This article explores the process by which intelligent transport system technologies have further advanced a data-driven culture in public transport and traffic control. Based on 12 interviews with transport engineers and fieldwork visits to three control rooms, it follows the implementation of Real-Time Passenger Information in Dublin and the various technologies on which it is dependent. It uses the concept of ‘data ratcheting’ to describe how a new data-driven rational order supplants a gradualist, conservative ethos, creating technological dependencies that pressure organisations to take control of their own data and curate accessibility to outside organisations. It is argued that the implementation of Real-Time Passenger Information forms part of a changing landscape of urban technologies as cities move from a phase of opening data silos and expanded communication across departments and with citizens towards one in which new streams of digital data are recognised for their value in stabilising novel forms of city administration.
Keywords: Intelligent transport systems, real-time information, smart city, Big Data, organisational change
Friday was publication day for ‘The Right to the Smart City‘ book edited by Paolo Cardullo, Cesare Di Feliciantonio and Rob Kitchin published by Emerald. The book is the outcome of the fourth international workshop hosted by the Programmable City project and focuses on the interrelationship of smart cities, rights, citizenship, social justice, commons, civic tech, participation and ethics. It includes chapters by Katharine Willis, Jiska Engelbert, Alberto Vanolo, Michiel de Lange, Catherine D’Ignazio, Eric Gordon, Elizabeth Christoforetti, Andrew Schrock, Sung-Yueh Perng, Gabriele Schliwa, Nancy Odendaal, Ramon Ribera-Fumaz, and the three editors.
1. Citizenship, Justice and the Right to the Smart City. Rob Kitchin, Paolo Cardullo, Cesare Di Feliciantonio
Part 1: Citizenship and the commons
2. Whose right to the smart city?
Katharine Willis
3. Reading the neoliberal smart city narrative: The political potential of everyday meaning making.
Jiska Engelbert
4. Playable urban citizenship: Social justice and the gamification of civic life.
Alberto Vanolo
5. The right to the datafied city: Interfacing the urban data commons.
Michiel de Lange
6. Smart commons or a ‘smart approach’ to the commons?
Paolo Cardullo
7. Against the romance of the smart community: The case of Milano 4 You.
Cesare Di Feliciantonio
Part 2: Civic engagement, participation and the right to the smart city
8. Sensors and civics: Towards a community-centred smart city.
Catherine D’Ignazio, , Eric Gordon and Elizabeth Christoforetti
9. What is civic tech? Defining a practice of technical pluralism.
Andrew Schrock
10. Hackathons and the practices and possibilities of participation.
Sung-Yueh Perng
11. Smart cities by design? Interrogating design thinking for citizen participation.
Gabriele Schliwa
12. Appropriating ‘big data’: exploring the emancipatory potential of the data strategies of civil society organisations in Cape Town, South Africa.
Nancy Odendaal
13. Moving from smart citizens to technological sovereignty?
Ramon Ribera-Fumaz
14. Towards a genuinely humanizing smart urbanism.
Rob Kitchin
Rob Kitchin has published a new article on RTE Brainstorm, The ethics of smart cities. The piece argues that the use of big data and artificial intelligence in managing cities creates many ethical issues, but initiatives to address them can enact ethics-washing in order to avoid regulation and more fundamental questions. The argument is illustrated with reference to initiatives in Toronto and Barcelona.
Sung-Yueh Perng has a new paper published in the journal Mobilites, titled: Anticipating digital futures: ruins, entanglements and the possibilities of shared technology making, doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2019.1594867
Abstract
Contrary to the corporate production of digital cities, shared technology making explores ways of innovation that are open to all, informed by diverse knowledges, and led by citizens. However, this exploration faces corporate translation of ethical and societal values for capital accumulation and concerns around the right to participate. Building on Tsing’s concept of ‘ruins’, this paper considers the anticipation of digital futures while the neoliberal ruination of shared technology making is in full swing. The paper examines the entanglements in hackathon rationalities and practices and demonstrates that the possibilities of shared technology making emerge from disrupting technocratic visions and repurposing corporate innovation resources and techniques. Drawing on the analysis, the paper argues that these entanglements are crucial to digital futures. They disclose in concrete ways how neoliberal co-optation can be disturbed and transformed. Equally importantly, they urge continuous explorations to assemble diverse practices and values for building momentum towards sustained processes of shaping desirable futures.
