The Intersection of Data, Equity, and City Governments

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by Yuki Mitsuda: “The Open Data Policy Lab’s City Incubator program was established in September 2021 to help realize the Third Wave of Open Data at the subnational level by building data capacity among city intrapreneurs. In its first iteration, the program supported innovators from ten cities around the world to better use data to address the opportunities and challenges they face.

Reflecting on the six-month program, the work enabled participants to meet the needs of their cities and the people within them. They also revealed shared themes across cities — common challenges and issues that defined urban, data-driven work in the 21st century. This blog explores one of the emerging themes we saw from participants in the City Incubator program: the intersection of equity, data, and city governments…

Three of our city incubator participants designed their data innovations around the ways cities and citizens can use data to measure and improve equity. 

  • Jennifer Bodnarchuk, a Senior Data Scientist at the Innovation & Technology Department in the City of Winnipeg, for example, led the development of a Diversity Dashboard that quantified and visualized their municipal government’s workforce representation. The tool can be used to measure the level of diversity represented in city-wide employment to move towards equitable hiring in the public sector. 
  • Henry Xavier Hernandez, the Chief Information Officer at the Information Technology Department in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and his team leveraged the City Incubator to develop Citizen 360, a public market analysis platform that helps businesses, organizations, and individuals identify economic opportunities in the city. This tool can aid small business owners from all backgrounds who are navigating the journey of starting a new business.
  • Andrea Calderon led Albuquerque’s Equity Index, which helps evaluate the reach of city service distribution with the goal of increasing municipal investment in pockets of the city where equitable city service provision has not yet been achieved. Albuquerque’s Equity Index work entailed assessing air quality in the city through the framework of cumulative impacts, which measures “exposures, public health, or environmental effects from the combined emissions in a geographic area” in pursuit of environmental justice…(More)”.

From the smart city to urban justice in a digital age

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Marit Rosol & Gwendolyn Blue: “The smart city is the most emblematic contemporary expression of the fusion of urbanism and digital technologies. Critical urban scholars are now increasingly likely to highlight the injustices that are created and exacerbated by emerging smart city initiatives and to diagnose the way that these projects remake urban space and urban policy in unjust ways. Despite this, there has not yet been a comprehensive and systematic analysis of the concept of justice in the smart city literature. To fill this gap and strengthen the smart city critique, we draw on the tripartite approach to justice developed by philosopher Nancy Fraser, which is focused on redistribution, recognition, and representation. We use this framework to outline key themes and identify gaps in existing critiques of the smart city, and to emphasize the importance of transformational approaches to justice that take shifts in governance seriously. In reformulating and expanding the existing critiques of the smart city, we argue for shifting the discussion away from the smart city as such. Rather than searching for an alternative smart city, we argue that critical scholars should focus on broader questions of urban justice in a digital age…(More)”.

In this small Va. town, citizens review police like Uber drivers

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Emily Davies: “Chris Ford stepped on the gas in his police cruiser and rolled down Gold Cup Drive to catch the SUV pushing 30 mph in a 15 mph zone. Eleven hours and 37 minutes into his shift, the corporal was ready for his first traffic stop of the day.

“Look at him being sneaky,” Fordsaid, his blue lights flashing on a quiet road in this small town where a busy day could mean animals escaped from a local slaughterhouse.

Ford parked, walked toward the SUV and greeted the man who had ignored the speed limit at exactly the wrong time.

“I was doing 15,” said the driver, a Black man in a mostly White neighborhood of a mostly White town.

The officertook his license and registration back to the cruiser.

“Every time I pull over someone of color, they’re standoffish with me. Like, ‘Here’s a White police officer, here we go again.’ ” Ford, 56, said. “So I just try to be nice.”

Ford knew the stop would be scrutinized — and not just by the reporter who was allowed to ride along on his shift.

