In The Making of Smarter City
The Future of City depends on The Hand of their citizen, not technology.
Let me begin by citing one of my favorite quotes from Jane Jacob — The Death and Life of Great American Cities —
“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”
To create a good and sustainable city is not easy. It takes a lot of learning process. Cities such as Jakarta, Bangkok, even Singapore had to face various urban challenges before becoming what they are now — A center of activity for the surrounding area and attracting people to come. It boosts the economic value of the city but on the other hand, draw more challenges. Urban Challenges are like a slime — adaptive and hard to deal with. It requires government or civic leaders to mirroring the nature of urban challenges and use it as tools for policy planning.
The question is: do we know how to mirroring its nature and characteristics? In order to understand it, civic leader/government need to open themselves and gather as much as information. Openness and willingness to collaborate with the city’s stakeholder, especially from the people and communities. People or communities turn to be a powerful sensor for a civic leader since they experience — face to face — the urban challenges directly on a daily basis.
As the world is facing a greater threat which derives from the growth of urbanization (where 55% of world population lives in the urban area), the inability to engage the people as part of co-partner/contributor may cause a civic leader to produce an ineffective solution. We can only tackle the tip of the iceberg without reaching its root. This lead to a vicious cycle process. The city will face the same problem of vandalism, traffic, sanitation, slums, and even safety all over again every time. Either now or never, civic leaders must and should act smarter to generate bottom-up & effective solutions
Citizen Participation is Key To Make Smarter City
Citizen is the catalyst for the urban development process. We have special insight and experience about our neighborhood which separates us with the other stakeholders. Whatever happens at our neighborhood will also affect us either directly or indirectly. Hence, we possess the (super)ability to improve their neighborhood through actively participate in the process of urban planning.
But, do we aware of this responsibility or ability? Responsibility is what makes us become a pivotal aspect of the city. It can determine the city regulators to produce more “people-centric” regulations. To provide simple yet effective solutions based on public perspectives. However, people hardly see it as an important role to takes — it might be caused by many aspects.
The city is the product of their citizen and the future rely on how the citizen can take more role in reshaping their cities.
Imagine a city which developed based on the technology, seems pretty cool right, without concerning the needs of their people. Songdo City in South Korea might be the best example of it. Being labeled as the future city or Smartest city, Songdo builds based on technological blueprint. It has most of most the advance urban tech. From the green electricity powered by household waste, green building certification, electric vehicle, and many more. This city clearly a “Tomorrow’s City” for most of the urban planner.
But the biggest problem at Songdo is the top-down approach to implement Smart City. It distanced the city with the needs of the people/citizen. As a result, Songdo has been left by most of the citizen — and become “Lonely City”.
Technology can create a city smart but not smarter to deal with urban problems and needs. Tech sold by big companies such as Cisco, IBM, etc are arguably sophisticated and “cool” for a city leader. It builds on the perspective of engineers and business. Nothing stands on “ what the people and citizen really need”.
“We need to take the wheel back from the engineers, and let people and communities decide where we should steer” — Anthony Townsend
Participation remains decisive facet in adjusting the smart city vision with the dynamics of a city. Citizen as a social creature is unique to each other either as an individual or community. As a result, the approach needs to be reversed. A city can not impose the top-down policy, which urges the citizen to live with the tech they do not need.
Otherwise, the city regulator needs to give the citizen the freedom to express their rights. The citizen must be seen as a subject, active collaborator, in the city’s development.
People/citizen is not a robot, which controlled by technology. Rather, technology needs to be created in order to help us.
It is necessary for the city regulator/decision makers to provide the tools for citizen involvement. Through the invention of information technology, the citizen has a lot of options to support their city. Simple yet effective technology is more beneficial than the sophisticated machine.
Jane Jacob and William W. Whyte formulate an idea of Placemaking. This idea focuses on people-centric cities design. The notion to include citizen in the Decision-Making Process (DMP) is crucial to establish a “sense of place”.
Here, the city regulator needs to practice the concept of collaborative process of Decision-Making. Citizen becomes the main players in policy development in addition to other stakeholders.
As a result, the city manages to give its citizen a sense of belonging. A city built by the idea and solutions of the citizen. The sense of place (which can be called “belonging”) regarded as the essential human needs to well-being and a cure against feelings of alienation and estrangement.
So, why do city need to provide the “simplest tools” for the citizen? The aim is to teach people how to utilize their responsibility and creating sense of belonging as a citizen. Without engagement from the city regulator, the citizen will not know the “super-ability” inside them to help the city better. The tools which usable and understandable can encourage the citizen to apply their “super-ability” within.
Collaboration between Jakarta Government and Qlue can be the best practice in terms of tools for Citizen’s “super-ability” utilization. Between October 2017 to October 2018, Jakarta had received more than 100,000 reports from the citizen from Qlue Apps. Qlue is a citizen’s social media which channel their neighborhood condition to the official government of Jakarta. It became a bridge between the regulator and its citizen.
Qlue is a smart city company which focus more on public participation
Qlue also played a big role in helping Jakarta to reduce their flood disaster. Within 5 years since their first launching in 2014, the intensity of flood had been reduced. Other than the flood, Qlue also helped the city of Jakarta become more liveable for its citizen. “Over the years, we have reduced the number of flood zones to 450. We have also helped reduce the number of illegal levies, damaged roads, and waste by creating a transparent ecosystem which has subsequently increased the level of trust in the city government. This year, Jakarta has remedied 87,000 issues of 112,000 complaints,” Rama Raditya (Founder and CEO, Qlue).
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” — Lao Tzu
An epilogue of Smarter City
A city is a product of its people and the process within. The importance of citizen cannot be ignored by the regulator or urban planner. In the very beginning, the smart city was established to make the city more liveable and sustainable for the people. Technology is not the only aspects of smart city. It cannot be in the front seat and drive the citizen. Yet, the tech needs to adapt with the needs of the citizen.
With the emergence of urbanization and its impacts, we need to perceive the people as the end user of smart city technology. Shifting the focus from making advance-sophisticate tech towards the utilization of people “super-ability”.
When most city decision maker, engineers, and companies dwell on technology aspects of a smart city, we as a citizen have to realize the great impacts of our ability to reshape the city we live in.
References
- Townsend, Anthony M. (2013), “Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and The Quest For A New Utopia.”
- Tomitsch, Martin. (2018), “Making Cities Smarter”
- Jacob, Jane. (1961), “ The Death and Life of Great American Cities”
- Avarot, I. (2002), ”Back to Phenomenological Placemaking”
