Smart Engagement and Smart Urbanism: Integrating "The Smart" Into Participatory Planning and Community Engagement

The smart city epitomizes a new paradigm shift in urban planning, policy, and cities. Smart cities require and are powered by smart city principles to succeed, including smart technologies, smart infrastructure, and smart governance; however, they also need to engage closely with the citizens who are most affected by the deployment of the smart city and who also embrace the diverse perspectives, experiences, and opportunities of living in smart cities, i.e., smart engagement. What would be forms of collaborative democracy and inclusive citizen participation in smart city planning? To what extent can smart city planning respond and address inequality, justice, and social and digital division? How can we create community-based climate change planning with the smart? What would be a smart community platform that supports smart engagement, and how do cities around the world establish smart city policy and assess the impact on smart engagement? This thematic issue aims to answer these questions by exploring new visions, facets and methods, practices, and tools for enabling smart engagement. Drawing on research from various countries and cities across the world, the contributions bring new prospects of smart engagement and smart urbanism and illuminate how the theory, plan and policy, and practices of smart engagements are binding to the extent of citizen participation and engagement in smart cities

Consumer and Community in the Future Electricity Network: an Insight from Smart Grid Projects in Europe

Integration of growing shares of renewable energy sources into the electricity networks have resulted in the need for electricity network upgrade through pervasive deployment of information and communication technologies. Having power sources close to the consumer premises and exploiting the potential of smart metering infrastructure may lead to consumers’ empowerment and energy savings. Therefore, the consumer should be approached with clear engagement strategies in the early stages of the technological system development. The analysis of European smart grid projects points to an increasing interest in consumers and communities as focal players for the success of the future electricity system. This necessitates characterization of the consumer as well as the community from what concerns values, beliefs and goals that are culturally and geographically located. In this context, this contribution presents and discusses some EU smart grid projects with a focus on consumers and on their interactions within the community. The abstract also demonstrates successful consumers’ engagement strategies in large-scale deployment of smart metering systems at national level, highlighting the need to address social needs and concerns at an early stage of the technological system development

Citizen-Centric Smart Cities: Empowering Public Administration through Social Media and Citizen Engagement

This paper examines the role of social media and citizen engagement in empowering public administration for citizen-centric smart city development. It focuses on the Smart Cities Marketplace, an EU initiative providing a collaborative platform. The study evaluates citizen engagement on Twitter, analysing posts from the Smart Cities Marketplace page. Objectives include assessing the representation of smart city dimensions: Smart Economy, Smart Mobility, Smart Environment, Smart People, Smart Living, and Smart Governance, and comparing engagement levels between posts with and without related keywords. Through quantitative and qualitative analyses, the study addresses citizen engagement and representation of smart city dimensions. The findings highlight the importance of innovative and tailored approaches to leverage social media as a catalyst for smart city development. Social media is pivotal in promoting collective accountability and shaping sustainable urban development, leading to adaptable, resilient environments that improve urban liveability and life quality

Citizen Engagement in Smart City Planning: The Case of Living Labs in South Korea

The smart city is recognized as a new city model for inclusive urban planning. Many local governments are making smart city plans to develop new policies that manage urban issues in South Korea. They identify issues through citizen surveys and decide which issues should be managed with priority. Some governments test developed policies based on citizen engagement. Most local governments use the living labs to encourage citizen engagement in smart city plans since these are public spaces where planners engage citizens to develop innovative and inclusive ideas. This study conducted a content analysis of smart city plans of local government. We analyzed the various approaches to the living lab and examined the stage of the planning process it is utilized in. Additionally, we identified the barrier to the living lab by interviewing people who participated in the smart city plan. According to the analysis, a barrier to citizen engagement exists in smart city plans; most citizen engagement is only used when planners develop ideas for setting visions and goals. It implies that citizen engagement occurs at a limited level in smart city plans and may cause planning to be less inclusive. We suggest that citizen engagement should be considered in the whole planning process to improve the inclusiveness of smart city plans and encourage sustainable citizen engagement

