MS1 Smart City Vision and Strategy - Report

8/6/2019 MS1 Smart City Vision and Strategy - Report

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SMART Innovation & People CIP Project

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SMART Innovation & People – SMARTiP PROJECT

Contract No.

Milestone M1 – Smart Citizens Vision and Strategy

Version no. Prepared/ Updated By Date1.0 Dave Carter 11.4.11




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CONTENTS

Smart Citizens in Smart Cities: Vision and Strategy

1. Smart Citizens in Smart Cities: Vision and Strategy Overview ........................................................... 3

2. Co-production in the context of developing Future Internet-enabled services ................................. 4

3. Smart cities: Future Internet enabled urban development ............................................................... 6

4. Smart citizens in smart cities: elaborating the concept ..................................................................... 8

5. Conclusions: implementing the vision .............................................................................................. 10




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1. Smart Citizens in Smart Cities: Vision and Strategy Overview

The SMARTiP project starts from the premise that the development of Future Internet enabled services in ‘smart

cities’ should be driven by conscious efforts to ensure that digital technologies are used to improve living and

working conditions and the overall quality of life, so that, in doing so, a more inclusive and sustainable urban

environment can be developed. One of the main objectives of this approach is to develop user-driven open

innovation in ways which maximise the active engagement of users and citizens thus enabling the co-creation and

co-production of new services.

The SMARTiP project is working to take the experience developed by a wide range of existing user-driven open

innovation initiatives in Europe, particularly those developed through Living Labs, and to apply this experience to

the challenge of transforming public services by empowering ‘smart citizens’ to be able to co-create and co-

produce innovative Internet-enabled services within emerging ‘smart cities’.

The project will be creating a series of ‘test-beds’ and demonstrators in five cities, Bologna, Cologne, Gent,

Manchester and Oulu, which will support the co-production of citizen-centric Internet-enabled services. The

objective is to develop co-production in innovation and dynamic ways which result in more inclusive, higher quality

and more efficient public services which can then be made replicable and scalable for cross-border deployment on

a larger scale. In working in this way the aim is to enhance the ability of cities to grow and sustain a ‘smart city’

ecosystem which engages citizens together with city leaderships, business and the research and innovation

communities.

The project is starting with a series of pilot projects covering three thematic areas:• Smart engagement;

• Smart environments;

• Smart mobility.

The pilots aim to provide a catalyst to stimulate citizen engagement in becoming active generators of content and

applications development, working both with the cities (with leaderships and staff) and with innovators,

entrepreneurs and developers, and using the experience gained to become more informed and involved users of

the developing Internet-enabled services in ‘smart cities’.

The central vision of the project is that ‘smart cities’ require ‘smart citizens’ if they are to be truly inclusive,

innovative and sustainable. The promise of the information society, to create new ways of empowering people to

play a fuller and more equal role in emerging governance systems through their access to dynamic Internet-enabled services, is also proving to be its biggest challenge, as not everyone is getting equal access to the skills and

opportunities that are supposed to be there. Many previous initiatives, particularly those focusing on e-

government and e-inclusion, have tackled the ‘digital divide’ only to find that the persistent inequalities blighting

many urban neighbourhoods mitigate against citizen empowerment and participation within the information

society.

The project aims to demonstrate new approaches in which the focus is first and foremost on citizen empowerment

as an essential catalyst in creating a new paradigm to transform the dynamics of data flows, management and




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service development. The potential of new bottom up approaches based on user-generated content, social mediaand Web 2.0 applications opens up possibilities for a new interpretation and understanding of spatial inequalities

and neighbourhood effects, seen through the experiences of the citizens themselves, leading to new forms of

empowerment for those citizens. This needs to enable citizens to build the social capital and capacity required to

become co-creators and co-producers of new and innovative services with the means to ensure that they are

delivered in more effective and inclusive ways, taking full advantage of new Internet-based technologies and

applications. The project will then facilitate collaborative networking between each local ‘smart citizens’ pilot and

the local developer communities, including SMEs and other entrepreneurs and innovators. The aim is to ensure

that pilot applications and services can be validated in ‘real world’ environments in order to minimize any limits on

their availability and to maximize their accessibility and subsequent deployment.

