When open data and data activism meet: An analysis of civic participation in Cape Town,South Africa

Municipal open data projects are motivated by a desire to democratize data access and knowledge production, strengthen transparency, and advance cities socially and economically. However, their effects and implications are insufficiently analyzed. This paper examines civic engagement in open data in Cape Town, South Africa, the continent's first municipal-level open data initiative. Findings reveal how local civil society organizations have been driving engagement with municipal open data as part of their recent turn towards technology and data-driven forms of public engagement and activism. This analysis highlights the important role of the “smart civil society organization”—occupying a position between the smart city and smart citizen—that is developing significant capacity to produce and share data about the city's informal settlements with stakeholders in government, the private sector, and wider society. Minimal engagement with or recognition of civil society efforts illustrates the limits to the city's philosophy of data openness, which is largely restricted to releasing selected government datasets to the public. The notion of “bi-directional open data” is developed here to characterize emerging possibilities for data openness between governments and the public. This may be particularly relevant for cities like Cape Town with a highly active, capable, and data-literate civil society.     

Rethinking public participation in the smart city

In efforts to become “smart cities,” local governments are adopting various technologies that promise opportunities for increasing participation by expanding access to public comment and deliberation. Scholars and practitioners encounter the problem, however, of defining publics—demarcating who might participate through technology-enhanced public engagement. We explore two case studies in the city of Calgary that employ technologies to enhance public engagement. We analyzed the cases considering both the definition of publics and the level of citizen participation in areas of participatory budgeting and secondary suites. Our findings suggest that engaging the public is not a straightforward process, and that technology-enhanced public engagement can often reduce participation towards tokenism. City councillors and planners need to critically confront claims that smart cities necessarily enhance participation. Moving beyond tokenism requires understanding “public” as a plural category. Municipal governments should seek to proactively engage citizens and communities utilizing helpful resources including, but not limited to, digital tools and smart technologies. This would allow planners to keep a “finger on the pulse” of publics' concerns, better identifying and addressing issues of equity and social justice. It is also important to consider how marginalized publics can best be recognized in order to bring their concerns to the fore in decision-making processes.     

Canadian smart cities: Are we wiring new citizen-local government interactions?

Governments around the world are developing smart city projects, with the aim to realize diverse goals of increased efficiency, sustainability, citizen engagement, and improved delivery of services. The processes through which these projects are conceptualized vary dramatically, with potential implications for how citizens are involved or engaged. This research examines the 20 finalists in the Canadian Smart Cities Challenge, a Canadian federal government contest held from 2017 to 2019 to disburse funding in support of smart city projects. We analyzed each of the finalist proposals, coding all instances of citizen engagement used to develop the proposal. A significant majority of the proposals used traditional types of citizen engagement, notably citizen meetings, round tables, and workshops, to develop their smart city plans. We also noted the use of transactional forms of citizen engagement, such as apps, and the use of social media. Despite the general rhetoric of innovation in the development of smart cities, this research finds that citizens are most commonly engaged in traditional ways. This research provides cues for governments that are developing smart city projects, placing an emphasis on the importance of the process of smart city development, and not simply the product.     

Public engagement in smart city development: Lessons from communities in Canada's Smart City Challenge

Quality of life is often touted as the main benefit of building smart cities. This, however, raises questions about the extent to which the public is engaged as part of the “smart” development process, particularly given the significant financial investments often required to meaningfully design smart city projects. To better understand approaches to public engagement in the context of smart city development, we draw upon three selected finalists of Infrastructure Canada's Smart City Challenge, which invited municipalities, regional governments, and Indigenous communities to enter a competition where the winning proposals would be awarded federal financial grants to complete their projects. Prizes of $5 million, $10 million, and $50 million were awarded. Specifically, we compare the public engagement experiences of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne (Quebec), the City of Guelph, and the Region of Waterloo. We carried out semi-structured interviews and reviewed documents in each community to better understand how finalists in each category engaged residents in proposal development. The paper addresses how communities are approaching public engagement in smart city development and the implications of these approaches. We conclude that, despite earnest attempts to publicly engage and become citizen-centric, municipal governments continue to see civic participation as a top-down tool.     

“A World Class City of Your Own!”: Civic Governmentality in Chennai,India

Abstract: This paper utilizes a critical governmentality approach to theorize the processes through which urban elites become stakeholders in the “world‐class city”. Through a case study of public consultations for urban development plans in Chennai, India, the paper explores the technologies that produce urban actors who “participate” in urban governance. Key to these technologies is a discourse of participation that privileges and normalizes citizens as urban stakeholders. The paper contributes to current explorations into the technologies of inclusion that are central to an emerging civic governmentality in South Asia. In Chennai this civic governmentality engages various segments of civil society in processes of urban governance through the mechanism of public consultation. It is through these public consultations that elites come to exert influence over urban plans and consolidate a vision and desire for the world‐class city.     

