Paper by Jen Nelles & David A. Wolfe: “This article argues that the concept of civic capital affords considerable insight into systems of urban economic development, usefully bridging gaps in both institution-centric and social capital approaches. While the concept has been applied in the literature on urban governance and economic development, its use has been fragmentary and has not seen broad engagement. This review of the state of the literature situates the concept of civic capital relative to existing literature in the field, highlights its relationship to other concepts, and reviews several qualitative approaches that apply the concept to case studies. It provides an overview of the concept and a description of the way it has developed alongside the rich literature on governance and social capital in urban development to illustrate its potential for further analytical study….(More)”.
Algorithms Quietly Run the City of DC—and Maybe Your Hometown
Article by Khari Johnson: “Washington, DC, IS the home base of the most powerful government on earth. It’s also home to 690,000 people—and 29 obscure algorithms that shape their lives. City agencies use automation to screen housing applicants, predict criminal recidivism, identify food assistance fraud, determine if a high schooler is likely to drop out, inform sentencing decisions for young people, and many other things.
That snapshot of semiautomated urban life comes from a new report from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). The nonprofit spent 14 months investigating the city’s use of algorithms and found they were used across 20 agencies, with more than a third deployed in policing or criminal justice. For many systems, city agencies would not provide full details of how their technology worked or was used. The project team concluded that the city is likely using still more algorithms that they were not able to uncover.
The findings are notable beyond DC because they add to the evidence that many cities have quietly put bureaucratic algorithms to work across their departments, where they can contribute to decisions that affect citizens’ lives.
Government agencies often turn to automation in hopes of adding efficiency or objectivity to bureaucratic processes, but it’s often difficult for citizens to know they are at work, and some systems have been found to discriminate and lead to decisions that ruin human lives. In Michigan, an unemployment-fraud detection algorithm with a 93 percent error rate caused 40,000 false fraud allegations. A 2020 analysis by Stanford University and New York University found that nearly half of federal agencies are using some form of automated decisionmaking systems…(More)”.
Hyperlocal: Place Governance in a Fragmented World
Book by By Jennifer S. Vey and Nate Storring: “Many of America’s downtowns, waterfronts, and innovation districts have experienced significant revitalization and reinvestment in recent years, but concentrated poverty and racial segregation remain persistent across thousands of urban, suburban, and rural neighborhoods. The coronavirus pandemic magnified this sustained and growing landscape of inequality.
Uneven patterns of economic growth and investment require a shift in how communities are governed and managed. This shift must take into account the changing socioeconomic realities of regions and the pressing need to bring inclusive economic growth and prosperity to more people and places.
In this context, place-based (“hyperlocal”) governance structures in the United States and around the globe have been both part of the problem and part of the solution. These organizations range from community land trusts to business improvement districts to neighborhood councils. However, very little systematic research has documented the full diversity and evolution of these organizations as part of one interrelated field. Hyperlocal helps fill that gap by describing the challenges and opportunities of “place governance.”
The chapters in Hyperlocal explore both the tensions and benefits associated with governing places in an increasingly fragmented—aneholders a structure through which to share ideas, voice concerns, advocate for investments, and co-design strategies with others both inside and outside their place. They also discuss how place governance can serve the interests of some stakeholders over others, in turn exacerbating wealth-based inequities within and across communities. Finally, they highlight innovative financing, organizing, and ownership models for creating and sustaining more effective and inclusive place governance structures…(More)”.
AI & Cities: Risks, Applications and Governance
Report by UN Habitat: “Artificial intelligence is manifesting at an unprecedented rate in urban centers, often with significant risks and little oversight. Using AI technologies without the appropriate governance mechanisms and without adequate consideration of how they affect people’s human rights can have negative, even catastrophic, effects.
This report is part of UN-Habitat’s strategy for guiding local authorities in realizing a people-centered digital transformation process in their cities and settlements…(More)”.
Smart cities: reviewing the debate about their ethical implications
Paper from Marta Ziosi, Benjamin Hewitt, Prathm Juneja, Mariarosaria Taddeo & Luciano Floridi: “This paper considers a host of definitions and labels attached to the concept of smart cities to identify four dimensions that ground a review of ethical concerns emerging from the current debate. These are: (1) network infrastructure, with the corresponding concerns of control, surveillance, and data privacy and ownership; (2) post-political governance, embodied in the tensions between public and private decision-making and cities as post-political entities; (3) social inclusion, expressed in the aspects of citizen participation and inclusion, and inequality and discrimination; and (4) sustainability, with a specific focus on the environment as an element to protect but also as a strategic element for the future. Given the persisting disagreements around the definition of a smart city, the article identifies in these four dimensions a more stable reference framework within which ethical concerns can be clustered and discussed. Identifying these dimensions makes possible a review of the ethical implications of smart cities that is transversal to their different types and resilient towards the unsettled debate over their definition…(More)”.
How to stop our cities from being turned into AI jungles
Stefaan G. Verhulst at The Conversation: “As artificial intelligence grows more ubiquitous, its potential and the challenges it presents are coming increasingly into focus. How we balance the risks and opportunities is shaping up as one of the defining questions of our era. In much the same way that cities have emerged as hubs of innovation in culture, politics, and commerce, so they are defining the frontiers of AI governance.
