Towards more socially inclusive smart sustainable cities: A study of smart city districts in Greater Copenhagen region

Today world’s cities are in a state of flux exhibiting complex dynamics and at the core of sustainability challenges including climate change and urbanization. At the same time cities have been acknowledged as agents of change when it comes to addressing these challenges. The urgency to address these problems has triggered cities to find smarter and innovative ways to deal with these challenges. Cities are committing themselves to smart city objectives and national governments are encouraging cities to become centers for innovation as well as drivers for sustainable growth. Smart city districts are emerging as a new form of urban living with smart solutions, technologies, products and services to address these sustainability challenges and enhance quality of life in cities. This thesis follows case study approach to explore how these emerging smart city districts are designed and governed by municipalities as smart endowments and activities of self-decisive, independent and aware citizens within Greater Copenhagen region. Focus is made on how the smart city districts are governed to catalyze co-creation and enhance social inclusion in their planning and development. Analytical models, the democracy cube and participation stairway are used to determine the potential and limits for citizen participation. The participation and engagement of citizens in form of collaborative or communicative planning forms the central focus of planning and development in the case studies investigated in this thesis. Information, consultation and dialogue form the main channels for citizen engagement in the planning process. The activities that enhance inclusive, innovative and reflective societies are seen to be a prerequisite for achieving sustainable social integration. Involvement of citizens in both planning and decision making hastens their relationships with city authorities and the opportunities for which they can further influence decisions. However, aspects of social inclusion are multi-dimensional and still remain a challenge since the cases under study are emerging from green fields. The realization of multi-channeled inclusionary approaches can act a medium for reaching a broader range of demographics and opinions

Miejska kreatywność jako potencjalny czynnik rozwoju górnośląskiego obszaru metropolitalnego

In a rapidly changing environment due to globalization, we are constantly looking for appropriate paths and strategies for cities and regions in accordance with affirmation of growth factors territorialisation. As a result, we observe an inflation of development conceptions that seek to define the conditions for urban resilience resulting in sustainable development despite the unstable environment. The author places his reflections in the context of Upper Silesia conurbation development challenges. He examines the current path of the region development and analyzes the role that the application of smart city and creative city concepts could play in this process. He does not decide which paths should be chosen but rather suggests a reflection on the proportions between different bundles inside the development process. He also highlights the limits of a smart city concept and shows to what extent those limits can be exceeded through the application of a creative city strategy. Specific conditions offered by the Upper Silesian metropolitan area related to its economic and social diversity provide a significant opportunity for the development of creative economy that could determine the competitive advantage of this area in the coming decades

Roadmaps to Utopia: Tales of the Smart City

Notions of the Smart City are pervasive in urban development discourses. Various frameworks for the development of smart cities, often conceptualized as roadmaps, make a number of implicit claims about how smart city projects proceed but the legitimacy of those claims is unclear. This paper begins to address this gap in knowledge. We explore the development of a smart transport application, MotionMap, in the context of a £16M smart city programme taking place in Milton Keynes, UK. We examine how the idealized smart city narrative was locally inflected, and discuss the differences between the narrative and the processes and outcomes observed in Milton Keynes. The research shows that the vision of data-driven efficiency outlined in the roadmaps is not universally compelling, and that different approaches to the sensing and optimization of urban flows have potential for empowering or disempowering different actors. Roadmaps tend to emphasize the importance of delivering quick practical results. However, the benefits observed in Milton Keynes did not come from quick technical fixes but from a smart city narrative that reinforced existing city branding, mobilizing a growing network of actors towards the development of a smart region. Further research is needed to investigate this and other smart city developments, the significance of different smart city narratives, and how power relationships are reinforced and constructed through them