The project intends to “support the facilitation of emerging markets for innovation” (as outlined in the recent DG

INFSO Communication “A Strategy for ICT R&D and Innovation in Europe: Raising the Game”) by creating

opportunities to trial and deploy co-production of public services using Internet-enabled technologies and

applications in the five contrasting socio-economic urban environments in partner cities in the UK, Belgium,

Germany, Italy and Finland. The new and, as yet, unexploited aspect of this approach is that of promoting and

stimulating ‘co-production’ as an essential element of the process of transforming public service delivery through

Future Internet-enabled services.

2. Co-production in the context of developing Future Internet-enabled services

‘Co-production’ as a concept emerged some four decades ago but it is now developing into a practical agenda for

system change which can be seen to be closely allied with the concept of ‘co-creation’ in the methodology of open

innovation. ‘Co-production’ has emerged both as a “critique of the way that professionals and users have beenartificially divided” and as a new way for citizens “to share in the design and delivery of services, and contribute

their own wisdom and experience, in ways that can broaden and strengthen services and make them more

effective”.1 It is based on four key principles:

• Recognizing people as assets;

• Valuing work differently;

• Promoting reciprocity;

• Building social networks.2

Internet-based technologies and services provide new opportunities for stimulating co-production while, at the

same time, co-production provides new opportunities for securing citizens’ engagement and active involvement in

the process of developing ‘smart services’ which, in turn, can help to accelerate the uptake of these technologiesand services. This ‘virtuous circle’ is then capable of enhancing cities’ ability to grow and sustain ‘innovation

1 Boyle, D. & Harris, M. (2009) “The Challenge of Co-production: how equal partnerships between professionals and the publicare crucial to improving public services”. New Economic Foundation (NEF), The Lab, NESTA. London.

2 Cahn, E. (2001) “No More Throwaway People: The Co-production Imperative”. Washington DC. Essential Books.




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Co-productionacross themes Smart engagement Smartenvironments Smart mobility

Recognizing

people as assets

Consumers of data & apps to

producers of data & apps, e.g.

participatory budgeting with citizens

moving from personal budgeting to

public/civic budgeting

Citizens as sensors

and sensing

networks

People mapping

themselves ‘on the

move’

Valuing work

differently

Citizens as active co-creators in

analysing the needs of local

communities

People engaged in

environmental

improvements on a

equal basis with

professionals

People maps as a

tool in improving

mobility planning

and delivery

Promoting

reciprocity

Service efficiencies creating new

community investment funds

Citizens being

resourced to

improved the

quality of life

Incentivising greener

and more effective

ways of improving

mobility

Building social

networks

Developing new social capital

New collaborative approaches to

holistic planning including a citizens

data aggregator resource

management

Identifying and

activating citizens’

capacity

Creating innovative

new mobility

possibilities

Each pilot project will focus on combining existing prototypes, using available Internet-based technologies, e.g.

mobile and location based services, next generation access (NGA) service networks and applications based on theemerging ‘Internet of Things’, including RFID, sensors and networks, and describing the adaptation work required

to develop these into the four targeted service areas outlined above. This will include the development of business

plans not only for the proposed thematic services specifically but also more generally for the new business models

which will be proposed to take forward all such services as the basis of replicating, scaling up and sustaining their

development on a more holistic basis.

3. Smart cities: Future Internet enabled urban development

There is a dynamic discourse emerging around the concept of ‘smart cities’ with a very wide range of actors

generating ideas about the concept, what it could and should mean, how it can best be achieved and what are

likely to be the opportunities and challenges encountered along the way. A full range of options and possibilitiesare being discussed, ranging from the most optimistic views of how “tech-powered cities” will revolutionise the

way we live to more sceptical views which are critical of perceived dangers in “global technology companies ...

offering ‘smart city in a box’ solutions” which threaten to “hand corporations the keys to our privacy”. Parts of this

debate have been characterised as a “battle for the soul of the smart city”3, with corporations on one side and

3 “Fast Company” magazine, article by Greg Lindsay, Dec. 16

th2010: http://www.fastcompany.com/1710342/the-battle-

for-the-soul-of-the-smart-city




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“entrepreneurs, hackers and ‘citizen hacktivists’”

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on another. Consequently the ‘smart city’ concept is highlycontested but this is just as likely to stimulate greater awareness and interest in this discourse as to constrain it.

