In a smart city, digitization and data fusion are increasingly used to make city life more efficient. For example, sensors, monitors or cameras can be used to foresee where it gets too crowded. "My goal is to make it clear that urban digitization is an a-technological, rather than an a-political issue," says Jiska Engelbert, Theme Leader Smart Cities and Communities at Vital Cities and Citizens.
How do tech companies get us to think of "smart" primarily in terms of technology applications? What is a smart city anyway? "That is exactly the underlying question of my research at Erasmus Initiative Vital Cities and Citizens (VCC)," says Engelbert. "In doing so, I am not interested in the right answer, but in how certain actors, especially the technology industry, think and communicate. In my research, in which I work closely and finely with Jan Fransen, Isabel Awad and Mariana Fried, I question the obvious link between 'smartness' and the vision of the city promulgated by the tech world."
'Smart' solutions are often invisibly woven into a physical environment or object. A well-known example is the fiber optic network or the "smart lamppost. The latter not only provides light, but also has other functions such as camera surveillance, 5G, weather station, charging station or CO2 meter. "In Rotterdam Lombardijen, an experiment is underway in which the lampposts have multiple fixtures. This allows them to monitor certain sounds and movements that could be a harbinger of theft."
When municipalities talk about the "smart city," it is not so much about a coherent plan of activities, but about the sum of different projects in which a municipality is participating. These are then often projects packaged as field labs or living labs, which are part of a larger project in which a municipality collaborates with knowledge institutions and private parties. "In that project basis and lab status of many smart city applications is the devil. Because those plans don't have to be approved by the city council or discussed at the city level. Residents are promised all sorts of things in terms of participation and input, but they hardly have any room at the front to question either the deployment of technology or the use of their neighborhood as a living laboratory."
In this way, private companies do get very easy access to public space, public infrastructures and public resources, Engelbert believes. But the main point is that digitization of the city becomes a kind of technical and technocratic issue for which you have to have the right permit or the right grant from the European Union or a big company. "With that, the smart city becomes an issue that seems to have little to do with the politics of the city. We see this in the fact that city councils do not often deal with this issue, apart from occasional concerns about privacy. On the other hand, in the fact that it is not (re)recognized that digitization of the city is actually very political, because it is actually a battle of interests. It is often used to allow specific groups, such as tech companies, who have no democratic mandate and for whom profit-by-data is the only goal, to have a huge stake in the imagination of the city and its residents."
"In my column in the online journalism magazine Vers BetonOpent externally, I have sometimes used the example of the electric shared scooters in Rotterdam. In fact, you can also look at electric shared scooters as 'smart' technology, because actually it is a digital technology that produces data, a profitable product of the digital platform economy, which is seamlessly packaged in a means of transportation. They have very easily been given wide latitude with which the opportunity was missed to allow permits for these kinds of digital platform companies to go through democratic and political decision-making. That would have allowed us, residents of the city, to determine much more how these scooters should relate to public space."
At BOLD CitiesOpent externally, researchers try to make invisible technologies visible. They signal, for example, that in Dutch city councils it is mainly about privacy and the fear of big brother. Together with Liesbet van Zoonen and Miyabi Babasaki, Engelbert is researching this ahead of the 2022 municipal elections. "Privacy is of course extremely important and a very valid concern, but with it we still question too much the technology itself, rather than the world (or city) image that is realized with it. It is precisely with regard to the latter that elected representatives and citizens can claim expertise and authority," says Engelbert. One condition, however, is that citizens are aware of the technology. To create that, there are so-called "data walks. During a walk through the city, participants are invited to notice data technologies in public spaces. Think of a camera hanging somewhere, a 5G mast protruding above houses or a sensor built into a traffic light.
"My main focus now is on how 'the smart city' can become part of the everyday political imagination, among grassroots representatives and among ordinary citizens. My goal is to make it clear that urban digitization is an a-technological, rather than an a-political issue," says Engelbert. And thus an issue for which you don't have to be a technical expert to ask critical questions about it. "We see that in Rotterdam much more thought is already being given to whether and how digital technology can support the lives of all Rotterdammers. It is becoming more than a tool whose use is predetermined, and with which mainly economic goals are pursued."
After all, it can be done differently. For example, in Barcelona. "Not technology, but policy around data and technology is extremely smart there. It gives the city council and the inhabitants of the city the means, power and mandate to impose conditions on digitalization and technology companies at the front end. It is my dream to realize something similar with and for Rotterdammers from VCC."
