No smart city without citizen participation

More Participation Needed

Cities all over the world aim at becoming smarter, more effective and a better place to live in. In order to achieve these goals, one specific party plays a key role, the citizens. As mentioned in a report by Deloitte, there will not be a smart city without smart citizens. Therefore, it is instrumental to include the residents of a city into the decision process. To do so, new technologies such as innovative ICT applications are necessary. These applications can revolutionize the way citizens and city officials communicate with each other.

Better Communication and Personalized Applications

Since cities and urban areas are fast-changing places, city officials are confronted with many issues and challenges. In order to find innovative solutions residents’ participation is of prime importance. Wietse Van Ransbeeck, the founder of CitizenLab, a civic engagement platform that aims to shape digital citizen participation, describes in his article four emerging technology trends that will change and shape the way citizens and city officials will communicate. The first trend Van Ransbeeck mentions in his article published on tmforum.org concerns a multichannel approach. Compared to offline communication, costs of online communication are low which additionally allows for an increased responsiveness on both sides, the residents’ and officials’ side. A multichannel approach enables governing officials to strengthen the depth and the width of citizen participation by combining digital means such as platforms and social media channels with traditional citizen engagement tools including focus groups and town hall meetings. An example for the implementation of this trend can be found in Paris. In 2015 the capital of France launched the “Smart and Sustainable Paris” initiative aiming at turning the city of light into a smart city. In an interview with L’Atelier the head of this project Benjamin Favriau underlines the importance of citizen participation and how they use offline and online channels to reach the residents of Paris. The major approach is the move to participatory budgeting, which allows residents to submit proposals to City Hall. Many of these proposals have been turned into projects and can be voted for. Moreover, many of the city’s policy proposal go through a discussion phase in which also Parisian residents can participate on the idee.paris.fr website.

A personalized interface is the second trend that could encourage citizens to participate in city-related challenges. Engagement will increase once citizens are aware of the relevance of their participation. This is why it is necessary to provide people with an interface such as an app or a platform they can use to filter current issues and challenges according to personal interest and proximity. A great example of a personalized interface is Tel Aviv’s app “DigiTel”. This app enables personalized and location-based citizen engagement. It informs users about, for example, possible traffic jams in their area, deadlines for kindergarten applications or concerts close by. Another example mentioned in Deloitte’s report is the project “FixMyStreet!” in Great Britain. This application allows citizens to report street damage to city official by simply sending a picture of the damage and its location from their smartphones. Trend number three is citizen engagement analytics. The objective of this trend is to gain insight into citizens’ opinions. The collected information can be divided into different groups which makes it easier for city officials to adopt to a more inclusive public policy. Last but not least, the fourth trend brought up by Van Ransbeeck is open data. Enabling citizens access to official data will result in more transparency and will eventually help residents better understand how the government spends money. Open data can be applied to make civic engagement thrive. Crime data, for example, could be used to take appropriate collective measurements to improve safety in your own neighbourhood.