After every significant encounter with residents, officers in Warrenton are required to hand out a QR code, which is on the back of their business card, asking for feedback on the interaction. Through a series of questions, citizens can use a star-based system to rate officers on their communication, listening skills and fairness. The responses are anonymous and can be completed any time after the interaction to encourage people to give honest assessments. The program, called Guardian Score, is supposed to give power to those stopped by police in a relationship that has historically felt one-sided — and to give police departments a tool to evaluate their force on more than arrests and tickets.

“If we started to measure how officers are treating community members, we realized we could actually infuse this into the overall evaluation process of individual officers,” said Burke Brownfeld, a founder of Guardian Score and a former police officer in Alexandria. “The definition of doing a good job could change. It would also include: How are your listening skills? How fairly are you treating people based on their perception?”…(More)”.

Toolkit on Digital Transformation for People-Oriented Cities and Communities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Toolkit by the ITU: “The Toolkit on Digital Transformation for People-Oriented Cities and Communities supports strategizing and planning the digital transformation of cities and communities to promote sustainable, inclusive, resilient and improved quality of life for residents in cities and communities.

The resources contained in this Toolkit include international standards and guidance, the latest research and projections, and cutting-edge reports on a variety of timely topics relevant to the digital transformation of cities and communities. The Toolkit can universally benefit cities and communities, as well as regions and countries regardless of their level of smart or digital development, or their geographical or economic status. ​

The Toolkit is:​

  • A one-stop guide containing latest international standards and other ITU and UN resources, publications and reports.​
  • An endeavour to identify the challenges faced by cities as well as potential solutions that they can leverage for maximum positive impact.​
  • A comprehensive, yet non-exhaustive collation of information that is meant to inspire and support progress toward the SDGs, especially SDG 11, at the local level.​..(More)”

Barcelona bets on ‘digital twin’ as future of city planning

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Aitor Hernández-Morales: “In five years’ time, the structure of Europe’s cities won’t be decided in local town halls but inside a quiet 19th-century chapel in a leafy neighborhood of Barcelona.

Housed in the deconsecrated Torre Girona chapel, the MareNostrum supercomputer — one of the world’s most powerful data processors — is already busily analyzing how to improve city planning in Barcelona.

Barcelona is using data to track access to primary health care centers throughout the city | BSC

“We’re using the supercomputer to make sure the urban planning process isn’t just based on clever ideas and good intentions, but on data that allows us to anticipate its impacts and avoid the negative ones,” said Barcelona Deputy Mayor Laia Bonet, who is in charge of the city’s digital transition, climate goals and international partnerships.

As part of a pilot project launched with the Italian city of Bologna earlier this year, Barcelona has created a data-based replica of itself — a digital twin — where it can trial run potential city planning projects.

“Instead of implementing flawed policies and then have to go back and correct them, we’re saving time by making sure those decisions are right before we execute them,” said Bonet.

Although the scheme is still in its test phase, Bonet said she expects the city’s high-tech approach to urban development will soon be the norm in cities across the EU.

“Within a five-year horizon I expect to see this as a basic urban planning tool,” she said.

Looking for blindspots

Barcelona’s popular superilles, or “superblocks,” are a prime example of an urban scheme that could have benefited from data modelling in the planning stages, according to Bonet.

Since 2014 the city has been creating mini-neighborhoods where through-traffic and on-street parking is all but banned, with the goal of establishing a “network of green hubs and squares where pedestrians have priority.” The superblocks were also touted as a way to help tackle air pollution, which is directly responsible for over 1,000 deaths in Barcelona each year…(More)”.

Smart Cities and Smart Communities: Empowering Citizens through Intelligent Technologies

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Srikanta Patnaik, Siddhartha Sen, Sudeshna Ghosh: “Smart City” programs and strategies have become one of the most dominant urban agendas for local governments worldwide in the past two decades. The rapid urbanization rate and unprecedented growth of megacities in the 21st century triggered drastic changes in traditional ways of urban policy and planning, leading to an influx of digital technology applications for fast and efficient urban management. With the rising popularity in making our cities “smart”, several domains of urban management, urban infrastructure, and urban quality-of-life have seen increasing dependence on advanced information and communication technologies (ICTs) that optimize and control the day-to-day functioning of urban systems. Smart Cities, essentially, act as digital networks that obtain large-scale real-time data on urban systems, process them, and make decisions on how to manage them efficiently. The book presents 26 chapters, which are organized around five topics: (1) Conceptual framework for smart cities and communities; (2) Technical concepts and models for smart city and communities; (3) Civic engagement and citizen participation; (4) Case studies from the Global North; and (5) Case studies from the Global South…(More)”.