Smart Engagement in Small Cities: Exploring Minority Participation in Planning

Smart engagement approaches are now widely applied in community planning processes. However, there continues to be a lack of representation from marginalized groups such as racial/ethnic minorities in planning processes. In this study, we explore what smart community engagement methods are being applied by small cities in the U.S., and how minority communities are participating in the planning process with those engagement methods. We analyzed planning documents and public engagement data from five small cities located in different regions of the U.S. with varying levels of minority populations. We evaluated the planning processes of the study cities, specifically comprehensive planning, and what smart community engagement tools they have applied. Our study shows that smart engagements are performed primarily through community surveys and online outreach initiatives. Despite adopting these approaches, most cities received lower participation from minority populations compared to non-Hispanic Whites. Cities with higher participation rates provided more engagement opportunities and conducted targeted community events and surveys to reach out to minority and low-income communities. From this study, we conclude that cities should apply varied methods for community engagement and should not rely solely on smart approaches to engage with minority communities. For cities to increase their overall civic participation, including those underrepresented, smart engagement approaches should be supported by targeted public events and outreach activities

Reuse potential assessment framework for gamification-based smart city pilots

The paper proposes a unified framework for assessing the re-use potential for the Smart Engagement Pilot currently being realized in the city of Ghent (Belgium). The pilot aims to stimulate the digital engagement in users (citizens) by involving them in online and offline communities, and increasing the social capital through the use of ICT (Information and Communications Technology). To engage the citizens, the pilot makes use of Gamification based entities (intelligent wireless sensors) embedded in public hardware, through which innovative games are organized in places of interest (neighbourhood, parks, schools, etc.). Once finished, this pilot will be re-used in other European cities under the context of CIP SMART IP project. Since, the success of a pilot in one city doesn't guarantee its success in the other, an objective socio-economic-organizational reuse assessment becomes critical. To do this assessment, we propose a framework, which uses a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) based scorecard to determine the roadblocks and battlefields that could deter such a transition

Community engagement as a tool to help deliver smart city innovation: a case study of Nottingham, United Kingdom

Cities are complex urban conurbations and facing many challenges. The majority of the world’s population now live in cities and consume 80% of the resources. 'Smart City' innovation is emerging as a major response to the challenges cities are facing. Much of the focus remains on technological interventions, but technology alone may not be sufficient to reach smart and sustainable city goals. Cities are made up of people who have influence and are therefore key stakeholders in the development of smart city innovation and cannot be ignored. This paper aims to explore community engagement in Nottingham to help deliver smart city innovation and the way Nottingham City Council is engaging local communities in its smart projects. The paper analyses the community engagement strategy of Nottingham developed as part of the EU funded smart city project, REMOURBAN (REgeneration MOdel for accelerating the smart URBAN transformation). The main drivers and barriers to effective community engagement are identified in the smart city context. This exploratory study adopted a case study strategy and qualitative research methods. The data was collected through thirteen semi-structured interviews with middle and senior managers in Nottingham City Council and other stakeholder organisations in the city and a focus group of five community leaders from three local community groups. The content analysis of the REMOURBAN documents related to citizen engagement and the council’s energy strategies and policies was carried out. The key results are discussed with recommendations to nurture effective community engagement as a smart city tool and conclusions are drawn

Integration of SMART board technology and effective teaching

The proposed paper reports on the results of a study conducted to explore the influence of SMART Board technology on student engagement in and perception of classroom activities. Using momentary time-sampling procedures, this study examined differences in second grade students\u27 on-task and off-task behaviors during 30-minute math and science lessons that did and did not include the use of a SMART Board. Student perceptions were measured via questionnaire. Observation results revealed that (a) effective teaching, without technology, can promote above-average levels of student engagement, (b) the integration of SMART Board technology can further increase on-task behavior, and (c) the combination of effective teaching and SMART Board technology can maintain high levels of student engagement throughout a multi-component lesson. Questionnaire results provided modest support for the use of the SMART Board to engage students. While none of the participants favored lessons without the SMART Board, only half rated their attention and participation higher in classes that included the SMART Board compared to those that did not. Further research is needed to determine if the integration of SMART Board technology and effective teaching enhances the engagement of students at other grade levels, of other demographic backgrounds, and in other subject areas

Building Climate Resilience in Smart Cities Using Open Data Services

Climate change and its consequences are among modern societies' most critical challenges. To that end, cities have focused on using information technology in their climate mitigation efforts in smart cities. Considering the magnitude of the problem and its impact on our societies, the need for building climate-resilient smart cities is crucial. In this study, we aim to understand how smart cities can achieve climate resilience. Conducting an exploratory field study and using the urban climate resilience framework as a theoretical lens, we suggest that smart cities can leverage the potential of open data and citizen engagement to reach climate resilience. In particular, our results show that building climate-resilient cities requires structural changes in citizen engagement processes and climate considerations. To that end, open data services and tools can be used to improve citizen engagement processes and develop more sustainable smart city solutions