Abstract
This article addresses the problem of replication among smart cities in the European Commission’s Horizon 2020: Smart Cities and Communities (EC-H2020-SCC) framework programme. This article initially sets the general policy context by conducting a benchmarking about the explicit replication strategies followed by each of the 17 ongoing EC-H2020-SCC lighthouse projects. This article aims to shed light on the following research question: Why might replication not be happening among smart cities as a unidirectional, hierarchical, mechanistic, solutionist, and technocratic process? Particularly, in asking so, it focuses on the EC-H2020-SCC Replicate project by examining in depth the fieldwork action research process implemented during 2019 through a knowledge exchange webinar series with participant stakeholders from six European cities—three lighthouse cities (St. Sebastian, Florence, and Bristol) and three follower-fellow cities (Essen, Lausanne, and Nilüfer). This process resulted in a City-to-City Learning Programme that reformulated the issue of replication by experimenting an alternative and an enhanced policy approach. Thus, stemming from the evidence-based policy outcomes of the City-to-City Learning Programme, this article reveals that a replication policy approach from the social innovation lenses might be enabled as a multidirectional, radial, dynamic, iterative, and democratic learning process, overcoming the given unidirectional, hierarchical, mechanistic, solutionist, and technocratic approach.
Highlights
In recent years, the concept of smart cities has gained momentum among policymakers in Europe [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
Smart cities have certainly reached the post-General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) algorithmic era [8,9,10], where a truly smart city in Europe could be established, in which citizens can move in relative anonymity and be identified only when needed and under conditions that allow for significant control over what can be done with their own data [11,12]
This article constructively contributes to the research on replication among smart cities in the European Commission (EC)-H2020-SCC framework programme by suggesting an alternative strategy to the one implemented by the Replicate project
Summary
The concept of smart cities has gained momentum among policymakers in Europe [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Horizon 2020: Smart Cities and Communities (EC-H2020-SCC) framework programme [13,14,15,16,17,18] This group must engage in joint and continuous conversations with diverse and numerous groups of city-regional stakeholders, as well as consider a generation of smart technologies (including the increasingly autonomous machine intelligence that can gather and analyse granular and real-time “big data”) if it is to effectively tackle the most pressing economic, technologic, ethical, and social issues that face European cities [15,19,20,21]. City representatives should approach replication as a highly contextual process by which the consideration of the place, the localisation in itself, and, more importantly, the mobility of citizens seem to matter more than ever before
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