Collective Intelligence for Smart Cities

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Chun HO WU, George To Sum Ho, Fatos Xhafa, Andrew W. H. IP, Reinout Van Hille: “Collective Intelligence for Smart Cities begins with an overview of the fundamental issues and concepts of smart cities. Surveying the current state-of-the-art research in the field, the book delves deeply into key smart city developments such as health and well-being, transportation, safety, energy, environment and sustainability. In addition, the book focuses on the role of IoT cloud computing and big data, specifically in smart city development. Users will find a unique, overarching perspective that ties together these concepts based on collective intelligence, a concept for quantifying mass activity familiar to many social science and life science researchers. Sections explore how group decision-making emerges from the consensus of the collective, collaborative and competitive activities of many individuals, along with future perspectives…(More)”

The Sky’s Not The Limit: How Lower-Income Cities Can Leverage Drones

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Report by UNDP: “Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are playing an important role in last-mile service delivery around the world. However, COVID-19 has highlighted a potentially broader role that UAVs could play – in cities. Higher-income cities are exploring the technology, but there is little documentation of use cases or potential initiatives in a development context. This report provides practical and applied guidance to lower-income cities looking to explore how drones can support key urban objectives…(More)”.

Can politicians and citizens deliberate together? Evidence from a local deliberative mini-public

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Paper by Kimmo Grönlund, Kaisa Herne, Maija Jäske, and Mikko Värttö: “In a deliberative mini-public, a representative number of citizens receive information and discuss given policy topics in facilitated small groups. Typically, mini-publics are most effective politically and can have the most impact on policy-making when they are connected to democratic decision-making processes. Theorists have put forward possible mechanisms that may enhance this linkage, one of which is involving politicians within mini-publics with citizens. However, although much research to date has focussed on mini-publics with many citizen participants, there is little analysis of mini-publics with politicians as coparticipants. In this study, we ask how involving politicians in mini-publics influences both participating citizens’ opinions and citizens’ and politicians’ perceptions of the quality of the mini-public deliberations. We organised an online mini-public, together with the City of Turku, Finland, on the topic of transport planning. The participants (n = 171) were recruited from a random sample and discussed the topic in facilitated small groups (n = 21). Pre- and postdeliberation surveys were collected. The effect of politicians on mini-publics was studied using an experimental intervention: in half of the groups, local politicians (two per group) participated, whereas in the other half, citizens deliberated among themselves. Although we found that the participating citizens’ opinions changed, no trace of differences between the two treatment groups was reported. We conclude that politicians, at least when they are in a clear minority in the deliberating small groups, can deliberate with citizens without negatively affecting internal inclusion and the quality of deliberation within mini-publics….(More)”.

Shaping the Future of Small and Medium-Sized Cities: A Framework for Digital Transformation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by the World Economic Forum: “Digital transformation is becoming a crucial support mechanism for countries as they respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and undergo economic rebuilding and sustained development. For small and medium-sized cities (SMCs), digital transformation can disrupt traditional business models, breakthrough geographical and spatial boundaries, and create new ways to live in the digital era. However, the digital transformation of SMCs presents challenges such as insufficient digital talent, funds, and resources, poor understanding and application of digital technologies, and a lack of intercity interaction and cooperation mechanisms. This report analyses the challenges, needs, and concerns of SMCs undergoing digital transformation in China, Japan, Brazil, and Singapore, proposes a methodological reference model, and suggests actions for various urban stakeholders…(More)”.