Framing smart cities
Rob Kitchin
NIRSA, National University of Ireland Maynooth
Smart cities
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Lots of definitions of smart cities. Generally encompass three
dynamics:
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Instrumentation and regulation
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Cities composed of ‘everyware’: ICT infrastructure, devices, sensors, software,
big data
Cities become knowable and controllable in new, dynamic, reactive ways;
improved models and simulations for future development
More efficient, competitive and productive service delivery
Urban big data
• Directed
o Surveillance: CCTV,
drones/satellite
o Digitisation of millions of
documents, films, audio recordings
• Automated
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Automated surveillance
Digital devices
Sensed and scanned data
Interaction and transactional data
IoT (Internet of things) and M2M
(machine to machine)
• Volunteered
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Social media
Sousveillance/wearables
Crowdsourcing
Citizen science
Single systems
Integrated, city & sector wide
Smart cities
• Lots of definitions of smart cities. Generally encompass three
dynamics:
•
Instrumentation and regulation
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•
•
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Cities composed of ‘everyware’: ICT infrastructure, devices, sensors, software,
big data
Cities become knowable and controllable in new, dynamic, reactive ways;
improved models and simulations for future development
More efficient, competitive and productive service delivery
Policy, development and governance
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Advances in ICT reconfiguring human capital, creativity, innovation, education,
sustainability, governance
Cities as competitive, entrepreneurial, knowledge-driven systems
Social innovation, civic engagement and hactivism
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ICT provides means for transparent and accountable governance, new forms of
civic participation, better informed citizens
• First two largely underpinned by neoliberal visions of market-led and
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technocratic solutions to city governance and development
Third is a counter-weight for some, alternative for others
Smart ...
• Economy
• entrepreneurship, innovation, productivity, competiveness
• Government
• e-gov, open data, transparency, accountability, evidence-informed
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decision making, better service delivery
Mobility
• intelligent transport systems, multi-modal inter-op, efficiency
Environment
• green energy, sustainability, resilience
Living
• quality of life, safety, security, manage risk
People
• more informed, creativity, inclusivity, empowerment, participation
The promise of smart cities
• Technology can be deployed to tackle pressing issues
• The city becomes knowable and controllable in new ways,
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enabling new forms of operational governance
Better information; more transparency and accountability;
enhanced participation in city life
Improved models and simulations for future development
More efficient, competitive and productive service
delivery; better run and cost effective cities
Stimulate creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship and
economic growth
Enhance quality of life
Seven critiques of smart cities
1. Ahistorical, aspatial and
homogenizing
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One size fits all approach
Fails to recognize history, culture, context, local
sense of place, politics, governance, diversity, etc
Often idealised imaginary of green field
development rather than complexities of
established communities, competing interests and
legacy infrastructure
Treats cities as a generic market for smart city
solutions
2. The politics of urban data
• smart city data portrayed as being objective and non•
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ideological.
likewise, the algorithms used to process these data are
positioned as neutral and non-ideological in their formulation
and operation, grounded in scientific objectivity
presents an image of being politically benign and
commonsensical
however, data do not exist independently of the ideas,
techniques, technologies, people and contexts that conceive,
produce, process, manage, analyze and store them
data are situated, contingent, relational, and framed and
used contextually to try and achieve certain aims and goals.
technical and managerial issues concerning measurement,
sampling frame, handling, veracity (accuracy, fidelity),
uncertainty, error, bias, reliability, calibration, lineage
3. Technocratic governance and
solutionism
• all aspects of a city can be measured and monitored and
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treated as technical problems that can be addressed
through technical solutions
underpinned by an ‘instrumental rationality’ and
practices ‘solutionism’: that is, there is a belief that
complex open systems can be disassembled into neatly
defined problems that can be solved or optimized
through computation
all that is required to understand, manage and fix the
issues a city faces -- in rational, logical and impartial
ways -- is sufficient data and suitable algorithms
top-down approach: marginalizes other forms of
governance and is technically rather than citizen focused
4. Neoliberal political economy &
corporatisation of governance
• overly driven by corporate interests who are using it to
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capture government functions as new market
opportunities.
