Introduction to the special section: Smart citizens creating smart cities: Locating citizen participation in the smart city

摘要

City governments around the world are investing in the development of “smart cities,” where technology is used to achieve improvements in efficiency, sustainability, and to better connect government with citizens. Arising in the global north, smart city ideology aims to create an improved relationship between the city and its inhabitants based on three key pillars: environmental sustainability, economic development, and social equity. Active citizen participation is considered critical in achieving these goals. Typical smart city projects include real-time resource management using distributed sensors, gathering mass amounts of urban data using locationtracking technologies, synchronized traffic systems using real-time video feeds, and the opening of direct, technology-mediated communication channels between citizen and government. While many definitions exist, early examples, such as Dirks and Keeling (2009) and Kanter and Litow (2009), defined a “smart city” as a linked and networked system that combines digital telecommunication networks, sensors, and software to create an intelligent city. Recent studies set in the global south (Brooker 2012; Mukherjee and Ghose 2013; Datta 2015; Hoelscher 2016; Mukherjee 2018) show smart cities as primarily state-led initiatives, with public-private partnerships. For example, in Rwanda, Nigeria, Ghana, and Ethiopia smart city initiatives emphasize the role of the private sector, especially western-based technology companies. A common emphasis in these projects is on being globally connected with world-class infrastructure; they are also characterized by a top-down bureaucratic control, and a complete exclusion of the complex social and human realities of a city (Watson 2014). Similar state-led smart city projects in India have emerged as “new urban utopias” that heighten social inequalities (Datta 2015). Malaysia has also undertaken a similar trajectory (Brooker 2012; Soederstroem et al. 2014) through the intelligent/smart cities of Cyberjaya and Putrajaya-urban development projects facilitated by keen political interest in economic development and urban regeneration. Here too, international companies like Mitsubishi Corporation, Cisco, and IBM play key roles in smart city projects, and as Soederstroem et al. (2014) note, reflect a top-down approach and deepen social and digital inequalities.