For Better or Worse : Imagining Innovation in Smart City Municipal Design

The smart city concept recently (ca. 2010) emerged as a corporate-led system-as-a-service (SaaS) tool to meet city needs of accessibility and efficiency. I looked at three Western cities—Reykjavík, San José, and Toronto—to discover what it meant for city managers to meet municipal needs by embracing smart initiatives. Senior-level city managers, consultants, and technologists invoked vocabularies of smartness and innovation, adopting Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) as tools to facilitate human resource and service efficiency needs. I found persistent ambiguity in how city managers described and measured outcomes for city smartness. I also found stakeholders used smartness to participate in global knowledge sharing coalitions with public and private entities, amplifying negotiation potential, and producing values of prestige around novel technological innovation. In so doing, public and private stakeholders formed individual and organizational identities around technological innovation, creating invisible tensions between human resource and technology investments, characterized by celebration of innovation work to the detriment of maintenance labors. My findings inform ongoing scholarship by explaining how smart city technologists sold a discourse of innovation that was not entirely compatible with how cities bureaucratically functioned. Such distinction is important to communicate to scholarly audiences unfamiliar with techno-fetishisms, but familiar with urban management critiques. Moreover, my study opens paths to understanding how private interests influence municipal management through more obscured means

Country overview South Africa

South Africa offers wide spread ICT infrastructure in the country and adoption is high amongst the population. With greater ICT availability, there is a growing possibility for citizens to hold government accountable, by sending immediate feedback on service performance through digital technologies. But ICT-mediated citizen engagement is still a novelty and in its infancy stages. This State of the Art report intends to provide a contemporary picture of citizen engagement in South Africa and the extent to which ICTs are contributing towards citizen participation with government. The paper is broken down into three sections: the first section is an overview of government policies around citizen participation and a national overview on ICT-mediated citizen engagement; the second section explores some of the emerging ICT-mediated spaces in South Africa; and the last section uses the theory of structuration to analyse digital state-citizen engagement.DFIDUSAIDSidaOmidyar Networ

Why do ethnonational conflicts reach different degrees of violence? : insights from Kosovo, Macedonia, and Bulgaria during the 1990s

Why did ethnonational conflicts reach different degrees of violence during the 1990s: high in Kosovo, middle-ranged in Macedonia, and low in Bulgaria? This article analyzes the relationship between the Albanians of Macedonia and Kosovo, the Turks of Bulgaria, and their respective states. Challenging democratization and security dilemma theories, it argues that the relative changes in minority rights compared to the communist period, rather than the absolute scope of minority rights granted by the new constitutions, created a political threshold early in the transition period that propelled causal chains of minority–majority interactions that led to different degrees of ethnonational violence. Combined with the status change, governmental strategies of co-optation, or coercion prompted the minorities to pursue their demands either through the institutions of the state (Bulgaria), through clandestine activities (Kosovo), or through a combination of both (Macedonia). This article also argues that a timely governmental response to nonterritorial minority demands prevented them from expanding to become territorial and from triggering higher levels of violence

Community Planning in 21st Century Los Angeles: Assessing the Effectiveness of LA’s Neighborhood Council System

By the late 1990s, Los Angeles faced threats from three neighborhoods — the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood, and San Pedro — which all sought municipal independence by seceding from the consolidated city. The orchestrators of each secession movement promoted similar goals such as “fair share of taxes”, “smaller, more individualized government”, and “more local control.” Wealthy homeowners associations and business leaders joined forces in the San Fernando Valley to bring the issue to a citywide referendum, which ultimately failed in 2002. As former Mayor Richard Riordan became increasingly worried by these secession movements, he launched two commissions to draft a revised City Charter that voters would need to approve via referendum. A major component of the revised Charter was the creation of a “neighborhood council” system designed to “promote more citizen participation in government and make government more responsive to local needs.” Voters approved the City Charter in 1999 and neighborhood councils have been operational for nearly two decades. This thesis gauges how effective the system has been in achieving its goals of greater citizen participation and more responsive local government. The report hones in on the San Fernando Valley, where secession fervor was the strongest, to examine the extent to which land use- and development-related projects have been debated and discussed by Valley neighborhood councils. Lastly, given the anecdotal stereotype that neighborhood councils are bulwarks against any sort of change, the research explores if and how councils are embracing Los Angeles’ contemporary urbanization trends towards higher-intensity mixed-use and infill developments as well as a growing commitment to public transit expansion. The study reveals that neighborhood councils have been moderately successful in achieving goals of greater participation and more responsive municipal government despite only serving advisory functions. Neighborhood councils are frequently concerned with land use and zoning matters, and often provide feedback to City Council with their opinions of projects. As Los Angeles becomes less car-centric, neighborhood councils seem to be increasingly more amenable to higher-intensity developments and public transportation projects depending on their local impacts