Best practices for measuring community resources across Canada: A comparison of coding classifications

Social scientists, geographers, criminologists, and health scientists are often tasked with finding data to best capture the impact of “community context” on individual outcomes, including residential services, physical resources, and social institutions. One outlet for such data in Canada is Digital Map Technologies Inc. (DMTI) Spatial, which offers a national repository of over one million businesses and recreational points of interest. The database is generated through CanMap Streetfiles, which includes geocodes of each point's precise location. These data are available to researchers from their university data library and Esri Canada, but primarily available to private sector and government markets. That said, the goal of the current paper is to encourage researchers to access this rich yet under-utilized data source. Each service, business, or resource in the DMTI Spatial database is assigned to a respective category using Standard Industrial Classification codes and North American Industrial Classification System codes. It is not clear, however, which is the more reliable coding criteria. We provide an overview of our review of DMTI Spatial data and take-away suggestions for using this valuable resource for future research on meso-level residential markers.     

The Making(s) of an Alternative Urban Policy: What Happens When Free Fares Come to Town?

While many urban policies and practices claim to offer an “alternative” to the “mainstream” of urban entrepreneurialism, they remain under-theorised and prone to alignment with entrepreneurial agendas. In this paper I examine fare-free public transport (FFPT) as a salient example of an alternative urban policy. Looking at Aubagne (France) and Tallinn (Estonia), I explore what happens when an alternative policy “comes to town”. I detect how FFPT enters local urban regimes, and study the (non-)participation of public transport passengers and workers in the decision-making process about whether and how to abolish public transport fares. My analysis reveals that albeit alternative policies such as FFPT seem to oppose entrepreneurialism, they may hinge on urban regimes that span across institutions, leave the local configurations of power unchallenged, and strenghten local elites. The adaptability of alternatives to diverse political and intellectual positions explains their resilience. Consequently, their radical character cannot be taken for granted and remains an object of political struggle.     

Pourquoi seules les villes sont-elles qualifiées d'intelligentes? Un vocabulaire du biais urbain

Since 2010, the term “smart city” has become a buzzword, used in a vague way to denote the increasing integration of information technology into city management processes and to describe the social and community processes they enable. The adjective “smart” is, however, only applied to cities: by implication non-cities (i.e., rural and peripheral regions) are not smart. In this paper we describe how the term “smart city” is used, and show that processes similar to those that make cities smart also occur outside cities. Reserving the term “smart” for cities therefore reflects a bias, similar to the bias that associates creativity and innovation with cities. As geographers we have become aware of our colonial and sexist biases: in this paper we argue that our urban bias is alive and well, and call attention to it.     

Infrastructuring Public Sector Innovation: Challenging Municipal Work Practices in Copenhagen

Abstract

In a complex and changing field, influenced by globalization, technological development, and increased differentiation and complexity in all parts of society, urban planners are increasingly required to rethink and innovate the way they manage and develop cities. As the contemporary focus on public sector innovation and “liveability” in cities gains momentum, the pressure on planners to re-invent their practices is becoming an interesting focal point for urban studies and raises the question of how research can engage with, and participate in, the development of new urban planning practices. This article reports from the action research project “Create your City”, which intervened in the innovation strategy of the Technical and Environmental Administration of Copenhagen during the period 2011–2013. The article shows how researchers can engage with the contemporary challenges for urban planning by staging interventions that allow planners to imagine the city in new ways, and develop new planning practices in the process. By analysing the infrastructuring of “Create your City”, the article shows how the project contributed to the development of new innovative practices in the administration, and points towards new potentials for scholarly engagement in the field of urban planning.     

Designing a New Civic Economy? On the Emergence and Contradictions of Participatory Experimental Urbanism

Can we remake local economies from scratch – not through political struggle but by design – to solve wicked problems and transform urban governance? Such questions are raised by an emergent trend within urban experimentation that emphasises participation and commoning in designing peer-to-peer provisioning systems through a platform logic. This article deconstructs the discourses animating what we term “participatory experimental urbanism” and reflects on what this might mean for local state restructuring in times of neoliberal austerity. By following its policies and prototypes as they move and mutate across the London Boroughs of Lambeth and Barking & Dagenham, we examine two exemplary initiatives, Open Works and Participatory City, tracing their beginnings in Lambeth's “cooperative council” model and their ongoing assembling into novel public-common-philanthropic partnerships. Foregrounding the contradictions within this latest turn towards urban governance-beyond-the-state, we draw out the implications for the future of social innovation, design-thinking, and the experimental city.     

