Data in the smart city: How incongruent frames challenge the transition from ideal to practice

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of interviews, focus groups and workshops with employees in the technical administration in the municipality of Copenhagen in the year after it won a prestigious Smart City award. The administration is interpreted as a 'most likely' to succeed in translating the idealised version of the smart city into a workable bureaucratic practice. Drawing on the work of Orlikowski and Gash, the empirical analysis identifies and describes two incongruent 'technological frames' that illustrates different ways of making sense of data and the smart city within this single organisational unit. One is called the experimentalist's credo and it is characterised by inspiration from the development of an Internet of Things as well as a readiness to learn from the open source community in software development. The other is called the data-owners vocation and it is characterised by a more situated approach that interprets data as strategic and political. It is argued that the existence of these frames provides two insights relevant for the literature on smart cities. First, they illustrate that one should be careful not to reify the smart city as a phenomenon that can be criticised in generic terms. Second, they suggest that even if there exists a transition toward the implementation of a technocratic smart city paradigm across public administrations, this paradigm is not unique in its focus on markets and evidence in governance.

Analysis of Sustainable Transport for Smart Cities

“…In most cases, women are always concerned with the safety and personal security elements of transport. More so, several studies [35,51,57] indicated that better transportation systems have always contributed to people's quality of life in a given society. In this case, allowing women to participate in policymaking, especially on sustainable transport, has brought economic growth and efficient transport systems in most cities.…”

“…Copenhagen, being a smart city [35], obviously requires smart solutions to the ever-growing transportation demands from inhabitants [36]. Following this, the city deliberately planned to ease transportation while limiting traffic congestion through establishment of a complex bicycle lane system.…”

“…Following this, the city deliberately planned to ease transportation while limiting traffic congestion through establishment of a complex bicycle lane system. Thus, therefore, the city is globally recognized as the best city for cyclists, following its rigorous development towards the cycling industry [34,35]. More so, Copenhagen's cycling system and structure has been used as a template to improve transportation in other cities across the world.…”

Democratising Smart Cities? Penta-Helix Multistakeholder Social Innovation Framework

“…Kitchin [12] (p. 9) defines technocratic governance as the procedure by which "all aspects of a city can be measured and monitored and treated as technical problems that can be addressed through technical solutions." Thus, the aggregated use of digital data to monitor, surveil, and nudge citizens has resulted in an intrinsic version of the technocratic smart city [13][14][15], which pervasively bypasses the democratic accountability to which stakeholders are entitled. Despite these negative side effects, smart cities have remained the focus of urban policy and decision-makers worldwide, as a broad rubric for using the so-called stakeholder and citizen engagement practices orientated towards the management in such techno-deterministic-and more bluntly, less democratic-and, thus, further platformised urban realms [16][17][18].…”

People-Centric Service Intelligence for Smart Cities

“…The magnificent goals of smart cities include quality of life, sustainability, and development [1], which have already attracted a great deal of attention from researchers in an array of disciplines, such as urban planning [2][3][4], transportation [5][6][7], civil engineering [8], information science [9][10][11][12][13], surveying and mapping [14,15], commercial and logistics [16], energy [17,18], atmosphere and environment [19], society [20,21], tourists [22], governance [2,23], and industry in recent years. Although the proper definition of smart cities are still lacking [2], smart cities' goals are consistent to include smart living, smart people, smart environment, smart mobility, smart economy, smart governance [24], smart services, and smart infrastructure [25].…”