4. Smart Neighborhoods — How Districts, Neighborhoods, and Communities look at smart technology?
There is something wrong with how smart cities are built all-around the world. A few problems that we might have are unable scale pilot programs due to short term goals, public interest or lack of financial incentives, sparse participation from people [Mancebo], citizen participation has no decision making power, or we are over-engineering it, or trying to build smart cities like an algorithm — trying to find one size fits all approach. Cities such as Barcelona, Paris, and Amsterdam tried to approach smart cities in different ways in terms of public-private relations, citizen participation, etc. but none were widely successful. Although Mancebo states that engagement with people and involving them in the decision process should be helpful, projects such as Quayside although spent over $11 million USD for “communications, external affairs, and engagement”, there is no clear evidence that these engagements work and are helpful to learn the public opinion and use the information to build better smart cities and also build trust among people [9]. Mancebo also suggests the use of urban labs such as Amsterdam’s living labs to associate users of the urban services, and representatives of local communities, digital operators, local authorities, and civic techs-type NGOs. This approach will emotional ties between the citizen and the place and help in the involvement and development of urban services.
Paris has tried to retrofit warehouses instead of building new ones but has not been able to turn the tide. Like Doctoroff said, “there is an inverse relationship between your capacity to innovate and the actual existence of people and buildings. Even with the ability to start from scratch, support front the government, huge capital investment, peoples’ collaborations, and some of the best minds at work, Quayside has not been able to showcase the ability to build a 14-acre smart city model. Although we can learn a lot from Quayside such as how to repurpose lanes for AVs, underground logistics delivery networks, mass timber construction, repurposing public spaces based on demand, fully integrated public transportation system, etc.
Vittanen described the Reflexive design practice where the end-users are active agents in the service design and it also takes into account the energy-efficiency. They describe a cooperative model along with ICTs to solve the issue of user empowerment. Vittanen, Connell, and Tommis discuss the success of a case study on how learning and insights relating to energy monitoring and feedback systems in the Greenhouse have been taken forward into the development at Little Kelham. The cooperative model where every resident is a member increases end-users’ sense of ownership and control. This case study shows the need for the involvement of the users in the design, implementation, and governance of ICTs for energy efficiency systems. The users as a community will be able to make decisions about energy governance and future innovation thus showing data ownership in this bottom-up approach. This approach may not be immediately scalable or transferable but the technology deployment could be transferred. Also, smaller collaborations and initiatives as in the case of Amsterdam are not coordinated with one another, and the involvement of local residents was limited, thus not leading to anything concrete.
We have all or most of the technology we need for building a sustainable and successful smart city but we are missing something. Is it money, policies, collective efforts, or the inability of upscaling? I believe since citizens are looking for a perfect smart city with all the features such as sustainability, mobility, public realm, smart buildings, community and city services, digital platform, affordability, privacy and data governance, the private sector interested in building such smart cities have to weigh in their efforts for profitability which in many cases is difficult. Also, technology changes rapidly and within a couple of years, we see generation level jumps in technology and this makes planning a smart city at a large scale very difficult, and the ideas and designs designed to be more aspirational than practical thus not being able to instill trust in the citizens.
References:
[1] E. Nonko, “Hudson Yards Promised a High-Tech Neighborhood — It Was a Greater Challenge Than Expected,” Metropolis, 2019, [Online]. Available: https://www.metropolismag.com/cities/hudson-yards-technology-urbanism/pic/52000/.
[2] A. Jaffe, Eric; Hollander, Sophia; Marshall, Alex; Preville, Phillip; Quirk, Vanessa; Zappia, “Toronto Tomorrow,” p. 234, 2019.
[3] J. Viitanen, P. Connell, and M. Tommis, “Creating Smart Neighborhoods: Insights from Two Low-Carbon Communities in Sheffield and Leeds, United Kingdom,” J. Urban Technol., vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 19–41, 2015, doi: 10.1080/10630732.2014.971537.
[4] C. M. Kayanan, C. Eichenmüller, and J. Chambers, “Silicon slipways and slippery slopes: techno-rationality and the reinvigoration of neoliberal logics in the Dublin Docklands,” Sp. Polity, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 50–66, 2018, doi: 10.1080/13562576.2018.1488556.
[5] F. Mancebo, “Smart city strategies: time to involve people. Comparing Amsterdam, Barcelona and Paris,” J. Urban., vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 133–152, 2020, doi: 10.1080/17549175.2019.1649711.
[6] S. Mattern, “Instrumental City: The View from Hudson Yards, circa 2019,” Places J., no. 2016, 2016, doi: 10.22269/160426.
[7] J. McLeod and G. Zochodne, “Sidewalk Labs pulls out of Toronto smart city project after 3 years, citing ‘unprecedented economic uncertainty,’” Financ. Post, 2020, [Online]. Available: https://financialpost.com/technology/sidewalk-labs-pulls-out-of-toronto-quayside-smart-city-project-because-of-unprecedented-economic-uncertainty.
[8] H. Grabar, “Building Googletown,” Slate, 2017, [Online]. Available: https://slate.com/technology/2017/10/sidewalk-labs-quayside-development-in-toronto-is-googles-first-shot-at-building-a-city.html.
[9] Medium. 2020. Debrief On Sidewalk Toronto Public Meeting #3 — A Master Class In Gaslighting And Arrogance. [online] Available at: <https://medium.com/@biancawylie/debrief-on-sidewalk-toronto-public-meeting-3-a-master-class-in-gaslighting-and-arrogance-c1c5dd918c16> [Accessed 27 September 2020].
[10]Townsend, Chapter 5, “ Tinkering Toward Utopia,”