“Smart Cities” has become a flavour of the day for governments, the private sector, even academics all of whom see this meme as being a way to translate the “hype”, err “glitz”, err “glory” of new tech–digital technology to the grimy old practices and policies of urban agglomerations and urban management.
The fact that according to the UN, sometime over the last year or so the balance between those living in urban areas and those living in rural areas tipped irrevocably over to the urban side. Now those who had always hankered to focus on the rather richer and more desirable (at least when it comes to actually doing field implementations, studies, property developments etc.) environs of big cities could, with all due conscience, begin to ignore the much poorer, less accessible and generally less “sexy”, rural dwellers.
Precisely what might be meant by a “smart city” has become a bit of play thing but is now exercising the imagination of the PR folks in major tech corporations and the offices of senior politicians in jurisdictions great and small. Wikipedia gives us this definition: a smart city is an emerging conceptual view of a city that promotes the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to engage with citizens to develop social capital and intellectual capital, to make better use of hard infrastructure (physical capital), reduce usage of environmental capital and support smart growth (sustainable economic development).
I’m not sure that helps a lot, but perhaps a definition from the Whole Earth Catalogue of corporate America–Forbes Magazine would provide a bit of focus and clarity to what is meant by Wikipedia’s fuzzy generalities. In an article entitled “Smart Cities — A $1.5 Trillion Market Opportunity” the author from the consulting firm Frost and Sullivan identifies eight key aspects that define a Smart City: “smart governance, smart energy, smart building, smart mobility, smart infrastructure, smart technology, smart healthcare and smart citizen as follows”. In a associated presentation the firm goes into somewhat more detail on each of these “smartnesses”
• Smart Energy uses digital technology through Advanced Meter Infrastructure (AMI), distribution grid management, high voltage transmission systems and for demand response for the intelligent and integrated transmission and distribution of power.
• Smart Buildings are green, energy efficient, and intelligent with advanced automated infrastructure that controls and manages aspects such as lighting and temperature, security, and energy consumption independently or with minimal human intervention.
• Smart Mobility enables intelligent mobility through the use of innovative and integrated technologies and solutions such as low emission cars and multimodal transport systems.
• Smart Technology will connect the home, office, mobile phone and car on a single wireless IT platform. Smart Technology includes adoption of smart grid system, smart home solutions, high speed broadband connection, and roll out of 4G technology
• Smart Healthcare is the use of ehealth and mhealth systems and intelligent and connected medical devices. It also involves implementation of policies that encourage health, wellness and well-being for its citizens and health monitoring and diagnostics as opposed to treatment.
• Smart Infrastructure includes intelligent and automated systems that manage, communicate and integrate different types of intelligent infrastructure such as energy grids, transport network, water and waste management systems and telecommunications.
• Smart Governance includes rolling out of policies and digital services from the government that help and support adoption of green and intelligent solutions through incentives, subsidies, or other forms of promotional schemes.
• Smart Citizens possess Interest to embrace smart and green solutions in the day to day work schedule. More proactiveness of citizens in adopting smart concepts and smart products which includes making “smart” lifestyle choices
So what does this tell us about the nature of “city smartness” as it is currently being defined:
• It is centralized and top down–the folks implementing smart cities seem to think they know best what cities need and what citizens want and they are prepared to make sure that big bucks are spent in achieving these
• They require a very sophisticated and developed urban infrastructure–one that will be expensive to implement (lots of money for consultants and suppliers) and don’t seem to offer a lot of opportunity for citizens to be engaged in the planning or design
• It means that all those who want to take advantage of the smartness of the city need themselves to be “smart” i.e. plugged in, with high end sensing devices and smart phones and (expensive) broadband connections
• Lots of activity to enable individuals to do things for their energy management and transportation but not much (basically no) attention to the way in which many (perhaps most) people actually live in urban environments (and particularly low income people and slum dwellers in Less Developed Countries) i.e. communally–with shared access to scarce resources, very limited if any individual connectivity beyond basic communications, little access to individualized health care, environmental management, security and so on.
