Volume 04 (2017)

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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14235/1775

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    Build it and they will come Analysis of an Online Deliberation initiative
    (AESOP, 2017) Lusoli, Alberto; Sardo, Stefania
    Public and private investments are increasingly being directed towards the development of ICTs for the construction of more inclusive and connected communities. Labelled as Collective Awareness Platforms (CAPs) under the European Seventh Framework Program, these initiatives explore the possibility of tackling societal issues relying on digitally-mediated citizen cooperation. As their diffusion increases, it is important to critically reflect on the extent to which they can effectively trigger forms of engagement and sustainable collaboration within and through digital artefacts. Among the associated risks is the furthering of a technocratic understanding of how collaborative processes work, based on the assumption that the introduction of CAPs would be a sufficient condition for the construction of inclusive and engaged communities. In this respect, this contribution investigates a case in which a digital platform was implemented with the aim of promoting citizens’ deliberation on urban-related issues. This experiment is analyzed by 1) assessing whether the platform functioned as a deliberative space; 2) tracking the negotiation processes of the digital artefacts’ functionalities occurring among initiative’s organizers, platform developers, and participants. The goal of the paper is to understand how different understandings and unexpected usages of the digital platform affected the deliberation process and therefore the initiative’s outcomes.
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    Delving deeper Considerations on applying empirical research methods to infrastructural urban technology projects
    (AESOP, 2017) Fortin, Claude
    Urban technologies are increasingly designed to support ubiquitous computing, which now includes different forms of digitally-augmented interactions in public space. This shift is underpinned by the development and management of digital infrastructures in metropolitan cities – a paradigm often rhetorically dubbed ‘smart cities’. Because the cityscape is uneven and characterized by diversity, this reconfiguration could be seen as a welcome opportunity to renegotiate the issue of agency in relation to the new technologies embedded in the built environment. Since the Urban Screen project was launched in 2005, digital art installations commissioned for public space have offered propitious terrain for rethinking this issue. Developing appropriate research methodologies, which could better support democratic practices within the infrastructural approach to urban technology design still stands out as pressing and necessary to facilitate the engagement of all concerned. This essay argues in favour of multidimensional approaches over unidimensional ones. To ground this discussion, it first describes the results of a unidimensional study carried out in 2015 in Montréal’s Quartier des Spectacles and then highlights some of the salient differences it presents with a multi-sited field study conducted on the same site from 2012-15. It finally concludes that a multidimensional approach seems more robust.
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    Editorial Vol. 4 (2017) : Social smart cities Reflecting on the Implications of ICTs in Urban Space
    (AESOP, 2017) Melgaço, Lorena; S. Willis, Katherine
    Much of our thinking around technology and the city is based around polarising paradigms. These tend to move between two different approaches; the technocratic and the social. On one hand the smart city agenda is underpinned by a vision of data-centred optimisation of urban systems, whilst on the other hand there is a focus on open-source, citizen driven approach based around ad-hoc practices and prototyping of counter-culture scenarios. To date, the technocratic paradigm has tended to dominate smart city projects and initiatives, which are often led by ICT companies. Many smart city concepts and projects tend to prioritise data capture that leads to top-down, technocratic governance (Kitchin, 2014), and a number of existing publications in the field focus on the technical and economic dimensions of smart systems (Paskaleva, 2011). This is despite the fact that the social issues and implications have been recognised as critical within the context of urban development (Hollands, 2008; Luque-Ayala & Marvin, 2015). Kitchin (2014) describes how the term ‘smart cities’ encompasses both cities which are ‘increasingly composed of and monitored by pervasive and ubiquitous computing’ and those ‘whose economy and governance is being driven by innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship, enacted by smart people’ (p. 01). This highlights the polarising nature of smart city rhetoric; the former presents a more technocratic and neo-liberal paradigm of ICT driven urban change, whilst the latter focuses on the positive societal impacts of ICTs in urban space. Consequently, Marvin, Luque-Ayala and McFarlane (2015) highlight the need for international comparative research, bringing a ‘critical insight across disciplines and places’ (p. 03).
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    Intelligence is open Smart city versus open city
    (AESOP, 2017) Lemieszek Pinheiro, Rafael
    In this paper we explore the impacts, current and potential, that new technologies have on city planning and management, comparing the different ways in which those impacts can be harnessed for either the public good, for private profit or for a mixture of both. We argue that smart technologies do not necessarily yield a positive social product, and that the openness of information (in its different levels) plays an important part in maximizing the social product of new technologies applied to urban space. In the first part, we briefly discuss urban complexity and how technology can be used to make cities readable and actionable upon. In the second part, we analyse three technological (“smart”) initiatives related to urban planning; Waze, Uber and OpenStreetMap, analysing the different processes by which information can be turned into use-value (and from there into exchange value). In the third part, we try to understand the economic process by which information is turned into capital through its restriction. We conclude by analysing the potential conflicts between the common good and the turning of information into capital, exploring some of the ways in which open data might be important in the process of making better cities.
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    Let’s play urban planner The use of game elements in public participation platforms
    (AESOP, 2017) Thiel, Sarah-Kristin
    Through the provision of digital tools, government institutions aim to counter the growing alienation of citizens towards institutional politics and overcome traditional barriers of participation. However, as yet this approach has not shown the desired effects of increasing public participation in political decision-processes. In an attempt to encourage more citizens to make use of e-participation tools, some of these platforms hope to use the leverage and motivational effects of games by incorporating game-inspired elements. This research provides an overview of the current practice of applying gamification in public participation as well as preliminary insights into the effects of this approach. We review a selection of commercial applications as well as research projects, for which we list the included game elements and a critical discussion of the approach. Our results show that most projects focus on communicating accomplishments to users that are based on their quantity of participation. While little work has yet analyzed the concrete effects of individual game elements, up to now evaluations have mostly focused on the acceptance of specific gamified public participation platforms. The contribution of this research is twofold. Firstly, it offers relevant insights for the design of future e-participation platforms. Secondly, this work helps to establish a common terminology for game research.
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    Mechanisms of the smart city A case study of smart city Búzios, Brazil
    (AESOP, 2017) Batista, Marcela Moraes; Maynardes Dallabona Fariniuk, Tharsila
    The concept of the smart city is emerging as a topic of interest. Since the implementation of technology in urban space it is becoming the present reality in many cities globally. This study investigates how the smart city project, known as The Smart City Búzios, in Brazil affects everyday life in terms of habits in, and relationships with, urban public spaces. The Smart City Búzios project involves the implementation of a smart grid infrastructure which purports to achieve energy efficiency for the city. The study also explores the different ‘smart’mechanisms used in this city, and attempts to understand the process of implementing the Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructures. This exploration includes the identification of both the groups of actors who were involved in the project, and the societal groups who benefited from it. To do this, a case study approach has been applied to investigate how the technological platforms that are used in the Smart City Búzios project could be considered as a process of ‘smartness’, and consider if these tools have the potential to change the urban sector. The analysis searches traits of changes in the living spaces and in the lifestyles with the inception of new technologies. The focus is on the project’s results since its implementation, explaining how these results are articulated in relation to the urban image portrayed in the project’s marketing strategies, based on extracts of media news and interviews. The analyses showed that that the strategies of marketing surrounding the project played a key role in the consolidation process. This study thus holds that urban intelligence must simultaneously be a process and a purpose, and that organizations from the public, private and voluntary sectors that are directly affected by the project should be partnered with and brought into inclusive processes of dialogues.