Rob Kitchin has a new paper published online first in Annals of the Association of American Geographers, The timescape of smart cities. doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2018.1497475
Abstract
To date, critical examinations of smart cities have largely ignored their temporality. In this article, I consider smart cities from a spatiotemporal perspective, arguing that they produce a new timescape and constitute space–time machines. The first half of the article examines spatiotemporal relations and rhythms, exploring how smart cities are the products of and contribute to space–time compression, create new urban polyrhythms, alter the practices of scheduling, and change the pace and tempos of everyday activities. The second half of the article details how smart cities shape the nature of temporal modalities, considering how they reframe and utilize the relationship among the past, present, and future. The analysis draws from a set of forty-three interviews conducted in Dublin, Ireland, and highlights that much of the power of smart urbanism is derived from how it produces a new timescape, rather than simply reconfiguring spatial relations.
Creating Smart Cities, edited by Claudio Coletta, Leighton Evans, Liam Heaphy, Rob Kitchin, has been published by Routledge in their Regional Studies Association ‘Region and Cities’ series. It contains a selection of chapters originating from our third Progcity workshop.
Description
In cities around the world, digital technologies are utilized to manage city services and infrastructures, to govern urban life, to solve urban issues and to drive local and regional economies. While “smart city” advocates are keen to promote the benefits of smart urbanism – increased efficiency, sustainability, resilience, competitiveness, safety and security – critics point to the negative effects, such as the production of technocratic governance, the corporatization of urban services, technological lock-ins, privacy harms and vulnerability to cyberattack.
This book, through a range of international case studies, suggests social, political and practical interventions that would enable more equitable and just smart cities, reaping the benefits of smart city initiatives while minimizing some of their perils.
Included are case studies from Ireland, the United States of America, Colombia, the Netherlands, Singapore, India and the United Kingdom. These chapters discuss a range of issues including political economy, citizenship, standards, testbedding, urban regeneration, ethics, surveillance, privacy and cybersecurity.
Contents
1. Creating smart cities – Rob Kitchin, Claudio Coletta, Leighton Evans and Liam Heaphy
PART I The political economy of smart cities
2. A Digital Deal for the smart city: Participation, protection, progress – Jathan Sadowski
3. Politicising smart city standards – James Merricks White
4. Urban revitalization through automated policing and “smart” surveillance in Camden, New Jersey – Alan Wiig
5. Can urban “miracles” be engineered in laboratories? Turning Medellín into a model city for the Global South – Félix Talvard
6. Building smart city partnerships in the “Silicon Docks” – Liam Heaphy and Réka Pétercsák
7. Towards a study of city experiments – Brice Laurent and David Pontille
8. University campuses as testbeds of smart urban innovation – Andrew Karvonen, Chris Martin and James Evans
PART II Smart cities, citizenship and ethics
9. Who are the end-use(r)s of smart cities? A synthesis of conversations in Amsterdam – Christine Richter, Linnet Taylor, Shazade Jameson and Carmen Pérez del Pulgar
10. ‘Cityzens become netizens’: Hashtag citizenships in the making of India’s 100 smart cities – Ayona Datta
11. From smart cities to smart citizens? Searching for the ‘actually existing smart citizen’ in Atlanta, Georgia – Taylor Shelton and Thomas Lodato
12. Promises, practices and problems of collaborative infrastructuring: The case of Dublin City Council (DCC) Beta and Code for Ireland – Sung-Yueh Perng
13. Smart for a reason: Sustainability and social inclusion in the sharing city – Duncan McLaren and Julian Agyeman
14. Pseudonymisation and the smart city: Considering the General Data Protection Regulation – Maria Helen Murphy
15. The privacy parenthesis: Private and public spheres, smart cities and big data – Leighton Evans
16. The challenges of cybersecurity for smart cities – Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin
PART III Conclusion
17. Reframing, reimagining and remaking smart cities – Rob Kitchin
