Smart City Configurations: A Conceptual Approach to Assess Smart City Practices and Outcomes

This paper proposes a novel conceptual framework as analytical tool to support the systematic and methodical investigation of smart city instantiations. Integrating existing fragmented perspectives, we propose three analytical dimensions (integration, automation and adaptivity) to describe the relationships between four foundational smart city aspects (technology, people, institutions and material environment). Together dimensions and foundational aspects create smart city configurations (SCCs). SCCs enable the systematic description, assessment and comparison of specific smart city instantiations. SCCs can further help to make transparent the basis for policy decisions and implicit assumptions of decision-makers aiding the legitimacy, explainability and accountability of smart city efforts

Citizen repertoires of smart urban safety: Perspectives from Rotterdam, the Netherlands

This article provides empirical research about the perspectives of citizens of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on the emergent phenomenon of ‘smart urban safety’, which advocates advanced uses of digital technologies and data for urban safety management, and is gaining currency in thinking about urban futures. While smart cities affect many dimensions of city management, applications to safety management belong to the most controversial, revealing important tensions between disparate perspectives on technology and society in the context of urban living environments. Despite their influence, the concepts of smart cities and smart urban safety are largely unknown to the public. To gain insights into citizens’ perspectives, this study uses smart urban safety vignettes to which participants are invited to respond. Using discourse analytical techniques, their interpretations of safety in the smart city are described, which center on functional designs, express lacking influence over technological developments, and reflect on benefits and risks and on their civic roles vis-à-vis technologically mediated urban safety management. Our article concludes by arguing how these findings complement, but also show limitations to traditional technology acceptance models that are as of yet dominant in research of smart urban safety specifically, and smart cities more generally

Making Smart Things Strange Again: Using Walking as a Method for Studying Subjective Experiences of Smart City Surveillance

Smart cities are commonly seen as places that are defined by surveillance because of their reliance on vast amounts of digital data to improve urban management challenges. Although the infrastructures and technologies that enable smart city surveillance pervade multitudinous urban spaces and everyday practices, they are often “hiding in plain sight,” going unnoticed in the bustle of everyday life. Hence, fostering research settings where citizens can productively reflect on their everyday surveillance constitutes a major challenge for the interrelated projects of doing empirical research about subjective experiences of smart city surveillance and the inclusion of citizens in smart city discussions. Drawing on walking as a method, this study attempts to meet this challenge by developing and empirically testing a methodology of purposive “data walking.”Situating the research in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, participants are instructed to identify data points for public safety purposes on a short walk through thecity and reflect on their experiences. Observations and experiences of smart city surveillance are documented with photos, text descriptions,and audio notes, which are shared in real-time with researchers and provide the basis for group reflections. These walks and reflections generate rich visual and textual data that yield insights into embodied and situated constructions of smart city surveillance as an object of subjective inquiry, experiences of visibility, considerations of agency and evaluations of public safety implications. The study considers these empirical results in conjunction with reflections on the methodology, contributing to further methodological explorations for including citizens in smart city discussions and surveillance subjectivity research