Charting the design and implementation of the smart city: the case of citizen-centric bikeshare in Hamilton, Ontario

Abstract

Previous scholarship on the smart city has expressed concern at the top-down, technocratic nature of smart technologies and the lack of meaningful citizen participation in their development. In this paper, we utilize instrumentalization theory to trace the initiation, design and deployment of a specific smart city initiative: bikeshare in Hamilton, Ontario. Smart bikeshare is increasingly seen as complicit in processes of social stratification, serving a predominately white, middle-class demographic and particular locales. Our case study reveals the potential of reflexive design praxes to reconfigure bikeshare as a platform for both instrumental and social value. In particular, we highlight how collaborative, open and inclusive forms of urban governance can enroll a broad range of civic actors to create a scheme that embodies diverse but complimentary goals and ideologies. We conclude that instrumentalization theory provides a conceptual means to open up the "black box" of urban design to critical interrogation, and to identify how to enact participatory design and citizen-centric smart urbanism.

Micromobility Trip Origin and Destination Inference Using General Bikeshare Feed Specification Data

“…GBFS data have also been used by several bikesharing studies (2,23,(31)(32)(33)(34)(35). In these studies, GBFS data has shown advantages in its large sample sizes and accurate spatiotemporal information compared with the survey data.…”