• It is also a city where there would appear to be no “public” services, presumably because all of these are provided by private contractors–garbage service, security/police service, and so on
• And finally it is a city without politics where “policies and digital services from the government” are rolled out apparently without consultation and input from citizens let alone any form of democratic input or decision making
Hmmm….
So “Smart Cities” particularly in Less Developed Countries are ways of turning urban environments into gold mines for consultants, hardware and software companies and redoing the city in the image and for the benefit of its most prosperous and well-serviced inhabitants and in the meantime transferring additional resources and benefits from the poor to the rich.
But another type of “Smart” program is possible–one that is focused on social inclusion, enabling citizens, supporting communities–a community informatics model. This would be a smart program where the emphasis is on “Smart Communities” rather than “Smart Cities” and enabling and empowering citizens and supporting their individual and communal quests for well-being rather than turning cities into a series of cascading neo-liberalized markets–for services, for infrastructure, for shelter. Thus the basic model of the “Smartness” could be one that included:
• Smart Community Planning–supporting citizen involvement in the delivery of “Smart Services” — thus for example citizens in urban slums in Less Developed Countries helping with the collective mapping of existing public toilets and then working with planners to identify the most appropriate locations for additional or alternative public toilets (or public water supplies)
• Smart Community Governance— providing a means for public scrutiny of municipal budgets including providing the funding for the training and support required for those with little education to review budgets and ensure that they are being spent appropriately and equitably among citizens
• Smart Community Health–supporting decentralized health support workers and facilities including public health facilities in low income areas–including information and training, a tiered system of diagnostics to ensure and efficient use of scarce public health resources
• Smart Community Citizenship–ensuring support ro location based electronic interaction among citizens around issues of local interest with information (government data) being structured (geo-tagged) in such a way that the information could be directly accessed and locally aggregated to support participation/intervention in municipal planning and programme design processes
• Smart Community Infrastructure–incident reporting facilities structured so that citizens can report on issues concerning public infrastructure in an aggregated way based on location and where these electronic facilities are transparent to the user allowing for inter-individual and collective collaboration as required to ensure an active response
• Smart Community Resources–digital support for administrative decentralization so that administration is structured in such a way as to be responsive to local circumstances and requirements and including structured processes for citizen participation in localized decision making including resource prioritization and allocation. A “smart” electrical grid for example should be able to ensure that some degree of control over how scarce electricity or water might be allocated in a municipal region–giving priority to hospitals and schools and less priority to individual users particularly high volume individual users
• Smart Community Dwellings–digitally enabling public land use and dwelling records including rentals, renter complaints, work orders, etc. made accessible (and usable) in local communities including through providing training and support in how to use these to protect individual and communal land rights and to use compiled information to support the rights of renters and those with informal dwellings
There are tremendous opportunities for politicians and government officials who can see past the buzz and the hype of “Smart Cities” to apply ICTs to support citizens as they use this technology to enable themselves and their communities and in this transform their cities from the bottom up.
Gurstein's Community Informatics 
billpks
November 7, 2014
Great overview Michael, and right on with the notice that yet another perfectly useful term (i.e. smart) has been objectified in the name of Commerce as the summa of human existence.
Whereas before “smart” was a adjective suggesting thoughtfulness of approach, now it is become “Smart” a meme in service of commodification and Branding in pursuit of the ultimate good – Higher Return on Investment.
Once there was Brand, another useful descriptor – indicating earned trust in one’s reliability as a purveyor of goods and services. Notwithstanding the health benefits of Coke, there is no arguing that the firm enjoys credibility with its customers. And that credibility was hard earned over many years of “sticking to its knitting.”
That and the Coke institution showed the resilience to recover sensibly when taking a flier on a new product that quickly earned a thumbs down from its brand loyalists. Even established brands will need to learn from experience from time to time.
Today we have Branding, a new meme intended to suggest that one can build, on vaporware, a reputation for loyalty a new fashioned way – with glitzy marketing and Search Optimization – thus Branding is become a commodity to be marketed just like Smart. The myth is that clicks equal trust. (And don’t get me going on Hack!).
