Can Smart Cities be Good Cities?
Source: Earth Island Journal - KAT FRIEDRICH
The UN’s new playbook for urban planners advocates for a more humane, inclusive digital transformation.
IN 2017, SIDEWALK LABS, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., struck a deal with Toronto to develop a technological utopia in one of the city’s neglected waterfront neighborhoods. Sensors, data, and robots — along with mixed zoning, fanciful buildings, bridges, and computing — would create a smart city of the future, Sidewalk promised. But the deal sparked a huge debate around surveillance, data privacy, and a slew of ethical and political pitfalls, as “it became clear that many of its ideas were either half-baked or relied too heavily on rewriting the rules,” architecture critic Alex Bozikovic wrote in Architectural Record. By 2020, the project collapsed and Sidewalk withdrew, giving developers and dreamers a harsh lesson in the realities of smart cities.
Around the same time, Barcelona began taking a more practical approach to the future. With approval from its city council, Barcelona worked to democratize the city’s technologies: delivering digital services to residents; promoting open-source, free software for public and private use; and ensuring the responsible use of data. The plan promoted digital skills and safeguards for its citizens, minimizing the need to rely on outside vendors. Rather than promising utopia, Barcelona applied ethics to the humdrum of software and legal structures.
The differences in these two approaches show how broad the “smart city” idea is — and how fraught. In a world that the United Nations estimates will be more than two-thirds urban by 2050, with nearly seven billion people living in cities, being “smart” could deliver advantages for city managers and developers. But a humane approach will also be essential, mitigating the human rights violations that can occur when cities idealize new technologies over the needs of the populace. To help promote a better approach, the UN’s Human Settlements Program, better known as UN-Habitat, has created a playbook for decision-makers, “Centering People in Smart Cities.”
“The People-Centered Smart Cities Playbook Series aims to help cities and communities ensure that urban digital transformation works for the benefit of all,” wrote Maimunah Mohd Sharif, the under-secretary-general and executive director for UN-Habitat, “driving sustainability, inclusion and prosperity in the process.”