THE RELEVANCE OF SMART CITIES

INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR ALEX MARSH AND DR. DAVID SWEETING UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL, UNITED KINGDOM

BY: KENJIRO JUÁREZ NAVA

The Faculty of Global Studies from Universidad Anahuac Mexico collaborates with several universities, academics, and international institutions to establish comprehensive research in the social sciences. The project Empowering Citizen-Oriented Smart City Innovation inMexico is an example of this type of alliance. Carried out between 2019 and 2022 by academics from both institutions, the initiative shows that international partnerships dealing with contemporary themes are crucial in global times.

Kenjiro: Why are Smart Cities something interesting to study?

Alex & David: Smart cities are interesting to study and important because the world is investing in developing strategies to use digital technologies to help manage cities for environmental reasons, manage traffic, or improve quality of life of significant interest, including international policy. Governments put lots of money into the technologies to help cities work, and the question is what effect does that have? what benefit does it have? and whom does it benefit? So, the dilemma works in who's in conversations and discussions that shape smart city activities The government develops smart banks or smart infrastructures whether or how is that decided interested in what is the role of citizens, communities, civil society organizations, and NGOs affected by the problems of cities like pollution, poverty, and traffic congestion It might be once they are rolling in deciding how digital technologies are used so the government can decide for itself the closest worth adding.

Sooner or later, we'll end up using technology in ways that are even more advanced and pervasive. The important thing is to try to make technology work to address the problems that are evident in cities, so you don't just get technology companies to provide technical solutions to technical problems. It needs to be a much broader base and one of the concerns is three important ideas to think about: the role of citizens, how governments are involved, and how states are involved to address the problems that people in cities face Smart cities aren't led simply by tech companies that have important roles to play in developing technology and implementing technology The problems come when technology companies leading it will get technical solutions to technical problems instead of solutions to problems in people's everyday life related to transport, air quality or poverty, and so on.

Kenjiro: Who should lead Smart City development?

Alex & David: No sector should lead those things, it should be a collaborative partnership between various interest groups leading smart city development. One of the challenges in this field of the idea of collaborative partnerships is global best practice in the community of these smart cities of cross-sectoral collaborations, the public, and the private not-for-profit citizens. The state may well have an orchestrating role to bring people together to facilitate a conversation, the challenge is making sure that the more powerful partners listen to the less powerful sectors

Kenjiro: Are there differences between global north/south smart cities?

Alex & David: There is a gap between the North and the South smart cities, in the inclusion between the tech enterprises, stakeholders, or the structured issues at the starting position in terms of the infrastructure There is a challenge in global N because is not uniform to cover many different scenarios to integrate with the global S where there are a whole bunch of things not sophisticated in their use of digital technology; people haven’t access to technology, and their lack of skills settles them in a different position.

To use digital mechanisms for solving problems, providing information, or providing services is about their ability to access and use those technologies; global N it's not different but it may be an issue in the global southern communities that struggle to have access to a tech platform. There's no smart city template in the sense that if a city wants to be a smart city it will be, smart city means sort of different things in different places North and South.

Each city has different and similar targets, everybody is working to become smart The cities compete for smartness so they can go up in global smart rankings; to be seen as smart they will be doing something and claiming that they're smart, but what they're doing might be very different in different places, one city might go to in autonomous vehicles, developing, research, and autonomous vehicles to be smart and unless not doing anything Most cities trying to become smarter and retrofitted introduce smart city activities to start thinking about using technology to face transport systems, air quality, and things like that; some cities are kind of new, and making the smart city as you're making the city is hard. South Korea is kind of a new city, it's been built with smartness in mind, but the question is whether anybody will want to live there, what sort of places are created from the ground with all this technology as smart buildings, open doors, and small rubbish systems will rule your life governed by technology, whether that's a pleasant place in which to live where there's just too much tech

Kenjiro: Which is the role that governments play in developing Smart Cities?

Alex & David: Quite a lot of the conversation about smart cities is around data, particularly combining data from different sources. So, for example, you've got a metro system so every time we swipe in and out of our cards it tracks our journeys, so then you could get all that data together in a map flow of people. In terms of synchronizing, there is available information about which metros you know people coming out of at what times of the day making got buses arrive at the right time The question is who decides what data is collected well? And how it's used? which is the role of the government in the information collected? If the government has a really important role in ensuring that the data is used responsibly, or the government has the capability or willingness to act in that sort of even-handed sort of equitable way

Kenjiro: What is your opinion about the role of citizens/civil society in progressing Smart City projects?

Alex & David: AI and algorithms make decisions, and train algorithms to make elections that lead to certain parts of the population being treated unfairly. A classic example is how to treat white engineering students get in a job application because the data behave in particular ways, so the algorithm works for them, but it doesn't work for women, and it doesn't work for people from minority communities The case of cycle labs in Toronto is one of the main examples of how the community act to face this struggle

The community rejected the big multinational company putting millions of dollars into developing a smart neighborhood, the citizens question the use of the data, and the companies couldn't give a satisfactory answer to the communities. Because it wasn't accepted by the citizens, they weren't confident and didn't feel that they got good enough answers to trust exactly what they were saying exactly, so they couldn’t trust what was being proposed and the project did not take place

Kenjiro: Do you have a favorite Smart City?

Alex & David: Barcelona is probably the best example of a smart city that changed thinking in the government mindset, they changed their mind about how they want the smart city to be Up until 2015, Barcelona was one of the leading examples in the world of a small city, which was a public-private partnership, and so all the big tech companies here partnered in conversation. In 2015, they elected a new mayor who agree with the tech process arguing the citizen's interests are clear enough at the center of the conversation, so they make the data open and engaged with citizens in a way that tried different ways to demonstrate that private companies are gathering all the data for their benefit. Barcelona is one of the most interesting cities in terms of willingness.

Paris is quite an interesting smart city because they focus on democracy using technology to enhance democracy; there are available website spaces providing services Using technology to increase the communication between the citizens and the government to know how money should be spent to get participatory budgeting

They emphasize deliberation citizens having input into policy decisions rather than providing services, their version of smart cities is holding on to democracy work well. Paris has gone right well how can keep some of that, so they pedestrianized immediate cycling? One of the interesting things you get in lists of rankings of the world's smartest cities is some of them are a bit different because some are technically advanced, and others are a bit more about the collective intelligence of the city.

Melbourne's definition of smart is about collective intelligence, education, and trying to rule on that broader range of our resources rather than tax the tech. Melbourne's sort of philosophy of smart cities is to be smart between themselves in drawing together their skills and knowledge to come up with a solution to their problems. Alternative smart cities it's placed more emphasis on other things than technology, but it doesn't mean they don’t want to use technology necessarily or the technology hasn't got a role

Amsterdam got a good cross-sector collaborative platform that they use in public and private universities They are transparent about what they're doing, and the other thing is they're quite active across a whole range of different sectors in thinking about what smart means about the narrative you go on the website, the challenge in smart cities is the awareness of what's happening in the city in general; citizen awareness is not just awareness, but sort of endorsement or seeing it as legitimate.

The conclusions were addressed by thoughts like cities that consider themselves smart, they would say their understanding of smart is fostering the creation sort of high-tech ecosystem, entrepreneurs, and investing in the technology sector that creates employment and spillover effects to the city. The smart thing to do here doesn't necessarily involve technology, in the smart city there's a discussion about alternative smart cities and the alternative might be putting collective intelligence first and then technology It is not the key to creating new networks, new conversations, or sharing information in different ways, it might support but it's not the main point