Move beyond the fantasy of the “smart city” and identify the real opportunities and risks inherent in digital technologies for sustainable and inclusive development of your territory.
How can we ensure that ICT development effectively contributes to greater sustainability and inclusion in cities? In which direction can local authorities direct this transition and innovation?
Identify the real opportunities and take a stance
The first step is to clarify collective expectations in terms of sustainable urban development and adopt a political project that could be based on digital tools. A clear vision of the opportunities and limits of digital technologies is necessary.
This vision will allow the local authority, as guarantor of the public interest, to structure its action and the initiatives of third parties. Digital technology should be at the service of its political project.
Four models of “smart city”
Schematically, we can sketch four models of “smart city” influenced by ICT.
Type of smart city | Algorithmic city | Uberised city | Wiki-city | Open source city |
---|---|---|---|---|
Type of city planning | Expertise planning | Post-strategic planning | Communicational planning | Participatory planning |
Dominant stakeholders | Private and/or public | Private | Citizen | Institutions and citizens |
Urban planners | Engineer | Innovator | Volunteer, civic hacker | Digital mediator |
Dominant values | Rationality | Market | Contributive democracy | Representative and participatory democracy |
Objectives | Efficiency, sustainability, control | Innovation, disruption, profits | Sociability, alternative models of government and city | Participation, new legitimacy and capacity for action |
Methods | Data mining and algorithms | Data mining and algorithms | Crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing Consists in the use of information, creativity, expertise or intelligence of a large number of people through the intermediary of a platform. From an economic approach, it may be a question of distributing a large number of tasks for the lowest cost. From a collaborative, social or altruistic approach, it is a question of making use of the specialist or volunteer networks of the general public to collect or process information. and collective deliberation | Crowdsourcing Crowdsourcing Consists in the use of information, creativity, expertise or intelligence of a large number of people through the intermediary of a platform. From an economic approach, it may be a question of distributing a large number of tasks for the lowest cost. From a collaborative, social or altruistic approach, it is a question of making use of the specialist or volunteer networks of the general public to collect or process information. , control or participation, collective deliberation |
Systems | Closed command platform | Closed “cooperative” merchant platform | Open, co-built, “cooperative”, non profit platform | Open, participatory, sometimes co-built, platform |
Rationale and vision | Confidence in the technical expertise and data as closed resources | Extension of the domain of urban capitalism via new markets for services | Civil society seeking an alternative city via the social networks and cooperative exchanges | Renewal of planning practices and institutions and initiation of dialogue among all the stakeholders |
Risks or limits | Domination and control of private stakeholders and depoliticisation of the solutions | Calls into question the legitimacy and capacity of action of the public sector | Bypasses or even calls into question the public stakeholders through the cooperative approach | Political and administrative supervision of processes; lack of representativity of participation |
Inspired by Douay, 2017
This typology is schematic. Nonetheless, it allows us to define scenarios that can be used to draw attention to the risks and limits of trends pushed to their extreme.
The “compass” of digital technology
Depending on the orientation chosen, the participation of non-institutional stakeholders and the degree of openness and access (internally or externally) to the data and digital tools will be more or less necessary. By taking position on the “compass” of digital technology, the local authority can start to identify the type of approach and the role to be adopted. Different alliances, tools, contractual arrangements will result.
The further to the left of the compass, the more the local authority should build and ensure its positioning vis-à-vis third party players. The lower the position, the more the local authority must defend its legitimacy and the accountability of the decisions in the public debate.
From promises to actual uses
The way private stakeholders, formal or informal, the population and even the local authorities make use of ICT generates unexpected effects. These initiatives are often situated where public services are weak or absent; they fill up the gaps and meet unsuspected needs. The local authorities can discover new niches for urban policies that previously were not in the scope.
Part B of the guide describes various actual and possible uses of digital technology in developing cities in four traditional urban functions, accompanied by examples: management of urban services, planning for the most vulnerable, relations between administrations and users, and local economic development.
We must therefore first of all return to basics: digital technology depends on information and communication technologies. It is not only a question of managing the city using data, but also of an ecosystem of stakeholders connected through digital devices. Of course, the effects of communication and information become intertwined: information serves as the foundation of new relations and the exchanges generate data.
The arrival of digital technology obliges local authorities to take position.
- ICT is shaking up the world of information and digital tools, opening up new opportunities for knowing, managing and anticipating the way the territory is changing in a much faster, more responsive way.
- Digital technology renders perceptible activities, urbanisation areas, categories of population, or even social movements, which previously had little visibility. This obliges the local authorities to define a position and a strategy for action.
Become aware of the risks of digital technology
The question of exclusion or the digital divide is not only a question of access to the new technologies or network coverage, but takes in more broadly the issues of pricing, social acceptability, gender, age, appropriation and literacy.
Dedicated support systems are necessary:
- to reach the most vulnerable sections of the population or the excluded of the digital,
- to design systems suited to their needs and capacities.
While introducing municipal services on digital media, it is therefore important to maintain physical services, ensure the presence of facilitators to accompany the users, and design tools and interfaces accessible to all (including the illiterate).
Setting up partnerships, planning a training budget, or making equipment available are municipal actions that can easily bring together the conditions necessary for an inclusive digital transition. The NGOs, the universities or educational institutes, the stakeholders in the social and solidarity economy (SSE
SSE
Social and solidarity economy.
) or again the third places
Third places
Correspond to social environments other than home and work. These are physical spaces where individuals can meet, come together and exchange informally in response to the needs of a community present. Third places all have their own personality, depending on their location and the community that is present there. Co working spaces are considered specific third places.
and incubators
Incubators
Support structure for business creation projects. Provide know-how, a network and logistics during the first stages of the life of the company. Incubators address companies that are very young or in the course of being incorporated.
Incubators stand out by the services they propose, whether or not they are profitable or by the type of projects they target.
Since the mid 2000s, “second generation incubators” have appeared known as accelerators, offering aid for the creation of a firm in exchange for shares in the new company.
who democratise the use of digital technology can be relays and mediators.
The local authority, for its part, can take the responsibility of identifying the target populations, and the intermediaries who can work with them.