Co-creating “smart” sustainable food futures with urban food growers

The futuristic visions, infrastructures, and developments of smart cities continue to gather pace, with municipal authorities and businesses in the UK investing increasing amounts of resources into their manifestation. At the same time local communities continue to be hard hit by austerity, with more local services being affected by government cuts, with the North-East of England being particularly affected. In this paper we report on a case study that aimed to explore how the top-down, technocentric, and corporate visions of smart cities stand in contrast to the reality of grassroots communities who are dealing with the consequences of austerity. Our case study focuses on a community of urban food growers. We describe our speculative and participatory approach that we devised for co-designing “smart” urban food-growing futures from the bottom-up with local residents in a deprived neighbourhood of Newcastle upon Tyne, and reflect on how they elicited realities and future visions that stand as a counterpoint to the corporate visions of future cities

The role of urban living labs in a smart city

In a rapidly changing socio-technical environment cities are increasingly seen as main drivers for change. Against this backdrop, this paper studies the emerging Urban Living Lab and Smart City concepts from a project based perspective, by assessing a series of five Smart City initiatives within one local city ecosystem. A conceptual and analytical framework is used to analyse the architecture, nature and outcomes of the Smart City Ghent and the role of Urban Living Labs. The results of our analysis highlight the potential for social value creation and urban transition. However, current Smart City initiatives face the challenge of evolving from demonstrators towards real sustainable value. Furthermore, Smart Cities often have a technological deterministic, project-based approach, which forecloses a sustainable, permanent and growing future for the project outcomes. ‘City-governed’ Urban Living Labs have an interesting potential to overcome some of the identified challenges

Understanding digital eco-innovation in municipalities: An institutional perspective

Municipalities consume over 67% of global energy and are responsible for over 70% of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that rapid adjustments need to happen at a global level, or the effects of climate change will be irreversible. The contribution of municipalities is therefore vital if GHG emissions are to be reduced. Our research is timely in its exploration of the ways in which municipalities institutionalise environmental sustainability practices in and through Green digital artefacts. Using mechanism-based institutional theory as a lens, the paper presents the findings of three contrasting case studies of large municipalities in the United Kingdom in their respective programmes to leverage the direct, enabling and systemic effects of Green ICT in order to reduce GHG emission and achieve their eco-sustainability goals. The case sites are also regarded as exemplars for further research and practice on digital eco-innovation. The mechanism-based explanations illustrate how a social web of conditions and factors influence eco-sustainability outcomes. We conclude that the digital technology-enabled grassroots-based initiatives offer the best hope to begin the transition to sustainable climate change within municipalities. The contributions of our study are therefore both theoretical and practical

Creating Low-carbon Communities: Evaluating the Role of Individual Agency and Systemic Inequality in San Jose, CA

Following a scholarly need to test compelling community level sociodemographic representations of environmental behaviors and outcomes, a sequential mixed method approach was used to evaluate the connections of human agency and systemic inequalities with carbon footprints. Statistical analyses of the 2016 SDG San Jose Dashboard data of city blocks and 2009 - 2013 ACS survey data were supplemented with interviews with eight climate action-oriented community engagement professionals in the South Bay. Boundary limiting socioeconomic conditions for systemic inequalities and human agency, dimensions of Gidden’s Structuration model, were specified. Partially supporting structural inequality theories, socioeconomic resources, primarily, and to a lesser extent dominant race concentration, were associated with larger carbon footprints, particularly when wealth was concentrated. Both human (time driven alone) and demographic (senior and mid-aged blocks) agencies were also in part at play in shrinking or even enlarging carbon footprints, in wealthier communities. These findings not only contributed to the literature on climate action, but also highlighted the need for targeted interventions in communities of different socioeconomic standing

Connected seeds and sensors: co-designing internet of things for sustainable smart cities with urban food-growing communities.