Residential segregation and inequality: Considering barriers to choice in Toronto

Segregation of visible minorities has persisted throughout time in Toronto. In examining these concentrations, the literature has been heavily focused on the notion that visible minorities are choosing to live in proximity to their respective ethno-racial groups and that these are spaces of aspiration rather than marginalization in Canada. This paper raises questions about the assertion of “self-segregation” by emphasizing affordability constraints on residential choices that are often rooted in discrimination in the labour market. Census data from 2016 and an adopted neighbourhood classification scheme were used to understand the spatial patterning of visible minorities in the Toronto census metropolitan area and highlight differences in the socio-economic characteristics of visible minority dominant and white dominant census tracts. The findings invite the inference that economic opportunities play a critical role in the residential choices of visible minorities and raise concerns about the quality of life in visible minority neighbourhoods. This research contributes to our understanding of how social inequalities have impacted the socio-spatial organization of the city of Toronto.     

The Public Assistance Policies of Cities and the Justice Concerns of Elected Officials: The Centrality of the Floors Principle in Addressing Urban Poverty

City councils are significant, though seldom central, actors in local policy networks providing public assistance to disadvantaged residents. Mayors and council members in 12 American cities more often support than oppose public assistance initiatives. They claim that their own normative judgments are more important to their preferences and voting behavior on such matters than are public opinion, group demands, or economic considerations. While such elected officials hold a variety of justice principles, the most important of these affecting their positions on public assistance issues is the “floors” principle. A broad ethical commitment to providing social minimums enhances support for living‐wage ordinances, for linking subsidies for economic development to assistance to less advantaged citizens, and for exempting spending on social services from budget cuts. We discuss the implications of these findings for major theories of urban politics and policies—collective‐action theory, regime theory, and pluralism—and for advocates on behalf of the urban poor.     

Tensions between municipal reform and outdated fiscal levers in rural British Columbia

Debates about the future of small municipalities in Canada are set against a backdrop of economic, political, and social restructuring processes that have displaced former state investment policies in favour of neoliberal public policy approaches. Small municipalities struggle with outdated financial and governance structures and a provincial public policy agenda that asks them to become more creative, innovative, and “entrepreneurial” in their approach and responsibilities. Drawing upon key informant interviews with eight case studies in British Columbia, Canada, this research examines the tensions between municipal reforms mandated by the provincial government over the past 30 years and commensurate fiscal levers and capacities in place to address these broadening responsibilities for small municipalities in volatile staples-dependent regions. Our findings demonstrate how successive provincial governments have mobilized New Public Management objectives through a host of legislative and regulatory changes that have increased the responsibilities and requirements on local governments without commensurate fiscal or jurisdictional capacity.     

Urban Policy Mobilities: The Case of Turin as a Smart City

This article analyses urban policy mobilities taking into consideration the idea of the smart city, which is currently a sort of leitmotif used in many cities within the framework of discourses on urban development. More specifically, this article offers an analysis concerning the circulation and implementation of the idea of the smart city in Turin, Italy. It investigates the actors, processes and networks involved in the mobilization and reproduction of the idea, as well as the mechanisms, concerning the embedding of the smart city discourse in the institutional fabric of the city of Turin, Italy. It also emphasizes how urban policy mobility can develop even without processes of “imitation” and “adaptation” of best practices from other cities.     

Bringing Organizations Back In: Multilevel Feedback Effects on Individual Civic Inclusion

Policy feedback scholarship has focused on how laws and their implementation affect either organizations (e.g., their resources, priorities, political opportunities, or incentive structures) or individuals (e.g., their civic skills and resources or their psychological orientations toward the state). However, in practice the distinction between organizations and individuals is not clear‐cut: Organizations interpret policy for individuals, and individuals experience policy through organizations. Thus, scholars have argued for a multi‐level model of feedback effects illuminating how policies operating at the organizational level reverberate at the individual level. In this theory‐building article, we push this insight by examining how public policy influences nonprofit organizations’ role in the civic life of beneficiaries. We identify five roles that nonprofit organizations play. For each role, we draw on existing research to identify policy mechanisms that either enlarge or diminish nonprofits’ capacity to facilitate individual incorporation and engagement. From these examples, we derive cross‐cutting hypotheses concerning how different categories of citizens may need policy to operate differently to enhance their civic influence; whether policy that is “delivered” through nonprofits may dampen citizens’ relationship with the state; and how the civic boost provided by policy may be influenced by the degree of latitude conferred on recipient organizations.     

