People-Centered Smart Cities: An exploratory action research on the Cities’ Coalition for Digital Rights

Igor Calzada,Marc Pérez-Batlle,Joan Batlle-Montserrat

doi:10.1080/07352166.2021.1994861

Abstract

ABSTRACT Declarations and manifestos have emerged across the world claiming to protect citizens’ digital rights. Data-driven technologies in global cities not only have yielded techno-euphoria but also have intensified techno-political concerns as reflected in UN-Habitat’s flagship program called “People-Centered Smart Cities” (PCSC) that advocates the willingness to promote inclusiveness while subverting the technocratic smart city meaning. Against this backdrop, in 2018, the city councils of Barcelona, Amsterdam, and New York formed the Cities’ Coalition for Digital Rights (CCDR), an international network of cities—currently encompassing 49 cities—to promote globally citizens’ digital rights. Inspired by Arendt’s famous quote, this article explores what “the right to have digital rights” may currently mean, drawing on a sample consisting of 13 CCDR cities. Through action research to examine six digital rights-related factors, full findings revealed not only distinct strategies—related to AI adoption—but also common policy patterns in the 13 CCDR cities.

Highlights

People-Centered Smart Cities (PCSC) and Cities’ Coalition for Digital Rights (CCDR)Technology, embodied through the so-called smart cities, has been integrated into most aspects of public and private urban life, promising opportunities to optimize key components of human settlements including mobility, energy, water, healthcare, education, housing, public services, public space, physical infrastructure, and the environment (Calzada, 2021a; Desouza et al, 2021; Hu & Zheng, 2021; Kirby, 2002; Kitchin, 2015; Komninos et al, 2021)
The datafication streams created by a new generation of smart city initiatives and technologies have spurred a global debate in cities about data governance, privacy, and surveillance, requiring local city governments to upgrade and tailor their digital infrastructure, consider urban governance in new ways, and assess their ability to secure data and guarantee digital rights for their fellow citizens (Bigo et al, 2019; Isin & Ruppert, 2015; Lupton & Michael, 2017; Sadowski, 2019; Sadowski et al, 2021)
The long-held urban affairs tradition of prophesying possible futures for urban landscapes has hegemonically taken form to build a highly techno-centric and overhyped smart city mainstream approach (Calzada & Cobo, 2015; Hollands, 2008), in which the processes for operating and main taining urban life are uncritically infused with modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) capabilities, like apps, sensors, and platforms mediated through opaque algorithms (Hand, 2020; Isin & Ruppert, 2020)

Summary

Introduction

Technology, embodied through the so-called smart cities, has been integrated into most aspects of public and private urban life, promising opportunities to optimize key components of human settlements including mobility, energy, water, healthcare, education, housing, public services, public space, physical infrastructure, and the environment (Calzada, 2021a; Desouza et al, 2021; Hu & Zheng, 2021; Kirby, 2002; Kitchin, 2015; Komninos et al, 2021). In smart cities, ICTs have been applied uncritically, with large-scale investments in ambitious digital infrastructure projects that fail to deliver the expected impacts and instead bolster concerns about the lack of transparency and privacy around the technologies that shape public services and urban life (Calzada, 2020a).

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