We present a case study of a participatory design project in the space of sustainable smart cities and Internet of Things. We describe our design process that led to the development of an interactive seed library that tells the stories of culturally diverse urban food growers, and networked environmental sensors from their gardens, as a way to support more sustainable food practices in the city. This paper contributes to an emerging body of empirical work within participatory design that seeks to involve citizens in the design of smart cities and Internet of Things, particularly in the context of marginalised and culturally diverse urban communities. It also contributes empirical work towards non-utilitarian approaches to sustainable smart cities through a discussion of designing for urban diversity and slowness

A People's History Of Recent Urban Transportation Innovation

Who are the people leading the charge in urban transportation? As our report explains, the short answer is that it takes leaders from three different sectors of urban society to make change happen quickly.First, there needs to be a robust civic vanguard, the more diverse their range of skills and participation, the better. Second, mayors, commissioners and other city leaders need to create the mandate and champion the change. The third sector is the agency staff. When these three sectors align, relatively quick transformation is possible. Several cities, including New York and Pittsburgh, recently experienced this alignment of a healthy civic community, a visionary and bold mayor and transportation head, and internal agency champions. Our report also highlighted the potential of other cities, such as Charlotte, where the civic sector continues to build on and widen their base

Classroom collaborations: enabling sustainability education via student-community co-learning

open access articlePurpose: This case study explores co-learning classes, a novel approach to leveraging universities’ capacity to contribute to the local sustainable development agenda whilst enhancing students’ learning. These participatory classes were piloted on a UK university Masters module focussed on action for sustainability. The classes sought to combine knowledge exchange, reflection and social network development, by bringing together students and community stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach: The classes were run as a series of five free events, each focussed on sustainability issues relevant for local practitioners. These were either regular timetabled sessions opened up to the public or additional on-campus public events. Attendance was either face-to-face or online. Evaluation was based upon participation data, written feedback and module leader’s post-event reflections. Findings: The classes successfully secured participation from diverse community members, including local government staff, voluntary sector workers, and interested individuals. Both students and community stakeholders valued the participatory format, linkages of theoretical and practical knowledge and diversity of attendees. Research limits/implications: Findings are based upon a small-scale pilot study. Further research using a wider range of contexts is required to enhance understanding of the co-learning approach. Practical implications: This paper highlights some key practical issues to consider if employing co-learning approaches in other contexts, including using inclusive language, aligning with students’ motivations and choosing appropriate focal event topics. Originality/value: Opening up participatory university classes for the public to attend as co-learners is a rarely used approach and has little coverage in academic literature. This small-scale study therefore has value by highlighting some of the potential impacts, strengths and limitations of this approach.https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJSHE-11-2018-0220/full/html#sec01

The Right to the Sustainable Smart City

Environmental concerns have driven an interest in sustainable smart cities, through the monitoring and optimisation of networked infrastructures. At the same time, there are concerns about who these interventions and services are for, and who benefits. HCI researchers and designers interested in civic life have started to call for the democratisation of urban space through resistance and political action to challenge state and corporate claims. This paper contributes to an emerging body of work that seeks to involve citizens in the design of sustainable smart cities, particularly in the context of marginalised and culturally diverse urban communities. We present a study involving co- designing Internet of Things with urban agricultural communities and discuss three ways in which design can participate in the right to the sustainable smart city through designing for the commons, care, and biocultural diversity

Smart Eco-CityDevelopment in Europe and China: Opportunities, Drivers and Challenges

The policy pointers presented in this report are the result of a three-year (2015-18) research project led by Federico Caprotti at the University of Exeter. The project, Smart Eco-Cities for a Green Economy: A Comparative Analysis of Europe and China, was delivered by a research consortium comprising scholars and researchers in the UK, China, the Netherlands, France, and Germany. The aim of the project was to investigate the way in which smart city and eco-city strategies are used to enable a transition towards digital and green economies. While previous work has considered smart cities and eco-cities as separate urban development models, the project considers them together for the first time. We use the term ‘the smart eco-city’ to focus on how green targets are now included in smart city development policies and strategies. This report presents a summary of policy pointers, or ‘lessons’, learned through our work on the cities we studied in the UK, China, the Netherlands, France and Germany. Specifically, we studied, in depth, the cities of Manchester, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Bordeaux, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Ningbo and Wuhan. This work included interviews with policymakers, urban municipal authorities, tech firm executives, and grassroots and community representatives and stakeholders. Our work also included intensive and in-depth qualitative analysis of documentary sources including policy and corporate reports and other materials.The research undertaken to produce this report was supported by funding from: the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) through research grant ES/ L015978/1; the National Natural Science Foundation of China, project number 71461137005; the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) through research grant 467-14-153 and the Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW) through research grant 530-6CD108; the French National Research Agency (ANR) through research grant ANR-14-02; and the German Research Foundation DFG through research grant SP 1545/1-1