Tag Archives: smart cities

Lessons for smart cities from the Programmable City project

The Programmable City project will come to a close at the end of May 2018. To mark the occasion the project is hosting a final event in the Mansion House, Dublin on May 9th, 10am-2pm. At this we will present the main findings and recommendations from across the sub-projects to stakeholders. The focus will very much be on practical lessons for smart city development.

In total 16 researchers worked on the project at some point during its lifetime, mainly undertaken fieldwork in Dublin and Boston, but also other cities. A diverse range of smart city issues – open and big data, policy formulation, city standards, traffic control, testbeds, smart districts, bike share, smart energy, emergency management response, procurement by challenge, smart lighting, property development, hackathons, citizenship, work practices, governance, and ethical and security considerations – were investigated from a social, cultural, political, economic and ethical perspective through policy analysis, c. 500 interviews, and ethnographic research. In addition, part of the team built the Dublin Dashboard.

A number of team members have progressed to other academic posts around the world (Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, Ireland, Taiwan, Wales) but all will be returning to Dublin to join the rest of the team to present their work through quick, snappy talks with time for questions. In addition, there will be a chance to view some of our latest dashboards work, with an AR/VR demo of 3D Dublin planning application.

We invite you to join us at this event to discover what lessons smart city developments might learn from our research.

Timetable:
10.00-10.30    Registration/Coffee
10.30-10.45    Welcome and overview of project
10.45-11.30    Session 1: Open/big data, city dashboards, city standards, work practices
11.30-12.15    Session 2: Emergency management response, smart lighting, procurement by challenge, traffic control room, smart district, property development
12.15-13.00    Session 3: Bike share, smart energy, citizenship, hackathons, governance, ethics
13.00-13.15    Smart Dublin
13.15-14.00    Lunch and AR/VR demos of new Building City Dashboards project

Please register for this free event via Eventbrite here

New working paper: Smart urbanism and smart citizenship: The neoliberal logic of ‘citizen-focused’ smart cities in Europe

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Paolo Cardullo and Rob Kitchin have published a new Programmable City working paper (No. 39) via OSF: Smart urbanism and smart citizenship: The neoliberal logic of ‘citizen-focused’ smart cities in Europe

Abstract

This paper examines the neoliberal ideals that underpin participation and citizenship in the smart city and their replication mechanisms at European level. We examine self-proclaimed ‘citizen-focus’ projects funded by or aligned to the European Innovation Partnership for Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC) by way of analysing policy documents and interviews with key stakeholders of smart city initiatives at European level and the Smart City Expo World Congress in Barcelona (SCEWC 2017). We suggest that smart cities as currently conceived enact a blueprint of neoliberal urbanism and promote a form of neoliberal citizenship. Supra-national institutions like the EIP-SCC act at a multi-scalar level, connecting diverse forms of neoliberal urbanism while promoting policy agendas and projects that perform neoliberal citizenship in the spaces of the everyday. Despite attempts to recast the smart city as ‘citizen-focused’, smart urbanism remains rooted in pragmatic, instrumental and paternalistic discourses and practices rather than those of social rights, political citizenship, and the common good. In our view, if smart cities are to become truly ‘citizen-focused’ an alternative conception of smart citizenship needs to be deployed, one that enables an effective shift of power and is rooted in rights, entitlements, community, participation, commons, and ideals beyond the market.

Key words: citizenship, smart cities, smart citizens, neoliberalism, European Union

New paper: Interfaces and divisions in the Dublin Docklands ‘Smart District’

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Liam Heaphy has published a new Progcity working paper (37) – Interfaces and divisions in the Dublin Docklands ‘Smart District’.

