INTRODUCTION

Date: 15 – 16  June, 2017

Venue: Room 256, 11/F, AC3, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Smart Cities is one of heated topics across the world. However, discussions on this initiative are more gravitated to the engineering/technology questions, whereas voices on the social and political aspects are still fragmented. This focused workshop aims to bring together scholars from different disciplinary and cases from different cities in this world of smart cities actions, so as to offer a distinctive, engaged and critical social science platform for research in this area.

Background

As part of the Urban Research Group’s evolving agenda, and its engagement with academics beyond the social sciences, it is proposed to hold an international workshop in 2017. The workshop will involve leading commentators on the challenges posed by rapid and pervasive technological change for urban life and urban governance. The active engagement of city governments around the world with these changes is reflected by the fact that by 2013 there were no less than 143 smart city projects in cities around the world.[1] It is not surprisingly, therefore, that the Smart Cities debate and research agenda is attracting increasing attention from the sciences as well. However, very much remains unclear. In an overview of the smart city literature, Albino, Berardi and Dangelico (2015) for instance argue that smart city is a ‘fuzzy concept (..) used in ways that [are] not always consistent. There is neither a single template of framing a smart city, nor a one-size-fits-all definition of it’.[2]

Albino et al. suggest that originally, in the 1990 the smart city research was shaped and driven predominantly by the engineering and technology disciplines. This budding attention went together with a renewed belief that smart governance of the ‘data-polis’[3] might translate in increased possibilities to steer urban society; a belief that had been vanishing rapidly in the preceding decades. Albino et al. continue to argue that in recent years there is an increasing interest for the smart city from the social sciences. But clearly, much remains to be done.[4] Smart cities risk excluding groups without capacities to participate in an increasingly technological world; with its focus on algorithms and calculable data, and related processes of depoliticisation, responsibilities become more opaque in the smart city; at the same time, possibilities for participatory governance evolve. While it is abundantly clear that these sort of issues will have a huge impact on urban life in decades to come, we have only started to explore these socio-political issues. On top of this, much of the commentary and analysis is rooted in US and European experiences, yet arguably the on-the-ground transformations in terms of hardware and software are most evident in the fast paced urbanization of Asia. One emerging question appears to be “are we putting the citizen and citizen participation at the centre?”

In response to these challenges, this two-day international workshop will engage critically with the smart cities agenda: in relation to the technological capabilities for more active urban citizenship and for more inclusive and responsive urban policy making. Are we allowing citizens to be participatory in the process of city design as well as smart city network? At the same time, it will explore the potential downside in relation to more centralized and less transparent decision making systems, ‘automatised’ and monetised control and distribution systems, more extensive surveillance and digital exclusion. The workshop will involve international scholars, local and regional analysts and leading big data compilers and providers (eg Experien).

[1] J.H. Lee, M.G. Hancock and M. Hu (2014) Towards an effective framework for building smart cities: Lessons from Seoul and San Fransisco, in: Technological forecasting and social change.
[2] Albino V., U. Berardi & R.M. Dangelico (2015) Smart Cities: Definitions, Dimensions, Performance and Initiatives, in: Journal of Urban Technology, Vol 22. No.1, pp, 3-21.
[3] Meijer, A. (2015) Bestuur in de Datapolis: Slimme Stad, Blije Burger? Boombestuurskunde.
[4] Sigaloff, Ch. & T. de Geus (2016) ‘De slimme stad: van en voor wie?’, in: M. Thaens, I. Gorissen & L. Wijnants (Eds.) Smart City: Een Stap op weg naar Smart Governance, PBLQ, The Netherlands.

Speakers:

Sarah Barns (Western Sydney University)

Paolo Cardullo (Maynooth University)

Valentina Carraro

Ayona Datta (King’s College London)

Adam Greenfield

Merje Kuus (University of British Columbia)

Ugo Rossi (University of Turin)

Shi Wenzhong (Poly University of Hong Kong)

Alan Smart (University of Calgary)

Su Leping (DIST Shanghai)

Daniel Sui (The Ohio State University)

Jun Wang (City University of Hong Kong)

Ling Yin (Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences)