Is Barcelona establishing a sustainable paradigm in Europe by grassroots-led smart urban experimentation through the ‘data commons’ policy?

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2019

Kicking Off the 2016–2017 Bridging European Urban Transformations ESRC Workshop Series (in the Post-Brexit era): European Smart Citizens as Decision Makers Rather than Data Providers Prof Michael Keith & Dr Igor Calzada, MBA University of Oxford, Urban Transformations ESRC Programme On November 14 th 2016 the Urban Transformations programme, funded by the ESRC, kicked off the first knowledge exchange activity 1 by bringing together academics and practitioners in the research/policy field of urban transformations from all over Europe. This workshop was the first of a series entitled Bridging European Urban Transformations that has been established in partnership between the Urban Transformations programme led by the University of Oxford at COMPAS and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), particularly with the Brussels Centre for Urban Studies. In this post-Brexit era, commitment and willingness to cooperate seems more important than ever before. Therefore, the workshop series, which runs from November 2016 to October 2017, emphasises the value of connections between institutions and key players in the field of urban transformations in the UK and in the rest of Europe. The first workshop, which that took place in SMIT 2 at the VUB in Brussels, focused on the necessity of unpacking and deconstructing the 'smart cities' paradigm that has been so influential in structuring the European policy agenda. The workshop drew together researchers, city professionals, policy makers and NGOs and was publicised in cooperation with the RSA Smart City–Regional Governance for Sustainability Research Network 3. The core idea that drove the workshop was the need to define the interconnections between 'hard', smart' infrastructures and economic, political and social systems on metropolitan and regional scales. '(Un)Plugging 4 Data in Smart City-Regions' showcased ESRC Urban Transformations projects explored how new strategies of data collection, storage and usage are harnessing urban and regional smart governance models to guide city/regional decision-making processes. The workshop was broken down into three themes, addressing new sources for data collection, storage and usage; urban expertise for citizen/user involvement; and finally, smart knowledge and expertise to tackle urban inequalities. According to Gartner, 1.6 billion connected devices will be hooked up to the larger smart city infrastructure worldwide by the end of this year. However, during the discussion in the workshop, some uncertain questions remain at the centre of the debate, regarding dataism 5 as a new term to describe this pervasive religion of data, according to Harari (2016). Richard Tuffs, the director of the European Regions Research and Innovation Network (ERRIN) 6 , a platform that connects academics and practitioners in a wide diverse of research fields within the European regions, introduced the workshop, emphasising the importance of citizen concerns 1 http://www.urbantransformations.ox.ac.uk/event/bridging-european-urban-transformations/ https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/unplugging-data-in-smart-city-regions-tickets-26793797971# 2 www.smit.vub.ac.be 3 http://www.regionalstudies.org/networks/network/smart-city-regional-governance-for-sustainability

The Politics of Urban Sustainability Transitions: Knowledge, Power and Governance

There is a risk in the ‘Smart City’ that plural forms of knowing the city become eclipsed by singular governance-oriented analyses produced through computational logics originating from undemocratic service providers. In light of this concern, this chapter considers three aspects of smart urbanism’s knowledge politics: i) the role of urban agencies – or understanding smart urbanism as a situated, socio-material practice; ii) the agency of smart city technologies’ materiality as well as the ownership and control of these technologies, and: iii) the political rationalities, values and assumptions embedded in smart city technologies’ design and use. Drawing on these insights, this chapter analyses smart knowledge politics in Barcelona, where the 2015 Council elections replaced a market-oriented political leadership enthusiastically implementing the Smart City with a political leadership whose origins in social movements and citizen democracy made it deeply sceptical towards smart urbanism. We analyse how this opened up space for different approaches to using technology in the city while at the same time giving rise to materially very different kinds of smart knowledge configuring technologies emphasizing citizen participation and democratic control of knowledge production. Indeed, political rationalities and smart knowledge configuring technologies intersected and co-evolved, rather than one informing the other unidirectionally.

Journal of Strategy and Management, 2015

Purpose – In recent years, the term “smart city” has attracted a lot of attention from policy makers, business leaders and citizenship in general. Although there is not a unique definition of what a smart city is, it is generally accepted that “smart” urban policies refer to local governments’ initiatives that use information and communication technologies in order to increase the quality of life of their inhabitants while contributing to a sustainable development. So far, “smart city” approaches have generally been related to top-down processes of technology diffusion. The purpose of this paper is to present a broader view on “smart” initiatives to analyze both top-down and bottom-up dynamics in a smart city. The authors argue that these two perspectives are complementary and its combination can reinforce the collaboration between different city stakeholders. Top-down and bottom-up initiatives are not opposed forces but, on the contrary, can have a synergistic effect on the innovation capacity of the city. Both perspectives are illustrated by providing examples of different “smart” aspects in the city of Barcelona: smart districts, open collaborative spaces, infrastructures and open data. Design/methodology/approach – To illustrate the arguments, the authors analyze the case of the city of Barcelona providing examples of top-down and bottom-up initiatives in four different smart city aspects: smart districts, open collaborative spaces, infrastructures and open data. The research method is based on a case study (Yin, 1984). The primary data consisted on interviews to city council representatives as well as managers of local public institutions, like economic development offices, and local organizations like for instance coworking spaces. The authors interviewed also specialists on the innovation history of the city in order to validate the data. In addition, the authors used secondary data such as reports on the 22@, and documentation on the Barcelona innovation policies, as well as doing a compilation of press articles and the online content of the institutional webpages. All together, the authors have followed a data triangulation strategy to seek data validation based on the cross-verification of the analyzed data sources. Findings – The analysis suggests that the top-down and bottom-up perspectives are complementary and their combination can reinforce the collaboration between different city stakeholders. Top-down and bottom-up initiatives are not opposed forces but, on the contrary, can have a synergistic effect on the innovation capacity of the city. Both perspectives are illustrated by providing examples of different “smart” aspects in the city of Barcelona: smart districts, open collaborative spaces, infrastructures and open data. Research limitations/implications – Nevertheless, the analysis has its limitations. Even if the authors have emphasized the importance of the bottom-up initiatives, citizens do not have often the resources to act without governmental intervention. This is the case of services that require high-cost infrastructures or regulatory changes. Also, as it usually happens in the case of disruptive technology, it is hard for citizens to understand the possibilities of its use. In these cases, firms and institutions must play an important role in the first phases of the diffusion of innovations, by informing and incentivizing its use. It is also important to note that some of the emerging usages of technology are confronted to legal or regulatory issues. For instance, distributed and shared Wi-Fi networks might be in opposition to economic interests of internet providers, that often difficult its expansion. It is also the case of services of the sharing economy that represent a menace to established institutions (like the tensions between Uber and taxi companies, or Airbnb and hotels). In these cases, city halls like it is the case in Barcelona, tend to respond to these emergent uses of technology by regulating to ensure protection to existing corporate services. Practical implications – In conclusion, the transformational process that leads a city to become a smart city has to take in consideration the complexity and the plurality of the urban reality. Beyond considering citizens as being users, testers or consumers of technology, local administrations that are able to identify, nourish and integrate the emerging citizens’ initiatives would contribute to the reinforcement of a smart city reality. Originality/value – The contribution of the paper is to go beyond the generalized technologic discourse around smart cities by adding the layer of the citizens’ initiatives.

International Journal of Sustainable Development Research, 2022

The current situation in urban areas and the increasing proportion of the world's population living in cities are leading to massive sustainability problems, which is why buzzwords such as sustainability, environmental protection, global warming, the Internet of Things and smart cities are omnipresent. Taking Vienna and Barcelona as examples, this paper tries to find out, how modern cities deal with these current challenges. The basis for this quantitative content analysis are the so-called "Urban Development Plans" (UDP), which record not only the current situation but also future developments. The UDP can thus be used as a basis for advising politicians by urban planners and serves the political leadership as an instrument or as a decision-making or orientation aid. It can ultimately be concluded that modern cities have a crucial role in sustainable development and thus play a central position in the application of advanced technologies to support sustainable urbanisation. In short, urban growth raises a variety of issues that threaten the sustainability of cities, as it places a huge burden on urban systems and ecosystem services. Clearly, major advances in urban design are needed to address these problems and specific issues. In this regard, modern cities are required to develop or implement more innovative solutions and sophisticated approaches, as this is necessary not only to monitor cities, but rather to understand, analyse and plan them. Ultimately, this work tries to find out whether there are differences in the smart city strategies of Vienna and Barcelona, or whether both citiesalthough spatially separated-have the same points on their agenda.

In recent years, the Smart City has become a very popular concept amongst policy makers and urban planners. In a nutshell, the Smart City refers to projects and planning strategies that aim to join up new forms of inclusive and low-carbon economic growth based on the knowledge economy through the deployment of information and communication technologies. However, at the same time as new urban Smart interventions are being designed and applied, insufficient attention has been paid to how these strategies are inserted into the wider political economy and, in particular, the political ecology of urban transformation. Therefore, in this paper we critically explore the implementation of the Smart City, tracing how the ‘environment’ and environmental concerns have become an organising principle in Barcelona’s Smart City strategy. Through an urban political ecology prism we aim to critically reflect upon the contradictions of the actually existing Smart City in Barcelona and how Smart discourses and practices might be intentionally or unintentionally mobilised in ways that serve to depoliticise urban redevelopment and environmental management. The paper stresses the need to repoliticise the debates on the Smart City and put citizens back at the centre of the urban debate.

Public Management Review, 2020

Sustainability, 2020

The ‘smart city’ concept has been wrought from distinctive theoretical underpinnings. Initially, this term was used to describe those cities that utilized advanced computerized systems to provide a safe, secure, green, and efficient transportation services and utilities to meet the demands of their citizens (Caragliu, Del Bo & Nijkamp, 2011; Hall, Bowerman and Braverman, Taylor, Todosow and Von Wimmersperg, 2000). A thorough literature review suggests that several cities are already using disruptive technologies, including advanced, integrated materials, sensors, electronics, and networks, among others, which are interfaced with computerized systems to improve their economic, social and environmental sustainability (Camilleri, 2015, 2017; Deakin and Al Waer, 2011; Hall et al., 2000). These cities are increasingly relying on data-driven technologies, as they gather and analyze data from urban services including transportation and utilities (Ramaswami, Russell, Culligan, Sharma and Kumar, 2016; Gretzel, Sigala, Xiang and Koo, 2015). Their underlying objective is to improve the quality of life of their citizens (Ratten, 2017; Buhalis and Amaranggana, 2015). Hence, ‘smart cities’ have introduced technological innovations to address contingent issues like traffic congestion; air pollution; waste management; loss of biodiversity and natural habitat; energy generation, conservation and consumption; water leakages and security, among other matters (Camilleri, 2019; 2014; Ahvenniemi, Huovila, Pinto-Seppä and Airaksinen, 2017; Ratten and Dana, 2017; Ratten, 2017). Ecologically-advanced local governments and municipalities are formulating long-term sustainable policies and strategies. Some of them are already capturing data through multisensor technologies via wireless communication networks in real time (Bibri, 2018; Bibri and Krogstie, 2017). Very often, they use the Internet’s infrastructure and a wide range of smart data-sensing devices, including radio frquency identification (RFID), near-field communication (NFC), global positioning systems (GPS), infrared sensors, accelerometers, and laser scanners (Bibri, 2018). A few cities have already started to benefit from the Internet of Things (IoT) technology and its sophisticated network that consists of sensor devices and physical objects including infrastructure and natural resources (Zanella, Bui, Castellani, Vangelista and Zorzi, 2014). Several cities are crunching big data to better understand how to make their cities smarter, more efficient, and responsive to today’s realities (Mohanty, Choppali and Kougianos, 2016; Ramaswami et al., 2016). They gather and analyze a vast amount of data and intelligence on urban aspects, including transportation issues, citizen mobility, traffic management, accessibility and protection of cultural heritage and/or environmental domains, among other areas (Angelidou, Psaltoglou, Komninos, Kakderi, Tsarchopoulos and Panori, 2018; Ahvenniemi et al., 2017). The latest advances in technologies like big data analytics and decision-making algorithms can support local governments and muncipalities to implement the circular economy in smart cities (Camilleri, 2019). The data-driven technologies enable them them to reduce their externalities. They can monitor and control the negative emissions, waste, habitat destruction, extinction of wildlife, etc. Therefore, the digital innovations ought to be used to inform the relevant stakeholders in their strategic planning and development of urban environments (Camilleri, 2019; Allam & Newman, 2018; Yigitcanlar and Kamruzzaman, 2018; Angelidou et al. ,2018; Caragliu et al., 2011). In this light, we are calling for theoretical and empirical contributions that are focused on the creation, diffusion, as well as on the utilization of technological innovations and information within the context of smart, sustainable cities. This Special Issue will include but is not limited to the following topics: • Advancing the circular economy agenda in smart cities; • Artificial intelligence and machine learning in smart cities; • Blockchain technologies in smart cities; • Green economy of smart cities; • Green infrastructure in smart cities; • Green living environments in smart cities; • Smart cities and the sustainable environment; • Smart cities and the use of data-driven technologies; • Smart cities and the use of the Internet of Things (IoT); • Sustainable energy of smart cities; • Sustainable financing for infrastructural development in smart cities; • Sustainable housing in smart cities; • Sustainable transportation in smart cities; • Sustainable tourism in smart cities; • Technological innovation and climate change for smart cities; • Technological innovation and the green economy of smart cities; • Technological innovation and the renewable energy in smart cities; • Technological innovation and urban resilience of smart cities; • Technological innovation for the infrastructural development of smart cities; • The accessibility and protection of the cultural heritage in smart cities; • The planning and design of smart cities; • The quality of life of the citizens and communities living in smart cities; • Urban innovation in smart cities; • Urban planning that integrates the smart city development with the greening of the environment; • Urban planning and data driven technologies of smart cities. Prof. Dr. Mark Anthony Camilleri Prof. Dr. Vanessa Ratten Guest Editors

Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 2012