Abstract

The study of physical and social divisions in divided societies has long been an area of study, such as the continued usage of ‘peace walls’ in Belfast, hostile architecture to prevent anti-social behaviour and rough sleeping, and the securitisation of private spaces. In the context of a new drive to create a smart district, this paper looks at the relationship between smart urbanism and planning, and at the spatial and social divisions between a new ‘gentrifying’ and well-educated community in the Dublin Docklands and established communities in the area. The Dublin Docklands redevelopment marks a significant break from a pattern of suburbanisation and inner-city decline and repurposes part of the former port area as a city centre extension. The paper accounts for the reshaping of the Dublin Docklands as a ‘smart district’ in collaboration with the city authorities, based on over thirty semi-structured interviews and participant-observation at consultation events. It argues that reductive definitions of smart cities as networking technologies be reworked into broader considerations on urban technologies and the future of cities, with greater emphasis on the relationship between technologies branded as ‘smart’ and the material and digital manifestation of boundaries in urban form.

Keywords: smart urbanism, smart cities, ports, planning, technology, urban design, interfaces, boundaries

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New paper: The (In)Security of Smart Cities: Vulnerabilities, Risks, Mitigation, and Prevention

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A new paper, ‘The (In)Security of Smart Cities: Vulnerabilities, Risks, Mitigation, and Prevention’ by Rob Kitchin and Martin Dodge, has been published in the Journal of Urban Technology. Download the paper here.

Abstract

In this paper we examine the current state of play with regards to the security of smart city initiatives. Smart city technologies are promoted as an effective way to counter and manage uncertainty and urban risks through the effective and efficient delivery of services, yet paradoxically they create new vulnerabilities and threats, including making city infrastructure and services insecure, brittle, and open to extended forms of criminal activity. This paradox has largely been ignored or underestimated by commercial and governmental interests or tackled through a technically-mediated mitigation approach. We identify five forms of vulnerabilities with respect to smart city technologies, detail the present extent of cyberattacks on networked infrastructure and services, and present a number of illustrative examples. We then adopt a normative approach to explore existing mitigation strategies, suggesting a wider set of systemic interventions (including security-by-design, remedial security patching and replacement, formation of core security and computer emergency response teams, a change in procurement procedures, and continuing professional development). We discuss how this approach might be enacted and enforced through market-led and regulation/management measures, and then examine a more radical preventative approach to security.

Key words: Crime, cyberattack, mitigation, risk, security, smart cities, urban resilience

New paper: The timescape of smart cities

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Rob Kitchin has published a new Progcity working paper (35) – The timescape of smart cities.

Abstract

To date, critical examinations of smart cities have largely ignored their temporality. In this paper I consider smart cities from a temporal perspective arguing that they produce a new timescape and constitute space-time machines. The first half of the paper examines temporal 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 paper details how smart cities shape the nature of temporal modalities, considering how they reframe and utilise the relationship between the past, present and future. The analysis draws from a set of 43 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.

Key words: time, timescape, temporality, space-time, smart cities, rhythm, pace, tempo, scheduling, real-time, past, present, future

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Algorhythmic governance: Regulating the ‘heartbeat’ of a city using the Internet of Things

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A paper by Claudio Coletta and Rob Kitchin, ‘Algorhythmic governance: Regulating the ‘heartbeat’ of a city using the Internet of Things’ has been published in Big Data and Society as part of a special section on ‘Algorithms in Culture’. It is open access.

Abstract

To date, research examining the socio-spatial effects of smart city technologies have charted how they are reconfiguring the production of space, spatiality and mobility, and how urban space is governed, but have paid little attention to how the temporality of cities is being reshaped by systems and infrastructure that capture, process and act on real-time data. In this article, we map out the ways in which city-scale Internet of Things infrastructures, and their associated networks of sensors, meters, transponders, actuators and algorithms, are used to measure, monitor and regulate the polymorphic temporal rhythms of urban life. Drawing on Lefebvre, and subsequent research, we employ rhythmanalysis in conjunction with Miyazaki’s notion of ‘algorhythm’ and nascent work on algorithmic governance, to develop a concept of ‘algorhythmic governance’. We then use this framing to make sense of two empirical case studies: a traffic management system and sound monitoring and modelling. Our analysis reveals: (1) how smart city technologies computationally perform rhythmanalysis and undertake rhythm-making that intervenes in space-time processes; (2) distinct forms of algorhythmic governance, varying on the basis of adaptiveness, immediacy of action, and whether humans are in-, on-, or, off-the-loop; (3) and a number of factors that shape how algorhythmic governance works in practice.