Changing the Rules of Play in Long Beach, California: Smart Cities, Infrastructure, and the Well-Played Game

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing on insights from focus group interviews (n = 82) conducted during the development of Long Beach, California’s Smart City Strategic Initiative (SCSI), we examine the extent to which the four guiding principles of the SCSI correspond to Long Beach residents’ perceptions and concerns about the smart city: design for equity; earn public interest; cultivate local expertise; build civic resilience. Participants expressed widespread wariness of the fairness of smart city technologies. We find that Bernard De Koven’s theory of the well-played game constitutes a promising framework for the fair deployment and maintenance of smart city technologies. Based on De Koven’s work and participant insights, we provide a series of empirically-grounded and theoretically informed implications for design intended to leverage the collaborative spirit of play communities in the design of smart cities.