The most important thing is that projects, such as SMARTiP and the other projects with the Smart City Portfolio,

are aware of the discourse and can feedback into it a credible European perspective based on real evidence,

experience and expertise.

The concept of ‘smart cities’ is being taken up by many cities as a strategic priority which recognises the growing

importance of digital technologies in enabling the commitments of those cities to competitiveness and

sustainability. At the same time the term is being used as a marketing concept by both cities and businesses to

provide an image for what they believe a future city should be like. The main focus is on cities being ‘greener’, with

smart energy, smart environments and smart mobility, and more liveable, with smart health, smart education and

smart living/working. This focus on sustainability and quality of life has also stimulated concern that not enough

attention is being paid to the question of inclusiveness and this is now emerging as an important cross-cutting

theme, especially within the Digital Agenda for Europe. The issue of inclusiveness, or ‘e-inclusion’, is also closely

related to concerns about citizens’ acceptance of internet-enabled services, within the wider context of issues

relating to trust, security and privacy.

All of the participating cities in the SMARTiP project are members of the Eurocities network5 and, in order to

generate a wider discussion with other cities, the project co-ordinator, the City of Manchester, is working together

with the City of Barcelona (involved in the coordination of one of the other Smart Cities Portfolio projects, “Open

Cities”6) in developing a Smart Cities Working Group within the Eurocities Knowledge Society Forum (KSF). The

Working Group met for the first time at the KSF meeting in Ghent on April 8 th 2011 and will work in partnership

with the Smart Cities Portfolio Working Group (of seven CIP 2010 ICT-PSP projects and the APOLLON CIP 2009

project), the FIREBALL FP7 Coordination Action and the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) to ensureknowledge sharing, joint planning of events and joint dissemination activities. The main aim of this collaboration is

to generate a dynamic dialogue around the conceptualisation and strategic definition of the ‘smart city’, including

working to understand and exchange ideas about the diversity of ‘smart city’ strategies and policies in Europe and

globally.

4 Institute for the Future report: “A planet of civic laboratories: the future of cities, information and inclusion”:

http://www.iftf.org/inclusion

5 www.eurocities.eu

6 www.opencities.net




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Momentum established which can support the creation of a ‘critical mass’ of citizen, user and developerengagement;

• Buy-in from key stakeholders from within the user communities and citizen networks;

• Accessible applications and user groups which are seen as attractive and “fun” by users;

• Future Internet technologies are available and accessible, e.g. locative technologies, wearables,

‘networked objects meet web-centric systems’;

• Identifiable progress towards co-production which results in service transformation.

These will be used to evaluate project progress and to feedback into future iterations of the Smart City Vision, not

only for the project but also for the wider collaborative networks being developed through the Smart Cities

Portfolio Working Group, Eurocities and ENoLL and the ‘Future Internet for Smart Cities Roadmap’ being developed

through the FIREBALL Coordination Action.

In conclusion, therefore, the SMARTiP project offers the following vision as the starting point for “Smart Citizens in

Smart Cities”:

Smart Cities will have smart citizens at their heart, enabling them to have the capacity and confidence to use

state-of-the-art future internet technologies to transform the way they live and work and their quality of life.

Future internet-enabled smart citizens will collaborate in new and dynamic ways, co-owning new ways of

planning and delivering services and co-producing services both for themselves and for those that they live with,

care for and work with. Smart citizens in smart cities will be part of new cross-border collaborations across

Europe and globally, using future-internet technologies to create new economic and social opportunities for

working and for living. Smart cities will enable smart citizens to make their environments greener, cleaner and

healthier as well as more open and inclusive. Smart citizens in smart cities will ensure that smart cities are moredemocratic, resilient and attractive, using future internet-enabled services to generate and celebrate creativity,

innovation and diversity.

MS1 Smart City Vision and Strategy - Report

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