Citizen Perspectives on the Smart City’, Sustainability 2016

’Smart cities are great, but first we need to explore being a “common sense city” – one that nails the fundamentals of an enjoyable lifestyle …’

inclusion is often invoked in smart cities talk & visions (as it is urban planning & policy generally); but the follow thro’ & detailed plans are lacking

Problem is 2-fold

1) the dominant ways that we have imagined ‘smart cities’ have been unbelievably narrow & constricting (corollary - smart cities are very likely to fail, more with a whimper than a bang);

2) there are ’scripts’ & ’recipes’ for some elements of ‘smart cities’ – efficient, short commute, enlivening public space with data & sensors etc; but not inclusion, accessibility, social & community development – in the crucial inclusion aspects of smart cities, we are barely at first base

Key questions:

Why is social participation & inclusion consistently missing from the top level visions/principles of smart cities?

Great to see accessibility sometimes mentioned – but why the assumption that technology will deliver accessibility (if current built environment – e.g. public transport - is not accessible)?

Does the ‘big data’ vision of smart cities actually deliver? what rights to citizens have to/over this data? What are the ethics of this city of data?

Biggest stumbling block is that ‘smart city’ concepts have been perhaps the MOST divorced from policy & design & service & social realities of any recent hi-tech dreaming (including National Broadband Network; mobiles for development & social innovation; municipal WiFi; Networking the Nation; and Information Superhighways)

So actual efforts at city level to do something useful with ‘smart city’ have to find concepts & resources that come from the lived experience & democratic yearnings of all people in the citye.g. what about cheap/free WiFi and electricity/charging points for homeless people in cities?

opportunity of disability & design

cutting edge way to reimagine cities with technology (& formulate

useful smart city strategy)

http://g3ict.org/resource_center/g3ict_smart_cities_initiative

Jenny Lay-Flurrie, Microsoft’s Chief Accessibility Officer, announced the company’s support and sponsorship of the initiative stating, “Technology empowers persons with disabilities to achieve more in the places where they live and work. As cities evolve and integrate new technologies, we can help them define what it means to be smart – and accessible – to make sure no one is left behind.” Source: http://www.g3ict.org/press/press_releases/press_release/p/id_95#sthash.TPuAMlxW.dpuf

disability helps us reimagine cities & technology

disability + mobile tech in everyday life

disability is now recognized as a significant part of social life & life coursedigital technology – esp. computers, the Internet, mobile media, social media, apps, geolocation technologies, and now, ‘smart’ homes, wearable computers, mobilities technologies including driverless cars - have emerged & are being ‘imagined’ as a significant part of the mediascape, cultural infrastructure, social support system, and personal identity and repertoire of many people with disabilitiesmobile & mobilities are central to disability & participation, esp. in cities

Are our cities ‘enabling’ rather than ‘disabling’?What about: transport? housing? Work? Welfare? health? Education? - for people with disabilities living in cities?Social, cultural & political participation in the new spaces & polities of cities?Where do digital technologies fit into the lives of urban dwellers with disabilities?Where does disability fit into smart cities? How does disability help us reframe cities, media technology & policy?

‘A significant and persistent characteristic of society is disabling spaces that are rarely sensitised to the needs of disabled people … More often than not, designed environments revolve around a spatial logic that separates people by virtue of their bodily differences and variations in cognitive and physiological capabilities. Such separations are tantamount to an infringement of disabled people’s liberties, and curtail, potentially, their rights to occupy, and to inhabit and be present in everyday places, the use of which is intrinsic to a person’s realisation of their well-being.’Rob Imrie, ‘Space, Place, and Policy Regimes: The Changing Contours of Disability and Citizenship’ (2014)

‘Crippling the Landscape 1 : Québec City is a thirteen minute video that chronicles a five kilometer journey from Laval University to the Ste- Foy train station. Join filmmaker and disability activist Laurence Parent as she takes you on the trip of a lifetime! Feel the experience of the road from the point of view of her wheelchair!’ – see 53 s mark onwards

‘the need to re-(politicise) the body as part of the development of what citizenship is or ought to be, in ways whereby impairment becomes regarded as the normalcy of everyday life’

Rob Imrie, ‘Space, Place, and Policy Regimes: The Changing Contours of Disability and Citizenship’ (2014)

7 July, 2014, ‘ReWalk’ website, reproduced from Boston Globe

Stacey Zoern’s Kenguru, from Paul Richoux, ‘Kenguru: the perfrect car for wheelchair users?’, ‘Wheelchairs and Mobility’, 24 September, 2014

Mobility is very much a ‘blended’ digital affair, involving communication technology

– finding an accessible train station by a digital map; using location technology on mobile phone to navigate a place; using an Opal card to ‘tap’ onto a train; calling a taxi via Uber; posting updates/accessibility issues via social media platforms; embedded digital technology in mobility technologies (‘connected’/smart cars; scooters & electronic wheelchairs; bicycles with GPS; walking with Fitbits)

Challenge for universal design/inclusive/just design in smart cities

• Digital technology is embedded in everyday life & our environment combine virtual + physical

• This involves bringing many different technology systems together

• Also brings many different other systems together (communication + transport = driverless cars)

• Yet our track record on universal, inclusive, accessible design in any one digital technology is mixed – e.g. case of web accessibility

Acknowledging disability - & people with disabilities - as one innovative set of perspectives & resources on technology offers a very helpful perspective on smart cities

Further readingGerard Goggin, ‘Disability and Mobilities; Evening Up Social Futures.’ Mobilities 11.4 (2016)

Laurence Parent, Parent, L. 2016, ‘The Wheeling Interview: Mobile Methods and Disability’, Mobilities 11.4 Rob Imrie, ‘Space, place and policy regimes: the changing contours of disability and citizenship’, in Soldatic, K., Roulstone, A., and Morgan, H., (eds.), Disability – Spaces and Places of Exclusion, Routledge, London, 2014, 13-30.

Charlotte Bates, Rob Imrie and Kim Kullman (eds), Care and Design: Bodies, Building, Cities, 2017

Kim Sawchuk, K. (2014) ‘Impaired’, in Adey, P., Bissell, D., Hanman, K., Merriman, P. and Sheller, M. (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Mobilitie (London: Routledge, 570-584)

Katie Ellis and Gerard Goggin. ‘Disability, Locative Media, and Complex Ubiquity.’ In Ubiquitous Computing, Complexity, and Culture, edited by Ulrik Ekman, Jay David Bolter, Lily Díaz, Morten Søndergaard, and Maria Engberg, 270-285. New York: Routledge, 2016.