Contesting Digital Futures: Urban Politics,Alternative Economies,and the Movement for Technological Sovereignty in Barcelona

Scholars have offered important critiques of the socio-spatial processes of contemporary technological development, including the rise of “smart city” urban development models. While these critiques have been essential for understanding contemporary forms of techno-capitalism and their reach into new areas, this paper calls for a consideration of alternative modes of digital development in urban life beyond the logics of securitisation and capital accumulation. In particular, I examine the critical discourses and experimental practices of a grassroots movement focused on claiming “technological sovereignty” (TS) in Barcelona. The TS movement is a broad, de-centralised network of cooperatives, associations, and community initiatives experimenting with alternative practices of locally rooted, open-source digital development. These groups explore democratic and cooperative practices of work, property, production, and consumption in relation to digital technology, based around an ethics of care and a commitment to working through and within local communities. In examining the values, beliefs, and practices of the TS movement, I bring ongoing discussions around digitalisation and the “smart city” into critical conversation with the extensive literature on prefigurative urban politics and postcapitalist economies.     

Eco‐urbanism and the Eco‐city,or, Denying the Right to the City?

This paper critically analyses the construction of eco‐cities as technological fixes to concerns over climate change, Peak Oil, and other scenarios in the transition towards “green capitalism”. It argues for a critical engagement with new‐build eco‐city projects, first by highlighting the inequalities which mean that eco‐cities will not benefit those who will be most impacted by climate change: the citizens of the world's least wealthy states. Second, the paper investigates the foundation of eco‐city projects on notions of crisis and scarcity. Third, there is a need to critically interrogate the mechanisms through which new eco‐cities are built, including the land market, reclamation, dispossession and “green grabbing”. Lastly, a sustained focus is needed on the multiplication of workers’ geographies in and around these “emerald cities”, especially the ordinary urban spaces and lives of the temporary settlements housing the millions of workers who move from one new project to another.     

Exploring the Political Potential of the Local State: Building a Dialogue with Sheffield in the 1980s

This article explores the political potential of the local state through an engagement with the case of Sheffield City Council in the 1980s. The new municipalism movement has generated renewed interest in the “local” and “urban” as transformative projects. The local state holds a pivotal if problematic role in these debates, often seen as the decisive force facilitating or impeding transformation. In building a dialogue with 1980s Sheffield, we provide a less certain account of the local state's potential. Sheffield occupies an ambiguous position within and beyond traditional municipal labourism and therefore provides a potent example to explore tensions within municipalism between state and autonomist visions of politics. In Sheffield, radical intent turned into a more cautious governmental programme in the city, notwithstanding glimpses of political alternatives. The experience of those years provides insights on the contingencies of bringing movements and state politics together in what was then called “local socialism”.     

Government Protection of Domestic Communications as National Defense: Assessing Canadian Government Policies

In the nominal interest of promoting a national identity and a stronger federation, a range of public policies have been implemented by the Canadian government to encourage and facilitate cross-subsidization in the Canadian telecommunications and broadcasting industries. The main policy instruments involve government regulations and foreign ownership restrictions that contribute to higher revenues for domestic producers of communication services than would otherwise be realized. The quid pro quo is that domestic telecommunications carriers and broadcasters must undertake costly and unprofitable actions that involve subsidizing activities such as rural telephone services and “Canadian entertainment content.” Unfortunately, there is little evidence that the relevant policies promote the goal of strengthening Canada’s national identity. Furthermore, they are inefficient, as well as nontransparent. The fact that several other countries, particularly France, have lauded Canadian content regulations as a “model” for smaller, open economies, they are more appropriately viewed as the socially undesirable outcome of a muddled public choice dynamic.     

“Mongrel City”: Cosmopolitan Neighbourliness in a Delhi Squatter Settlement

Abstract: This paper examines the construction of a “cosmopolitan neighbourliness” which emerges in a Delhi squatter settlement in the context of communal violence. Through interviews with over 80 inhabitants, I suggest that an openness to “others” in the settlement is produced in order to construct a home for oneself in an exclusionary city through a series of relational constructs—between the “cosmopolitan” city and the “parochial” village; between the “murderous” city and the “compassionate” slum; between the exclusionary urban public sphere and the “inclusive” neighbourhood sphere. The squatter settlement is internalised as a microcosm of a “mongrel city”, a place which through its set of oppositional constructs becomes inherently “urban”. “Cosmopolitan neighbourliness”, however, remains fragile and gendered. It is a continuous strategic practice that attempts to bridge across differences of caste and religion through gendered performances that avert and discourage communal violence even when the city becomes murderous.