In High-Tech Cities, No More Potholes, but What About Privacy?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Timothy Williams in The New York Times: “Hundreds of cities, large and small, have adopted or begun planning smart cities projects. But the risks are daunting. Experts say cities frequently lack the expertise to understand privacy, security and financial implications of such arrangements. Some mayors acknowledge that they have yet to master the responsibilities that go along with collecting billions of bits of data from residents….

Supporters of “smart cities” say that the potential is enormous and that some projects could go beyond creating efficiencies and actually save lives. Among the plans under development are augmented reality programs that could help firefighters find people trapped in burning buildings and the collection of sewer samples by robots to determine opioid use so that city services could be aimed at neighborhoods most in need.

The hazards are also clear.

“Cities don’t know enough about data, privacy or security,” said Lee Tien, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on digital rights. “Local governments bear the brunt of so many duties — and in a lot of these cases, they are often too stupid or too lazy to talk to people who know.”

Cities habitually feel compelled to outdo each other, but the competition has now been intensified by lobbying from tech companies and federal inducements to modernize.

“There is incredible pressure on an unenlightened city to be a ‘smart city,’” said Ben Levine, executive director at MetroLab Network, a nonprofit organization that helps cities adapt to technology change.

That has left Washington, D.C., and dozens of other cities testing self-driving cars and Orlando trying to harness its sunshine to power electric vehicles. San Francisco has a system that tracks bicycle traffic, while Palm Beach, Fla., uses cycling data to decide where to send street sweepers. Boise, Idaho, monitors its trash dumps with drones. Arlington, Tex., is looking at creating a transit system based on data from ride-sharing apps….(More)”.

Cities, Government, Law, and Civil Society

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Heidi Li Feldman: “For too long, legal commentators have developed accounts of law, governments and civil society, and rights to access that society, from a national-federal perspective. As Americans increasingly live in cities, it is time for legal theorists to concentrate on municipalities as the locus of civil society. From an American national-federal perspective, government and law play primarily a remedial role with regard to civil society, stepping in only to resolve great inequities, usually by creating legally recognized civil rights and enforcing them. Civil society and civil rights, however, exceed this cramped national-federal window on it. Throughout the United States today, civil society is a multi-faceted arena for social coordination and social cooperation, for consonant and collective action of many different kinds. The only reason civil rights and the legal protection of them matters is because participation in civil society is makes it possible for individuals to engage in all manner of activities that are useful, enjoyable, and worthwhile. In other words, the significance of civil rights follows from the existence of a civil society worth participating in. To the extent that government can and does make civil society viable and valuable, it is an integral part of civil society. That feature gets lost in a remedial account of the relationship between government, law, and civil society. 

Perhaps the role of cities in civil society has been neglected by the legal academy because cities are not sovereigns. Sovereignty has often been the issue that provokes theoretical attention to government and its role in civil life. At the heart of the federal-national account of civil society and government is the potential threat the sovereign poses to other actors in civil society. But there is no necessary connection between concentrating on the nature and workings of sovereignty and considering the role for government and law in civil society. And when a government is not a sovereign, its ability to threaten is inherently constrained. That is what examining cities, non-sovereign governments embedded in a web of other governments, shows us. 

When we turn our attention to cities, a very different role for government and law emerges. Cities often exemplify how government and law can enable civil society and all those encompassed by it. They show how government can promote and amplify collective action, not only at the local level but even at the international one. In the United States today, governments can and do provide resources for consonant and collective action even in nongovernmental settings. Governments also coordinate and cooperate alongside fellow actors such as citizen activist groups, small and large businesses, labor unions, universities and colleges, and other nongovernmental organizations. This is particularly apparent at the local level. By delving into local government, we gain a distinctive perspective on the intersection of government and law, on one hand, and civil society, on the other — on what that intersection does, can, and should be like. This paper develops a first iteration of a locality centered account of civil society and the role for government and law within it. I examine a particular municipality, the City of Pittsburgh, to provide a concrete example from which to generate ideas and judgements about the terrain and content of this localist account….(More)”.

Innovation Contests: How to Engage Citizens in Solving Urban Problems?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Sarah Hartmann, Agnes Mainka and Wolfgang G. Stock: “Cities all over the world are challenged with problems evolving from increasing urbanity, population growth, and density. For example, one prominent issue that is addressed in many cities is mobility. To develop smart city solutions, governments are trying to introduce open innovation. They have started to open their governmental and city related data as well as awake the citizens’ awareness on urban problems through innovation contests. Citizens are the users of the city and therefore, have a practical motivation to engage in innovation contests as for example in hackathons and app competitions. The collaboration and co-creation of civic services by means of innovation contests is a cultural development of how governments and citizens work together in an open governmental environment. A qualitative analysis of innovation contests in 24 world cities reveals this global trend. In particular, such events increase the awareness of citizens and local businesses for identifying and solving urban challenges and are helpful means to transfer the smart city idea into practicable solutions….(More)”

Understanding Smart Cities: Innovation ecosystems, technological advancements, and societal challenges

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Introduction of Special Issue of Technological Forecasting and Social Change by Francesco PaoloAppio, MarcosLima, and Sotirios Paroutis: “Smart Cities initiatives are spreading all around the globe at a phenomenal pace. Their bold ambition is to increase the competitiveness of local communities through innovation while increasing the quality of life for its citizens through better public services and a cleaner environment. Prior research has shown contrasting views and a multitude of dimensions and approaches to look at this phenomenon. In spite of the fact that this can stimulate the debate, it lacks a systematic assessment and an integrative view. The papers in the special issue on “Understanding Smart Cities: Innovation Ecosystems, Technological Advancements, and Societal Challenges” take stock of past work and provide new insights through the lenses of a hybrid framework. Moving from these premises, we offer an overview of the topic by featuring possible linkages and thematic clusters. Then, we sketch a novel research agenda for scholars, practitioners, and policy makers who wish to engage in – and build – a critical, constructive, and conducive discourse on Smart Cities….(More)”.

Selling Smartness: Corporate Narratives and the Smart City as a Sociotechnical Imaginary

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Jathan Sadowski and Roy Bendor in Science, Technology and Human Values: “This article argues for engaging with the smart city as a sociotechnical imaginary. By conducting a close reading of primary source material produced by the companies IBM and Cisco over a decade of work on smart urbanism, we argue that the smart city imaginary is premised in a particular narrative about urban crises and technological salvation. This narrative serves three main purposes: (1) it fits different ideas and initiatives into a coherent view of smart urbanism, (2) it sells and disseminates this version of smartness, and (3) it crowds out alternative visions and corresponding arrangements of smart urbanism.

Furthermore, we argue that IBM and Cisco construct smart urbanism as both a reactionary and visionary force, plotting a model of the near future, but one that largely reflects and reinforces existing sociopolitical systems. We conclude by suggesting that breaking IBM’s and Cisco’s discursive dominance over the smart city imaginary requires us to reimagine what smart urbanism means and create counter-narratives that open up space for alternative values, designs, and models….(More)”.

Legitimacy: Ethnographic and Theoretical Insights

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Italo Pardo and Giuliana B. Prato: “Global in scope, this original and thought-provoking collection applies new theory on legitimacy and legitimation to urban life. An informed reflection on this comparatively new topic in anthropology in relation to morality, action, law, politics and governance is both timely and innovative, especially as worldwide discontent among ordinary people grows.

The ethnographically-based analyses offered here range from banking to neighbourhoods, from poverty to political action at the grassroots. They recognize the growing gap between the rulers and the ruled with particular attention to the morality of what is right as opposed to what is legal. This book is a unique contribution to social theory, fostering discussion across the many boundaries of anthropological and sociological studies….(More)”.

Implementing Public Policy: Is it possible to escape the ‘Public Policy Futility’ trap?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blogpost by Matt Andrews:

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“Polls suggest that governments across the world face high levels of citizen dissatisfaction, and low levels of citizen trust. The 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer found, for instance, that only 43% of those surveyed trust Canada’s government. Only 15% of those surveyed trust government in South Africa, and levels are low in other countries too—including Brazil (at 24%), South Korea (28%), the United Kingdom (36%), Australia, Japan, and Malaysia (37%), Germany (38%), Russia (45%), and the United States (47%). Similar surveys find trust in government averaging only 40-45% across member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and suggest that as few as 31% and 32% of Nigerians and Liberians trust government.

There are many reasons why trust in government is deficient in so many countries, and these reasons differ from place to place. One common factor across many contexts, however, is a lack of confidence that governments can or will address key policy challenges faced by citizens.

Studies show that this confidence deficiency stems from citizen observations or experiences with past public policy failures, which promote jaundiced views of their public officials’ capabilities to deliver. Put simply, citizens lose faith in government when they observe government failing to deliver on policy promises, or to ‘get things done’. Incidentally, studies show that public officials also often lose faith in their own capabilities (and those of their organizations) when they observe, experience or participate in repeated policy implementation failures. Put simply, again, these public officials lose confidence in themselves when they repeatedly fail to ‘get things done’.

I call the ‘public policy futility’ trap—where past public policy failure leads to a lack of confidence in the potential of future policy success, which feeds actual public policy failure, which generates more questions of confidence, in a vicious self fulfilling prophecy. I believe that many governments—and public policy practitioners working within governments—are caught in this trap, and just don’t believe that they can muster the kind of public policy responses needed by their citizens.

Along with my colleagues at the Building State Capability (BSC) program, I believe that many policy communities are caught in this trap, to some degree or another. Policymakers in these communities keep coming up with ideas, and political leaders keep making policy promises, but no one really believes the ideas will solve the problems that need solving or produce the outcomes and impacts that citizens need. Policy promises under such circumstances center on doing what policymakers are confident they can actually implement: like producing research and position papers and plans, or allocating inputs toward the problem (in a budget, for instance), or sponsoring visible activities (holding meetings or engaging high profile ‘experts’ for advice), or producing technical outputs (like new organizations, or laws). But they hold back from promising real solutions to real problems, as they know they cannot really implement them (given past political opposition, perhaps, or the experience of seemingly interactable coordination challenges, or cultural pushback, and more)….(More)”.

Distributed, privacy-enhancing technologies in the 2017 Catalan referendum on independence: New tactics and models of participatory democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

M. Poblet at First Monday: “This paper examines new civic engagement practices unfolding during the 2017 referendum on independence in Catalonia. These practices constitute one of the first signs of some emerging trends in the use of the Internet for civic and political action: the adoption of horizontal, distributed, and privacy-enhancing technologies that rely on P2P networks and advanced cryptographic tools. In this regard, the case of the 2017 Catalan referendum, framed within conflicting political dynamics, can be considered a first-of-its kind in participatory democracy. The case also offers an opportunity to reflect on an interesting paradox that twenty-first century activism will face: the more it will rely on private-friendly, secured, and encrypted networks, the more open, inclusive, ethical, and transparent it will need to be….(More)”.

Data Flow in the Smart City: Open Data Versus the Commons

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Chapter by Richard Beckwith, John Sherry and David Prendergast in The Hackable City: “Much of the recent excitement around data, especially ‘Big Data,’ focuses on the potential commercial or economic value of data. How that data will affect people isn’t much discussed. People know that smart cities will deploy Internet-based monitoring and that flows of the collected data promise to produce new values. Less considered is that smart cities will be sites of new forms of citizen action—enabled by an ‘economy’ of data that will lead to new methods of collectivization, accountability, and control which, themselves, can provide both positive and negative values to the citizenry. Therefore, smart city design needs to consider not just measurement and publication of data but also the implications of city-wide deployment, data openness, and the possibility of unintended consequences if data leave the city….(More)”.

Harnessing Digital Tools to Revitalize European Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Elisa Lironi: “…Information and communication technology (ICT) can be used to implement more participatory mechanisms and foster democratic processes. Often referred to as e-democracy, there is a large range of very different possibilities for online engagement, including e-initiatives, e-consultations, crowdsourcing, participatory budgeting, and e-voting. Many European countries have started exploring ICT’s potential to reach more citizens at a lower cost and to tap into the so-called wisdom of the crowd, as governments attempt to earn citizens’ trust and revitalize European democracy by developing more responsive, transparent, and participatory decisionmaking processes.

For instance, when Anne Hidalgo was elected mayor of Paris in May 2014, one of her priorities was to make the city more collaborative by allowing Parisians to propose policy and develop projects together. In order to build a stronger relationship with the citizens, she immediately started to implement a citywide participatory budgeting project for the whole of Paris, including all types of policy issues. It started as a small pilot, with the city of Paris putting forward fifteen projects that could be funded with up to about 20 million euros and letting citizens vote on which projects to invest in, via ballot box or online. Parisians and local authorities deemed this experiment successful, so Hidalgo decided it was worth taking further, with more ideas and a bigger pot of money. Within two years, the level of participation grew significantly—from 40,000 voters in 2014 to 92,809 in 2016, representing 5 percent of the total urban population. Today, Paris Budget Participatif is an official platform that lets Parisians decide how to spend 5 percent of the investment budget from 2014 to 2020, amounting to around 500 million euros. In addition, the mayor also introduced two e-democracy platforms—Paris Petitions, for e-petitions, and Idée Paris, for e-consultations. Citizens in the French capital now have multiple channels to express their opinions and contribute to the development of their city.

In Latvia, civil society has played a significant role in changing how legislative procedures are organized. ManaBalss (My Voice) is a grassroots NGO that creates tools for better civic participation in decisionmaking processes. Its online platform, ManaBalss.lv, is a public e-participation website that lets Latvian citizens propose, submit, and sign legislative initiatives to improve policies at both the national and municipal level. …

In Finland, the government itself introduced an element of direct democracy into the Finnish political system, through the 2012 Citizens’ Initiative Act (CI-Act) that allows citizens to submit initiatives to the parliament. …

Other civic tech NGOs across Europe have been developing and experimenting with a variety of digital tools to reinvigorate democracy. These include initiatives like Science For You (SCiFY) in Greece, Netwerk Democratie in the Netherlands, and the Citizens Foundation in Iceland, which got its start when citizens were asked to crowdsource their constitution in 2010.

Outside of civil society, several private tech companies are developing digital platforms for democratic participation, mainly at the local government level. One example is the Belgian start-up CitizenLab, an online participation platform that has been used by more than seventy-five municipalities around the world. The young founders of CitizenLab have used technology to innovate the democratic process by listening to what politicians need and including a variety of functions, such as crowdsourcing mechanisms, consultation processes, and participatory budgeting. Numerous other European civic tech companies have been working on similar concepts—Cap Collectif in France, Delib in the UK, and Discuto in Austria, to name just a few. Many of these digital tools have proven useful to elected local or national representatives….

While these initiatives are making a real impact on the quality of European democracy, most of the EU’s formal policy focus is on constraining the power of the tech giants rather than positively aiding digital participation….(More)”