Demystifying the Digital Participation in the Smart City: Shifting the perspective towards residents
This research was conducted in collaboration with Marie-Luise Schlander during her internship at Sensor Lab.
As part of CLEVER°FRANKE’s smart technology initiative Sensor Lab, we have been captivated by the developing urban technologies and digital strategies that have given rise to the term Smart City. This comprehensive term is loaded with a great number of definitions, disagreements, discussions, initiatives and expectations, while the current and future inhabitants of smart cities have been left rather oblivious. In Sensor Lab, we have taken up the mission to render the Smart City more visible through our Demystifying the Smart City research program. As part of this mission, we conducted interviews and surveys to reveal what the residents of Utrecht (our base) think about the Smart City and how they want to participate in its developments. The highlights of our results pose crucial questions on how to delineate the Smart City agenda of Utrecht and provide references for other cities.
The increase in urban population all around the world has been challenging cities to tackle a multitude of issues, among them housing, environment, health, mobility and employment. The effort to find effective solutions to these problems has led many cities worldwide to one common answer: the Smart City. Although the same overarching concept has been shaping the way many cities evolve, each city has adopted a different approach towards becoming ‘smarter’.
While several cities like Amsterdam, Vienna and Budapest have been pushing their own branding strategies around the Smart City, Utrecht has interestingly remained rather quiet despite its numerous technology-driven initiatives and plans. Out of 100 residents interviewed in Utrecht, 66 have never heard the term before, whereas 24 have, and only 10 knew what Smart City is.
Delving into how the Smart City plays a role in a city like Utrecht has provided a unique view on the topic, as the Smart City Utrecht is not embellished much by marketing statements yet. This gave us the opportunity to investigate what kinds of worries and struggles a municipality could face in the process of installing smart city technologies. We took this one step further and aspired to understand the process from the perspective of the residents of Utrecht as well.
Against the backdrop of the Smart City agenda of stakeholders and the municipality, we posed two main questions that led our survey of the residents:
- “How do residents feel about the use of Smart City technologies? How would they like to be involved in their city concerning the use of Smart City technologies?”
- “How would residents like to be involved in their city? How can digital tools facilitate participation?”
Therefore, by juxtaposing the opinions of the municipality with that of citizens on the Smart City Utrecht, we revealed insights into how the future Smart City plans can be more participative and effective.
Smart City Utrecht: projects, plans, challenges
As of April 2019, there have been several Smart City pilots and projects of different sizes operated by the municipality of Utrecht, usually in collaboration with companies in the field of technology and sustainability. The problem is that these projects are not connected. According to both the economic department of the municipality of Utrecht as well as the department of participation and innovation, every department has their own projects and pilots, and they are not regrouped under an overarching Smart City strategy (Interview 5).
At the time of our research, the municipality was discussing upcoming changes to broaden the existing public participation, either by launching a central platform or initiating more independent projects (Interview 1). We were fortunate to interview them then, as we could witness contrasting opinions and their doubts. You can read below the highlights from our interviews with an employee from the Municipality of Utrecht, and the company Civity that develops digital tools for municipalities in the Netherlands.
The employee from the department of economy & IoT of the municipality told us about their plans to have a “Digital City” concept as a guideline. He reported on the municipality’s work from an economic perspective, seeing residents as “customers” who can be informed, but do not necessarily have to be updated about the urban developments and the use of smart technologies.
However, he stressed that one of the pillars of Utrecht’s Digital City concept should be ethics and that the municipality is aware that there is a fine line between nudging and controlling residents (Interview 5, 120). On the other hand, he also expressed how the municipality is sometimes worried to see how little residents seem to care about privacy issues and the use of technology (Interview 5, 50).
Afterwards, we had an interview with an employee from Civity which is a company specializing in (open) data management and tool development. They developed the “slim melden” website which is used by the municipality of Utrecht.
According to them, digital tools for participation should only be launched by the municipality if there is a need among the public. They see how these tools can motivate a more diverse crowd to participate online, but suggest that the tools are best used on a project basis. They believe that a long-term platform would cost too much energy, time and money to moderate and keep alive (Interview 4).
