Perspectives on citizen data privacy in a smart city – An empirical case study

Abstract

Digitisation is arguably an inevitable feature of contemporary urban development, yet privacy issues arising from the mass data collection, transmission and processing it entails continue to be a poorly understood and contentious issue for people living in cities. This article uses a case study approach to provide new evidence of the detailed perspectives of citizens and policy makers on data privacy in rapidly digitising urban environments, with a focus on one of the UK’s most prominent smart cities: Manchester. It adds to the literature on smart cities through the application of complementary scholarship from two areas – trust and participation – in order to analyse comparatively citizens’ views and concerns on data gathering activity in their city with efforts of policy makers to incorporate data privacy matters in their digital city planning. The article finds a clear – but reparable – data privacy disconnect between people and digital policy makers and explores how citizen data privacy concerns may be addressed through a lens of trust and participation.