SDG-11 and smart cities: contradictions and overlaps between social and environmental justice research agendas

There is an increased role Information and Communications Technology (ICT) plays in the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This paper focuses specifically on SDG-11 “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” and how cities are increasingly incorporating ICT toward this goal. The public discourse on Smart Cities suggests economic, social and environmental benefits are possible through the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). However, the increased deployment and use of digital infrastructure and processes in the name of sustainability and optimization itself is the focus of a growing body of critical literature on Smart Cities. This mini-review collates critical literature on digital infrastructures and processes related to SDG-11 and Smart Cities to identify areas of significance for further research. Although many Smart City projects discuss sustainability benefits, the distribution of benefits and risks across different communities is rarely examined. An increased use of ICT in Smart City projects can provide environmental benefits to some communities, while shifting the burden of risks to other communities. An increased use of ICT has its own energy and resource impacts that has implications for sustainability beyond the geography of individual cities to global impacts. The lifecycle and supply chain impacts of advanced ICT projects are being identified and documented. The end user of the Smart City projects may benefit significantly from the increased use of ICTs, while the environmental costs are often borne by disparate communities. In some cases, within the same city where a Smart City project is deployed, the inequities in distribution of environmental resources and services are exacerbated by layering new ICT implementations on top of existing socio-economic inequities. Therefore, this paper combines a broad view of Smart City environmental impacts, as well as a deep examination of the intersection of social justice and environmental justice issues to create more wholistic approaches for analysis of governance of Smart City projects. A more wholistic approach for governance of Smart City projects is required that includes combined social justice and environmental justice frameworks, toward achievement of SDG-11 goals

Why government supported smart city initiatives fail: examining community risk and benefit agreements as a missing link to accountability for equity-seeking groups

This paper utilizes concepts from a critical social justice discourse on smart cities to identify factors behind resistance to new smart city initiatives from equity-seeking groups. The broader critical discourse is examined based on relevance to the eventual failure of the initiatives selected as case studies. It highlights institutional failure within government-supported initiatives due to the lack of consideration given to equitable distribution of risks and formal accountability mechanisms. It describes outcomes surrounding smart cities in which the benefits accrue to some groups within the city while risks increase for other groups. Finally, we examine the integration of “risk” as an adaptation to the existing practical mechanism of Community Benefit Agreements, for use of this framework to support value sensitive design approaches in future smart city initiatives

The Hybrid Space of Collaborative Location-Based Mobile Games and the City: A Case Study of Ingress

Structural changes in the way we live and interact in cities are occurring due to advances in mobile communication technologies affecting everyday practices. One such practice, at the forefront of digital technology adoption, is digital gaming or play. Location-based mobile games (LBMGs), such as Pokémon Go and Ingress have surged in popularity in recent years through their introduction of a new mode of play, employing mobile GPS and internet-enabled technology. Distinguished by their embedded GIS, LBMGs can influence how people play, interact with and perceive the city, by merging urban and virtual spaces into ‘hybrid realities.’ Despite the popularity of such games, studies into how LBMGs affect urban dweller interactions with each other and the city have been limited. This article examines how the digital interface of the large-scale collaborative LBMG Ingress affects how players experience and use the city. Ingress is a collaborative hybrid or location-based game that uses GPS location information from smartphones, Google maps, and Google POI to create virtual gameplay environments that correspond to and interact with other players and the city. The methodology cross-references the MDA framework from game studies (Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics) within the urban mobility, sociability and spatiality characteristics of the hybrid realities theoretical framework. In this article, we explore how Ingress (re)produces hybrid space through deliberate design of interface game elements. By applying this analytical approach, we identify the game mechanics and their role in producing a hybrid gameplay environment with impacts on social and mobility practices altering the perception of and engagement with the city

Sustainable Smart Cities : Applying Complexity Science to Achieve Urban Sustainability

Publisher PD

Planning and complexity: Engaging with temporal dynamics, uncertainty and complex adaptive systems

The nature of complex systems as a transdisciplinary collection of concepts from physics and economics to sociology and ecology provides an evolving field of inquiry (Laszlo and Krippner, 1998) for urban planning and urban design. As a result, planning theory has assimilated multiple concepts from the complexity sciences over the past decades. The seemingly chaotic or non-linear urban phenomena resulting from the combination of hard and soft systems (Checkland, 1989) or physical and environmental aspects of the city with human intervention, motivation and perception have been of particular interest in the context of increasing criticism of top-down approaches. Processes such as self- organisation, temporal dynamics and transition, previously ignored or assumed problematic within equilibrium-centred conceptualisations or mechanistic theories, have found their way back into planning through complexity theories of cities (CTC) (Allen, 1997; Batty, 2007; de Roo and Silva, 2010; Marshall, 2012; Portugali, 2011b). While there is an overlap with Structuralist-Marxist and humanistic perspectives (Portugali, 2011c) and a continuity from an older science of cities (Batty, 2013), it is interesting to observe the engagement with bottom-up phenomena, structural and functional co-evolution and resultant adaptable and self-organisational systems within complexity planning. It has taken time for planning to adopt complexity thinking beyond metaphor or common usage of the term, but we now appear to be at a tipping point where complexity planning is exploring methods of engagement and cognition, rather than the question of whether cities are complex

A Strategic Planning Problem: The Relationship Between Urban Transformation Outcomes and the Temporal Order of Planned Projects

This chapter presents a new computational tool that enables strategic planners to explore the impact of sequences of development towards achieving the United Nation’s (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The hypothesis based on a complexity theory framework is that the order in which projects are built as part of an area’s strategic development can significantly influence future outcomes. A custom-built tool – with an underlying computational simulation - enables the incorporation of bottom-up dynamics and self-organisational behaviours within explorations of urban policy and intervention aimed at spatial and infrastructural change. The simulation treats areas as temporal, spatial and programmatic morphologies with identified relational drivers stemming from a statistical analysis of historic transformations. Transition rules in the simulation model based on historic relations links future development to known trajectories and path dependencies. The tool enables exploration of the longer-term outcomes of major and minor changes within existing dynamics and trajectories of urban transformation. The possibility to test probable outcomes of strategic controls within the model, as well as catalysts within different temporal scenarios, has the potential to contribute significantly to the development of strategic future planning especially in the rapidly developing urban environments of the Global South