Where do the residents of Utrecht stand?
Following the interviews, we conducted a survey among 100 residents of Utrecht to hear their point of views on the topic of digital means of participation in Utrecht. We chose to conduct the survey over two weeks in the districts of Leidsche Rijn, Overvecht, Binnenstad and Noordoost in order to obtain a variety of voices.
Digital tools for participation/communication in the city
The survey showed that the majority of the respondents (74 of 100) contact the municipality through the website. Others may use the phone (52), email (18), or apps like Whatsapp (6) and other social media (3). When asked if they knew of or had used digital tools like Argu or OnzeWijk, few respondents answered in the affirmative.
Interest in local and digital participation
Concerning local politics, we asked the respondents about their interest in direct, digital and deliberate democracy through digital participation.
The survey showed residents’ preference to participate in easy and accessible ways like online referendum voting, while the interest for more specific topics like budgeting and policy making was lower. Nonetheless, when asked if they were interested in using a website for the above-mentioned activities, 50% of the respondents showed an interest, 23% were neutral and another 26% were not interested (1% n/a)
In total, respondents were indecisive on preferring to have a central website for their city district or the whole city: 45% said city district, 45% the whole city and another 10% did not answer. Nonetheless, those who said “district” often added “it’d be nice to have one website but have different categories for the city districts”. After all, the municipality’s idea of having one central platform could work out while having some twists.
The use of Smart City technologies
When asked about their knowledge and skills regarding digital technology, the majority (84%) stated that they can use, understand and explain most or all functions on their computers and/or smartphones. However, their knowledge of smart technologies is mainly limited to everyday life devices and technologies such as social media, smartphones, apps, websites, and computers. 62% gave an answer to what they consider to be smart technologies, but few named AI, sensors, cameras, the use of algorithms or IOT.
As stated above, the majority of respondents (66%) was not aware of the term “Smart City”; some (24%) have heard of the term before and only a few (10%) said they know what it entails.
After being given a short description of Smart Cities, though, 52% said that they would like to learn more about the role that digital technologies play in the city, whereas 21% were unsure and 27% uninterested. However, if a new camera would be installed in their street, the majority of the respondents (77%) said that they would want to be informed about this practice by the municipality. The responses were thus clearly stronger when it came to the personal involvement of residents.
Concerning data collection in the city, more than half (62%) stated their interest in having insights into the data the municipality is collecting. This answer is especially striking given that 90% of the respondents have never heard of the municipality’s Open Data Platform. Only 8% have heard of it and 2% have used it. In addition, more than half of the respondents (57%) declared that they would like to have a say in what should or should not happen with this data collected by the municipality.
Lastly, another 39% said they would like to be more involved in technological changes and innovations in the city in the future, for example through shared decision making with the municipality. However, the more hands-on topics like citizen sensing were less interesting for residents. This shows a general interest to be informed and updated about the municipality’s practices with smart technologies and proves that a part of the residents would additionally like to be involved.
The survey results revealed that even though few residents were aware of smart technologies, a majority of them would like to learn more. Therefore, more and better information about the use of smart technologies could motivate residents to participate in city developments. The respondents were especially interested in using a central participative website operated by the municipality or to vote online on suggestions by other residents. This seems more effective, especially considering that a variety of existing digital tools are not well known by residents.
While not everyone may wish to participate in the same way, there are different possible participation levels, from being merely informed to being more empowered. It would surely be a positive step if the municipality made a greater effort to promote its website, giving residents a stronger voice in a participative society.
Read more
If you want to learn more about our ‘Demystifying the Smart City’ research program, read our previous articles about the roundtable discussions, meetups, and field works that we organized as well as the Privacy Label project that was developed by CLEVER°FRANKE for SensorLab.
Contact
If you want to get more information about our full research (including the survey sample, more survey results and interviews, and discourse analysis) please contact Gert Franke: gert@cleverfranke.com
Demystifying the Smart City is a research program made possible with the support of the Creative Industry Fund NL and CLEVER°FRANKE.