promoting the marketisation of public services and the
hollowing out of the state wherein city functions are
administered for private profit
potentially creates a technological lock-in or corporate
path dependency that beholden cities to particular
technological platforms and vendors over a long period
of time, creating monopoly positions
5. Buggy, brittle, hackable urban
systems
• smart cities takes two open, highly complex and
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contingent systems -- cities and digital systems -and binds them together
creates environments which are inherently buggy and
brittle and are prone to viruses, glitches, crashes,
and security hacks
as systems become ever more complicated,
interconnected and dependent on software,
producing stable, robust and secure devices and
infrastructures becomes more of a challenge
new systems lead to the discontinuation of analogue
alternatives, meaning that if they fail there are no
alternatives until the system is fixed/rebooted
6. Profound social, political,
ethical effects
• panoptic surveillance and erosion privacy (in
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its diverse forms)
social sorting
control creep
anticipatory governance
7. Reinforce power geometries &
inequalities
• smart cities are the vision of certain vested
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interests
they serve the interests of certain
constituencies
they control/regulate other populations
actively marginalize/dispossess some
Conclusion
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A smart city is not a vision of a future city; they already exist in
practice in a multitude of forms
There’s much debate about what constitutes a smart city and
often a disconnect between discourse and actually existing smart
urbanism
Nevertheless, smart city technologies and networked urbanism
hold much promise
They also pose a number of challenges and risks
The pace of development and rollout is well ahead of reflection
and critique
Yet we will live with the cities we produce for many years
There’s an urgent need to interrogate the vision and
implementation of smart cities to ensure we favourably balance
the positives in favour of the negatives
Rob.Kitchin@nuim.ie
@robkitchin
http://www.nuim.ie/progcity
@progcity
Kitchin, R., Lauriault, T. and McArdle, G. (2015) Knowing and governing cities through urban
indicators, city benchmarking and real-time dashboards. Regional Studies, Regional Science
2: 1-28
Kitchin, R. (2015) Making sense of smart cities: addressing present shortcomings.
Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 8: 131-136
Kitchin, R. (2015) Spatial big data and the era of continuous geosurveillance. DIS Magazine
Kitchin, R. (2014) The real-time city? Big data and smart urbanism. GeoJournal 79(1): 1-14.
Privacy
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Surveillance
Interrogation
Aggregation
Identification
Insecurity
Secondary Use
Watching, listening to, or recording of an individual’s activities
Various forms of questioning or probing for information
The combination of various pieces of data about a person
Linking information to particular individuals
Carelessness in protecting stored information from leaks and improper access
Use of information collected for one purpose for a different purpose without the
data subject’s consent
Exclusion
Failure to allow the data subject to know about the data that others have about her
and participate in its handling and use, including being barred from being able to
access and correct errors in that data
Breach of confidentiality
Breaking a promise to keep a person’s information confidential
Disclosure
Revelation of information about a person that impacts the way others judge her
character
Exposure
Revealing another’s nudity, grief, or bodily functions
Increased Accessibility
Amplifying the accessibility of information
Blackmail
Threat to disclose personal information
Appropriation
The use of the data subject’s identity to serve the aims and interests of another
Distortion
Dissemination of false or misleading information about individuals
Intrusion
Invasive acts that disturb one’s tranquillity or solitude
Decisional Interference
Incursion into the data subject’s decisions regarding her private affairs
Data type
Accounts log
App Activity
App Data Usage
App Install
Battery
Device Info
Data collected by Uber android app
email log
name, package name, process number of activity, processed id
Cache size, code size, data size, name, package name
installed at, name, package name, unknown sources enabled, version code, version
name
health, level, plugged, present, scale, status, technology, temperature, voltage
board, brand, build version, cell number, device, device type, display, fingerprint, IP,
MAC address, manufacturer, model, OS platform, product, SDK code, total disk
space, unknown sources enabled
GPS
MMS
NetData
PhoneCall
SMS
TelephonyInfo
accuracy, altitude, latitude, longitude, provider, speed
from number, MMS at, MMS type, service number, to number
bytes received, bytes sent, connection type, interface type
call duration, called at, from number, phone call type, to number
from number, service number, SMS at, SMS type, to number
cell tower ID, cell tower latitude, cell tower longitude, IMEI, ISO country code, local
area code, MEID, mobile country code, mobile network code, network name,
network type, phone type, SIM serial number, SIM state, subscriber ID
WifiConnection
WifiNeighbors
Root Check
Malware Info
BSSID, IP, linkspeed, MAC addr, network ID, RSSI, SSID
BSSID, capabilities, frequency, level, SSID
root status code, root status reason code, root version, sig file version
algorithm confidence, app list, found malware, malware SDK version, package list,
reason code, service list, sigfile version