Acknowledging this latest distortion of a completely useful adjective, the only comment I would offer to your excellent slate of alternative choices regarding Urban Digital Immersion is that you consider using the term Mindful in place of Smart (i.e. synonymous with “cleverly marketed and sold).
INPUT to [CITIES] = RETURN
Return on Investment is a part
Return on Objective – e.g. as in equality of education opportunity – resists commodification
Return on Engagement – e.g. as in mentally healthy neighborhoods in the urban core – places relationship at the foundation of human existing, not sales!
It takes Mindfulness to find the Sustainable balance of these three types of Return – trusting those obsessed with RoI to take our Common interests to heart is clearly a non-starter.
Michael Gurstein
November 7, 2014
Thanks Bill. I very much like your idea of replacing “smart” with “mindful”. Maybe in a subsequent post 🙂
transitionyarra
November 7, 2014
Reblogged this on transitionyarra.
Nidhi Tandon
November 7, 2014
And what about smart food systems?
Michael Gurstein
November 7, 2014
Hi Nidhi, Could you be more specific?
Tony Roberts
November 9, 2014
Hi Mike. Thought provoking post as always. To me it seems that the useful distinction that you make between ‘smart cities’ and ‘smart communities’ turns on two factors. The first is collective community processes that empower citizens’ organisation (rather than privatised interventions than enrich individuals). The second is the critical intent to produce a more egalitarian social distribution of benefits (rather than leave the market to decide/divide)? Your alternative means and alternative ends combine in empowering citizens rather than market economics.
Michael Gurstein
November 9, 2014
Excellent and very perceptive points as always Tony. Thanks.
rbonazzo
November 10, 2014
Reblogged this on rbonazzo.
Klaus
November 10, 2014
Is there not a danger of replacing the panacea of ‘smart city’ with the next buzz word of ‘community’? While I agree with your points, are they not just different possible approaches to ‘smartening’ the city?
Your ‘community’ points start with verbs, yet don’t indicate the actor (I assume they are to be done by either the public authority or private sector?). Secondly, ‘city’ to me signals better the inclusive agora and public engagement than ‘smart communities’, which can too easily be disbanded into middle class gated communities & corresponding closed networks (ie ‘splintering urbanism’). Thirdly, I think it is important to remember that while the ‘smart’ infrastructure may come top-down, the inferences made can be data (and thus citizen) driven. Example: http://www.urbanlaunchpad.org/ and their mapping of Dhaka’s bus system
Michael Gurstein
November 10, 2014
Hi Klaus, Thanks for your comments. My intention with the blogpost was to point out as you say that a different–bottom up, citizen centred, community enabling model of `smartness` is possible. The actor in this instance has to be a combination of public authorities — elected and appointed officials responsible for the operation of the city — and citizens themselves using the technologies to undertake and co-manage the activities/services. Following the approach of the original Forbes article I focused on the authorities but could and should also have given additional emphasis to citizens collaboratively (as communities) using digital supports to achieve self-empowerment.
Your point about `splintering communities` is an interesting one. My approach is one where I believe that engagement and empowerment comes from inter-individual interaction, norm setting, development of common goals and so on (Community Informatics). Yes, this may imply some splintering and even `gated communities` but in large urban agglomeration there is also a strong drive towards involvement in multiple and cross-cutting communities which when affiliated and aggregated can become the basis of both integration and large scale bottom-up empowerment.
The example that you point to from Dhaka seems to me (potentially) useful but at least on the face of it not particularly enabling. A complex city like Dhaka consists I believe, of a huge agglomeration of multiple and very diverse local neighbourhoods/communities. Enabling some of those, particularly those with the least income with the means for having some measure of influence on the opportunities for local bus travel would I think be highly useful. Unfortunately in the app that you are pointing to I only see the provision of one way information and even that largely for the better off with access to the Internet, literacy skills, and the skills and resources to access, read and make use of what appears to be a highly complex output/map.
