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Content archived on 2023-04-13

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Smart city and wise city

The term smart cities mainly refers to the field of technology. Some fear that the intelligent cities of the future will be massively robotic, with algorithms dominating people. Hence the need for more citizen engagement in designing the digital revolution of their urban spaces.

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The notion of "smart city" has grown in popularity during the last twenty years. Digital revolution fans believe that communication technologies will radically transform our cities, offering a vast range of new services that will simplify our daily life. But this could also mean a big "network of sensors amounting to millions of electronic ears, eyes and noses", where citizens are controlled by those who have access to this data. In other words, some fear that this scenario will destroy democracy. Expert Barbara Branchini, who manages R&D smart city projects, disagrees with this pessimistic vision. She says: "The remedy is citizen engagement. Smart is not only a city dominated by technology, but a place where participation, creativity and education are promoted. Citizen engagement and citizen participation in the decision-making go together with technological development." She reports her recent experience in the EU project MAtchUP: "Among the initiatives, a participatory workshop was organised in December 2018 in Valencia, Spain, involving representatives of the public and private sectors, research organisations and citizens' associations. The project aims at implementing innovative solutions in the energy, mobility and ICT sectors and replicating them in cities across Europe." See full article here: https://www.matchup-project.eu/news/smart-city-and-wise-city/

Keywords

citizen engagement, smart cities, co-design