Disconnected in a connected city

Trying to become a smart city is just one of the many trends we see nowadays. In this blog I like to define a smart city as the following: a city that uses modern technologies and large sets of data to monitor, control and improve the city’s infrastructure and services. Newly build cities, especially in Asia, are already build in line with this philosophy. Similar to almost every technological development, both the positive and negative side are thoroughly discussed. For example, China’s initiative to implement a social scoring system is partly made possible by features of a smart city. Millions of cameras make it possible that i can be detected whether a particular resident is ignoring the red light, which will have an impact on your social score. If you do this five times you will be black listed, and you are practically done in the city: no job, no mortgage, no use of public transport etc. Of course, smart cities have many upsides as well. Most of its initiatives are aimed to making it more comfortable for the residents. Rotterdam municipality, for instance, has many of its traffic lights equipped with thermal and/or rain sensors showing cyclists the green light more often during rainfall or cold days. I would like to use Rotterdam as a showcase for the problem I want to address.

According to the Financial Times, Rotterdam is the one of the most connected cities of Europe. With its harbor, airport and great infrastructure it is heavily connected to the rest of the world, making it automatically an interesting place for smart city initiatives. Many software- and product developers look for new ways to make the city smarter. Without going in to much detail about these innovative ideas, I want to address the problem of ignorant citizens. As with many technological developments, citizens do not complain until it breaches their privacy. This often happen in later stages of projects, and sometimes even hard to reverse when political decisions are involved. It is not necessary the result of citizens being excluded from decision making processes, it is rather about citizens lacking the knowledge to be able to participate in certain discussions. Hence, my question is: should the municipality and companies responsible for smart city projects invest in educating the citizens about certain developments? In my opinion, it is beneficial for both residents and project operators when there is more understanding about the underlying principles and technologies on smart city initiatives. One could state that the theory of networking effects do apply in this case. When more citizens make use of, or are aware of the projects, the (data) value increases for the municipality and the companies behind the initiatives. Moreover, I feel like that wherever citizens are involved, voluntary or not, the project operators are to a large extent responsible to make sure that important stakeholders (i.e. citizens) are extensively involved in the project process.

In conclusion, during the rise of smart cities citizens should be involved in early stages of projects in order to prevent citizens’ resistance and lack of knowledge. New smart city projects will inevitably be introduced the coming decades, and citizens will be involved no matter what. Municipalities and companies should be held responsible for making sure that residents wont be disconnected in a connected city.