I`m sure the map will be very useful (I would love one the next time I`m in Dhaka) but the point of my piece was to show that these kinds of initiatives are highly selective in those who are benefited. I discussed this issue in an earlier blogpost https://gurstein.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/immiserating-the-poor-we-have-an-app-for-that-social-media-vs-the-iphone-in-egypt-and-a-kenyan-slum/
Katharine
November 11, 2014
For those interested in this more reflective and citizen-centred approach to the ‘smart city’ agenda, please see furthr information about the Mediacity 5 conference to be held in Plymouth , May 2015. With reference to Michael’s blogpost and discussion around the topic of Smart Cities vs. Smart Communities, please find below a Call for Papers for a conference in May 2015, Plymouth, UK. The topic of the conference is ‘reflecting on social smart cities’, and focuses on discussing more bottom-up and citizen/community- centred understanding of ‘smart’ urban projects and development and how these can address societal challenges at an urban scale.
“The conference addresses the approaches and the corresponding design responses that meet the challenges of social, citizen-centred, smart cities and communities. It will offer reflective, high quality theoretical and design-based responses to the question of how media and ICTs can create alternative responses to current societal challenges.
Topics
The conference papers will address urbanity and digital media and ideas of place and space and reflect on new models, landscapes and frameworks in the social smart city. We explore how ‘the city’ as a site of participation is enabled through media and technology and modes of citizen participation and agency as well as how temporal installations and urban prototyping enable us to imagine other possible futures. We will also look to the Internet of Things to explore the way in which objects increasingly become sentient actors in urban life. Through this we will address broader issues of resilience and sustainability and how these intertwine with media and technological frameworks. ”
More information at : http://www.mediacity.i-dat.org
Abstract submission deadline is 4th January 2015 11:59pm GMT
Any queries please email: mediacity@plymouth.ac.uk
Adrian McDonald
December 16, 2014
Great commentary Mr Gurstein and completely agree with your observations.
I think we have a big problem!
As we all know vested interests in cities will feel that power or opportunity will be removed and as a result will try to ensure that the democratic deficit is maintained by limiting the smart citizen.
The challenge for entrepreneurs and the movement is how to work with power and at the same time work around their objections.
Solutions that give the power structures validity in their actions whilst empowering communities is the holy grail.
Tom Lowenhaupt
March 5, 2015
At the Freedom 2 Connect conference earlier this week, Cory Doctorow talked about control of the data generated by smart devices. He used the printer/ink precedent and stated that IoT device sellers are basing their business model on selling the users device and continuing to extract rents from users for updates and the like. People don’t own the devices but licensee, a tenant, controlled by some distant force that can add or remove features from devices. For example, the utility might work with Nest to turn down your heat if you’re late with your bill payment.
See the full video at http://new.livestream.com/internetsociety/F2C2015
Tom Lowenhaupt
Michael Gurstein
March 5, 2015
Thanks Tom, very interesting and strongly supportive of my overall argument!
Jose Carlos
June 23, 2015
I think we have a big problem!
Pallavi Jha
August 28, 2015
Nice article. very true picture shown of smart city initiatives. I would love to learn more about community driven approaches. How community networks can be utilized in initiatives for smart solutions for our cities and rural communities. Note: i wanted to like this article but i do not have wordpress account.
Michael Gurstein
September 27, 2015
Thanks Pallavi. Unfortunately, information on community driven approaches to Smart Cities seems to be quite scattered but one place to start would be to do a key word search at the Journal of Community Informatics http://ci-journal.net. There have been several special issues and a number of articles overall that address this issue.
jmichka
April 2, 2016
one soul already got to the concept of objectification of the word “smart” but then wonder what constitutes a “Stupid city.” We seem to have a whole lot of those around. A good example IMO is Kansas CITY, Mo. One huge area is served by one grocery store on the edge of it and several small mini marts and a dollar store as the outlets for groceries for 15,00-20,000 ppl. Their downtown is almost shut down to build a light rail line that goes in a circle And any moment now, according to city boosters, “hi-tech” industries will descend on the city, covering it in high paying jobs, etc. based on what evidence? and for what reason? There are even few restaurant survivors in the core downtown, or much to support “high tech” businesses save Google’s presence on the broadband side of life. But they want and insist on being a “smart city?” huh? sounds like a transplant of little grey cells is in order. My opinion, anyway. Good article, Mike.