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Helping everyone to participate

This growth in citizen participation is forcing governments to address issues of technological inequality and accessibility. For example, in Israel, the Negev hub for innovation will help to connect disparate Jewish and Arab communities located in this desert region. The hub will provide them with the technology needed for improved access to government services and programmes and enhance residents’ quality of life. In addition, an increase in on and offline collaborative methods such as Decidim, Barcelona’s new voting system and Stockholm’s Open Lab will give people from all backgrounds a greater opportunity to shape city policy and programmes, as well as identifying better and innovative ways of doing things.

“It takes a village” – but when it comes to building smart cities, it takes far more than that. Developing smart cities requires strategic partnerships, creative business models, change management – and according to my latest report, co-authored with my colleague Jennifer Belissent – citizen buy-in. In order for smart city technology to take hold, governments must incorporate citizens’ perspectives into their strategy long before giving their plans the green light.

Gathering citizen perspectives on so nascent a concept is a classic challenge; however, current attitudes and behaviors signal citizen readiness for smart cities. For instance, as US and UK online adults become aware of smart city solutions, they grow deeply intrigued. And, according to Forrester’s Consumer Technographics® survey and behavioral tracking data, online adults’ current device activities lend themselves to participating as engaged digital citizens:

Last year we have done some research with the consultants Frost and Sullivan on Smart Cities and Citizen Engagement. As part of this project, many municipal decision-makers in Europe were interviewed about which services were the focus of their data-centric projects.

We found that the top four services (with over 75% of respondents mentioning them) were: Traffic management and Parking; Energy efficiency; Access to public data; and Citizen engagement. So two of the goals here are about decentralizing, crowdsourcing and prioritizing the relationship and the participation of citizens. This “engagement dimension”, we believe, is the necessary foundation for attaining major gains in managing traffic, energy, waste, etc.

The same research showed decision-makers in European cities are now understanding the power of collaboration, engagement with citizens. They mention – at the top –  employing tactics such as “open innovation” (hackathons, etc); Citizen reporting and uploads; Open source software; Public analytics dashboards, etc

Breadcrumb NavXT 5.7.   Most of us will have heard something about ‘smart’ cities, but perhaps are unsure what the term really means? Using examples from ‘cutting edge’ research which we are conducting here at the University of Stirling, where we are uniquely looking at smart cities from the ‘lens’ of the citizen, we will try to help to fill…