Some examples of how cities have been taking the lead include the Cities Coalition for Digital Rights, the Montreal Declaration for Responsible AI, and the Open Dialogue on AI Ethics. Others can be found in San Francisco’s ban of facial-recognition technology, and New York City’s push for regulating the sale of automated hiring systems and creation of an algorithms management and policy officer. Urban institutes, universities and other educational centres have also been forging ahead with a range of AI ethics initiatives.
These efforts point to an emerging paradigm that has been referred to as AI Localism. It’s a part of a larger phenomenon often called New Localism, which involves cities taking the lead in regulation and policymaking to develop context-specific approaches to a variety of problems and challenges. We have also seen an increased uptake of city-centric approaches within international law frameworks…
Below are ten principles to help systematise our approach to AI Localism. Considered together, they add up to an incipient framework for implementing and assessing initiatives around the world:…(More)”.
Innovation in the Public Sector: Smarter States, Services and Citizens
Book by Fatih Demir: “The book discusses smart governments and innovation in the public sector. In hopes of arriving at a clear definition of innovation in the field of public administration, the volume provides a wide survey of global policies and practices, especially those aimed at reducing bureaucracy and using information-communication technologies in public service delivery. Chapters look at current applications across countries and multiple levels of government, from public innovation labs in the UK to AI in South Korea. Providing concrete examples of innovation culture at work in public institutions, this volume will be of use to researchers and students studying new public management, public service delivery, and innovation as well as practitioners and professionals working in various public agencies…(More)”.
Platformization of Urban Life
Book edited by Anke Strüver and Sybille Bauriedl: “The increasing platformization of urban life needs critical perspectives to examine changing everyday practices and power shifts brought about by the expansion of digital platforms mediating care-services, housing, and mobility. This book addresses new modes of producing urban spaces and societies. It brings both platform researchers and activists from various fields related to critical urban studies and labour activism into dialogue. The contributors engage with the socio-spatial and normative implications of platform-mediated urban everyday life and urban futures, going beyond a rigid techno-dystopian stance in order to include an understanding of platforms as sites of social creativity and exchange…(More)”.
What does AI Localism look like in action? A new series examining use cases on how cities govern AI
Series by Uma Kalkar, Sara Marcucci, Salwa Mansuri, and Stefaan Verhulst: “…We call local instances of AI governance ‘AI Localism.’ AI Localism refers to the governance actions—which include, but are not limited to, regulations, legislations, task forces, public committees, and locally-developed tools—taken by local decision-makers to address the use of AI within a city or regional state.
It is necessary to note, however, that the presence of AI Localism does not mean that robust national- and state-level AI policy are not needed. Whereas local governance seems fundamental in addressing local, micro-level issues, tailoring, for instance, by implementing policies for specific AI use circumstances, national AI governance should act as a key tool to complement local efforts and provide cities with a cohesive, guiding direction.
Finally, it is important to mention how AI Localism is not necessarily good governance of AI at the local level. Indeed, there have been several instances where local efforts to regulate and employ AI have encroached on public freedoms and hurt the public good….
Examining the current state of play in AI localism
To this end, The Governance Lab (The GovLab) has created the AI Localism project to collect a knowledge base and inform a taxonomy on the dimensions of local AI governance (see below). This initiative began in 2020 with the AI Localism canvas, which captures the frames under which local governance methods are developing. This series presents current examples of AI localism across the seven canvas frames of:
- Principles and Rights: foundational requirements and constraints of AI and algorithmic use in the public sector;
- Laws and Policies: regulation to codify the above for public and private sectors;
- Procurement: mandates around the use of AI in employment and hiring practices;
- Engagement: public involvement in AI use and limitations;
- Accountability and Oversight: requirements for periodic reporting and auditing of AI use;
- Transparency: consumer awareness about AI and algorithm use; and
- Literacy: avenues to educate policymakers and the public about AI and data.
In this eight-part series, released weekly, we will present current examples of each frame of the AI localism canvas to identify themes among city- and state-led legislative actions. We end with ten lessons on AI localism for policymakers, data and AI experts, and the informed public to keep in mind as cities grow increasingly ‘smarter.’…(More)”.
Breakthroughs in Smart City Implementation
Book edited by Leo P. Ligthart and Ramjee Prasad: “Breakthroughs in Smart City Implementation should give answers on a wide variety of present social, political and technological problems. Green and long-lasting solutions are needed in coming 10 years and beyond on areas as green and long lasting solutions for improving air quality, quality of life of residents in cities, traffic congestions and many more.Two Conasense branches, established in China and in India, report in six book chapters on initiatives needed to overcome the obvious shortcomings at present. Three more chapters complete this fifth Conasense book: an introductory chapter concerning Smart City from Conasense perspective, a chapter showing that not technology but the people in the cities are most important and a chapter on recent results and prospects of “Human in the Loop” in smart vehicular systems…(More)”.