Smart mobility: opportunity or threat to innovate places and cities

The concept of the “smart mobility” has become something of a buzz phrase in the planning and transport fields in the last decade. After a fervent first phase in which information technology and digital data were considered the answer for making mobility more efficient, more attractive and for increasing the quality of travel, some disappointing has grown around this concept: the distance between the visionarypotentialthatsmartness is providingis too far from the reality of urban mobility in cities. We argue in particular that two main aspects of smart mobility should be eluded: the first refers to the merely application to technology on mobility system, what we called the techo-centric aspect; the second feature is the consumer-centric aspect of smart mobility, that consider transport users only as potential consumers of a service. Starting from this, the study critics the smart mobility approach and applications and argues on a“smarter mobility” approach, in which technologies are only oneaspects of a more complex system. With a view on the urgency of looking beyond technology and beyond consumer-oriented solutions, the study arguments the need for a cross-disciplinary and a more collaborative approach that could supports transition towards a“smarter mobility” for enhancing the quality of life and the development ofvibrant cities. The article does not intend to produce a radical critique of the smart mobility concept,denying a priori its utility. Our perspectiveisthat the smart mobility is sometimes used as an evocativeslogan lacking some fundamental connection with other central aspect of mobility planning and governance. Main research questions are: what is missing in the technology-oriented or in the consumers-oriented smart mobility approach? What are the main risks behind these approaches? To answer this questions the paper provides in Section 2 the rationale behind the paper;Section 3 provides a literature review that explores the evolution on smart mobility paradigm in the last decades analysing in details the “techno-centric”and the “consumer-centric” aspects. Section 4proposes an integrated innovative approach for smart mobility, providing examples and some innovative best practices in Belgium. Some conclusions are finally drawnin Section 5, based on the role of smart mobility to create not only virtual platforms but high quality urban places

Digital tools as a means to foster citizen involvement in urban planning

Based mainly on sensors, flow optimization and algorithms, the smart city model has revealed its limits. The city’s smart citizens are scarcely included in the planning process, even though they occupy a key position to produce and share valuable knowledge on how they live and use the city. Technology has the potential to generate tools that improve interaction and information exchange between urban planners and city dwellers, which is a key aspect for more sustainable and responsive planning. This lunchtalk will explore how digital tools can be harnessed to create new means of involving citizens in the urban planning process, and how they integrate a non-expert but practiced layer of knowledge. By looking at numerous existing tools, it will examine the opportunities and limitations of these digital technologies as a way to create novel planning practice

Smart Cities: Towards a New Citizenship Regime? A Discourse Analysis of the British Smart City Standard

Growing practice interest in smart cities has led to calls for a less technology-oriented and more citizen-centric approach. In response, this articles investigates the citizenship mode promulgated by the smart city standard of the British Standards Institution. The analysis uses the concept of citizenship regime and a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods to discern key discursive frames defining the smart city and the particular citizenship dimensions brought into play. The results confirm an explicit citizenship rationale guiding the smart city (standard), although this displays some substantive shortcomings and contradictions. The article concludes with recommendations for both further theory and practice development

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

Using urban foresight techniques in city visioning: lessons from the Reading 2050 vision

The emergence of urban (or city) foresight techniques focuses on the need to create coherent city visions to plan and manage for future long-term change and create opportunities for new investment into the local urban economy. This paper reviews the concepts of ‘co-created’ city visioning and urban foresight, setting this in the context of new and emerging practice and policy in the UK, and elsewhere. The paper critically reviews the development of the vision for a small city (the ‘Reading 2050’ project, linked to the UK Future of Cities Foresight Programme), and the lessons it holds for visioning, foresight and planning, using the ‘quadruple helix’ framework as a conceptual lens for analysis

A Framework to Use Public-Private Partnership for Smart City Projects

The concept of Smart City has been emerging as a strategic set of integrated initiatives encompassing infrastructures, technology and digital services for the purpose of enhancing the quality of life of citizens. However, the development and implementation of Smart City projects require considerable investments that are difficult to fund with traditional public finance. In this context, Public-Private-Partnerships (PPP) appear to be suitable solutions to overcome the shortage of public finance and cuts on public spending. However, the adoption of PPP forms for Smart City projects has not been fully explored and only experimentally applied so far. In order to promote the usage of PPP to finance Smart City initiatives, this paper proposes some PPP financial instruments and discusses the associated strengths and weaknesses. In particular, the use of Project Finance, Revenue Sharing and Social Impact Bonds are suggested as sound alternatives and suitable sources of financing for Smart City project