Smart citizens for smart cities: Participating in the future

Energies, 2020

Cities constitute three quarters of global energy consumption and the built environment is responsible for significant use of final energy (62%) and greenhouse gas emissions (55%). Energy has now become a strategic issue for local authorities (LAs) and can offer savings when budget cuts have threatened the provision of core services. Progressive LAs are exploring energy savings and carbon reduction opportunities as part of the sustainable and smart city agenda. This paper explores the role of citizens in smart city development as “buildings don’t use energy: people do”. Citizens have the potential to shape transitions towards smart and sustainable futures. This paper contributes to the growing evidence base of citizen engagement in low carbon smart cities by presenting novel insights and practical lessons on how citizen engagement can help in smart city development through co-creation with a focus on energy in the built environment. A case study of Nottingham in the UK, a leading sm...

IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 2020

A significant cultural shift occurred over recent decades, with the majority of the world’s population now living in cities and contributing over two thirds of global carbon emissions. If countries around the world are to meet challenging global carbon reduction targets, then how our cities are governed and managed to maximize energy efficiency is of vital importance. Faith is increasingly being placed in what are commonly referred to as ‘smart cities.’ Smart cities seemingly offer a utopian vision of urban integration, efficiency and [subsequent] carbon reductions, yet urbanisation presents real challenges, as noted by Sustainable Development Goal 11: “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”. Cities are made up of people and increasingly both policymakers and practitioners are starting to see citizens as an essential stakeholder, even if there is a blurring over the boundaries between citizens and consumers. It is unclear what these people actu...

Sustainable Cities and Society, 2019

 Highlights the importance of citizen participation in the development of a smart sustainable city  Introduces a hierarchical model between sustainability and digital citizen participation based on exhaustive review  Emphasizes that the role of ICT in the social sustainability of smart cities is particularly salient.  Explores how digital citizen participation could advance social sustainability  Expands our understanding on how ICT can contribute to the creation of more-thanhuman smart cities

Urban Planning

The smart city epitomizes a new paradigm shift in urban planning, policy, and cities. Smart cities require and are powered by smart city principles to succeed, including smart technologies, smart infrastructure, and smart governance; however, they also need to engage closely with the citizens who are most affected by the deployment of the smart city and who also embrace the diverse perspectives, experiences, and opportunities of living in smart cities, i.e., smart engagement. What would be forms of collaborative democracy and inclusive citizen participation in smart city planning? To what extent can smart city planning respond and address inequality, justice, and social and digital division? How can we create community-based climate change planning with the smart? What would be a smart community platform that supports smart engagement, and how do cities around the world establish smart city policy and assess the impact on smart engagement? This thematic issue aims to answer these qu...

Infrastructures, 2020

Citizen participation has become an important aspect in the design of smart cities. This paper investigates the frame and modality of citizen participation in a European Horizon2020 smart city project, +CityxChange, in Trondheim. +CityxChange aims at enabling citizen participation and co-creation in the transition to a positive energy city. The question is "what are the prevailing approaches and practices in relation to citizen participation amongst the key actors involved in +CityxChange? Which structures and processes have inhibited or fostered the participation mechanisms (e.g., for, by, and of people) and practices in Trondheim?" Through participatory observations and interviews with key local actors and citizens, we found that the focus of +CityxChange on efficiency and creating innovative solutions "for" people in partnership with the private sector has disturbed the "by" and "of" people mechanisms of participation. Citizens' power and roles are not delegated to challenge or replace the project's predetermined issue or plan. The anchorage of the project outside of the formal administrative structure has caused other functional barriers that inhibit citizen participation, rather than facilitate it. This paper discusses the causal relationships between these interconnected barriers and suggests how authorities can possibly overcome them.

International Academic Conference on Places and Technologies

Environmental sustainability has become a core objective in policy fields related to the built environment, from the international to local level. The transition to a sustainable built environment depends on increasing the energy performance of buildings, but due to the maturity of the building stock in Europe affecting energy efficiency and the current incentives for investing in sustainable energy solutions, the performance of buildings cannot be improved without widespread citizen engagement. Technical solutions for upgrading smart buildings and connecting them are being developed that create new opportunities for achieving a net-zero or even positive energy balance on the neighbourhood, district and city level. Nevertheless, attention must also be paid to the social aspect using citizen engagement to ensure that such solutions are taken up and replicated. From a social perspective, new skills and values are needed amongst citizens to improve individual and collective behaviours. Co-creation is an approach for shaping the urban environment that includes a wide range of stakeholders and is believed to lead to improved outcomes, especially with regard to integrating users' needs and generating a sense of shared responsibility and ownership over the built environment. The Horizon 2020 project +CityxChange uses co-creation for the development of positive energy districts (PEDs), which have the potential to bring carbon neutral cities to reality. The paper explores several aspects of citizen engagement developed in the project: an urban innovation lab approach, a citizen participation playbook, learning framework for the next generation of smart citizens, and framework for creating positive energy champions.

IGI Global, 2021

Citizen participation and sustainability are two main concepts used in the definitions in the smart city literature. Citizen participation is often used within the context of improving good governance in smart cities. Its relationship with sustainability is seldomly discussed. This study analyses the relationship between the concepts of smart city, smart sustainable city, and citizen participation, and discusses how citizen participation is shaped in smart sustainable cities. In light of this analysis, seven types of citizen participation mechanisms are studied. The findings of the study reveal that sustainability in smart cities is only considered within the framework of environmental matters, while citizen participation is only considered as a mechanism aimed at supporting good governance. The study recommends using these participation mechanisms to highlight other aspects of sustainability such as securing comprehensive-ness, alleviating poverty, promoting gender equality and to focus on other aspects of citizen participation such as real participation and democratic effectiveness.

Review of Innovation and Competitiveness

RIC Ružica Bukša Tezzele (1), Raffaele De Amicis (2) THE ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY AND CITIZENS' INVOLVEMENT IN SMART...

IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine, 2020

Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC http://upcommons.upc.edu/e-prints Aquesta és una còpia de la versió author's final draft d'un article publicat a la revista IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine.

The technological focus of many Smart City projects relies on top-down innovations, ignoring the role that citizens can play in improving their local communities. In this paper we outline our approach to supporting citizens in playing an active role in urban innovation, from the crowdsourcing of initial ideas through to facilitating citizen involvement in the realization of community projects. This extends previous work in the field by exploring how to go beyond identifying issues and ideas to securing a commitment from citizens to assisting a project intended to address an identified issue.