Mayors and the health of cities

Mayors and the Health of Cities sheds light on how US mayors perceive and prioritize the health of their cities in the context of existing urban health data. The report also highlights promising city-led initiatives targeting four priority health areas: the obesity epidemic, the opioid crisis, traffic fatalities, and gun violence. Findings included in the report are based on analyses from several datasets and sources, including a nationally representative survey of American mayors, the City Health Dashboard 500 Cities, and supplemental information from federal sources.Supported by Citi and The Rockefeller Foundatio

An Evaluation of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) as a Policy Option for Compostable Plastics in California

This research project evaluates Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) in California as a viable option to address the end-of-life management challenges identified for compostable plastics. The evaluation is done in three ways (1) review the main challenges identified for managing compostable plastics against the existing California EPR laws for mercury thermostats, agricultural pesticide containers, carpet, paint and mattresses to look for overlap in issues EPR has been used to address, (2) review compostable plastics in the context of the Product Selection Criteria used by California, (3) Look at the California Framework for setting up an EPR program to lay out what an EPR program for compostable plastics could look like. Implementing EPR for compostable plastics now, while the product is emerging on the market, would help producers organize around addressing the challenges their products are creating and enable them to agree on and implement solutions that would contribute to an increased ability to identify and manage compostable plastics. This would decrease contamination and unwanted material at compost and recycling facilities and help ensure these items are not disposed of in a landfill. The outcome of the evaluations shows that EPR for compostable plastics would be successful in addressing two of the five challenges identified for compostable plastics: education and identification. When taken into consideration against other products in the waste stream, compostable plastics would not be a priority based on the initial product selection criteria provided by CalReycle. The framework shows that compostable plastics fit the mold and are able to meet the general requirements of an EPR program in California

Putting Community First: A Promising Approach to Federal Collaboration for Environmental Improvement: An Evaluation of the Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE) Demonstration Program

This report is an independent evaluation of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Community Action for a Renewed Environment (CARE) Demonstration Program, a community-driven process that uses the best available data to help communities set priorities and take action on their greatest environmental risks. CARE fosters local partnerships that seek participation from business, government, organizations, residents and EPA staff. It also supports a public, transparent planning and implementation process based on collaborative decision-making and shared action.Key FindingsThe National Academy Panel overseeing this effort was impressed by the dedication of the EPA staff to this unique initiative and commended the EPA for its efforts to partner with communities in achieving important long-term and sustainable environmental improvements at the local level. Recommended actions for the CARE Program include: (1) develop and implement a multifaceted information sharing approach; (2) coordinate and refine internal program management activities; and (3) develop a strategic plan and a business plan for CARE

Good to Great: Taking the Governance Leap in India

This report by Dasra is thus a timely effort toward building greater awareness on a critical subject and suggesting action-oriented solutions to it. Governance in India is constantly put in to doubt, not only the government per se, but also citizens, businesses and media have an equal role to play in nation-building. The manner in which this report succinctly pulls together the various building blocks needed to establish a strong and effective governance framework for India is very informative and thought provoking.This report highlights the work of several such non-profit organizations that are positively contributing to strengthening governance in their respective focus areas. These span a diverse range of issues -- lack of accountability and capacities within the executive, poor citizen awareness and participation, lack of platforms for active public engagement, the need for an independent and inclusive media and several others