Smart cities: a quiet revolution

“Looking at the history of technology literally puts us in our place by suggesting that rather than ending time, space, and social relations as we have known them, the rise of cyberspace amounts to just another in a series of interesting, but ultimately banal exercises in the extension of human tools. They are potentially very profound extensions, but not enough to warrant claims about the end of anything, other than the end of a chapter in a seemingly never ending story. Indeed, the history of technology suggests that this would be far from the first time that we have laid claim to the end of history, the end of geography, and the end of politics. Practically every substantial technological change has been accompanied by similar claims. The chant goes on: This changes everything. Nothing will ever be the same again. History is over, again and again and again.”

Vincent Mosco (2004) The digital sublime. Myth, power and cybersapce, MIT Press, Cabridge

The beginning of the XXI century has deployed different technological developments in the urban and their potential for transforming cities today can barely be glimpsed. We are not good at advancing the future, nor at foreseeing the unintended consequences of progress. In any case, we know that all the Internet-based technologies are already the protagonists of urban innovations and the most significant technological advances in the coming years. The internet of the future is the framework for developments related to the Internet of things, cloud computing, big data or sensor technology. Its applications reach all scales, from changes in personal life habits to the transformation of business models in almost any industry. Likewise, any of the features of mobile technology-driven changing habits are eminently urban and shape new patterns in a process of social engineering, and have little to do with traditional habits a couple of decades ago. Lives under this scenario are a continual succession of digital traces from individuals, human groups or entire communities that are captured, stored, processed and exploited, remodelling preferences, customizations and adjustments in real time, while algorithmic regulations and other sorts of black boxes broaden their influence in everyday lives and decisions.

Delivering a Computer in 1957  Photograph via Norfolk Record Office 

These changes are usually presented as a profound revolution. Spectacularization of technology (or, at least, a particular set of technology developments) in the media tends to draw a revolution taking place. However, despite the enormous changes that have led to the panoply of advances associated with the networked society, this transition has been, if not stealthily, at least quiet and peaceful. Faced with the temptation to identify the emergence of the smart city as a new paradigm in urban management and understanding of urban reality, we must recognize that the digital urban layer has been present in academia and thinking about cities for a couple of decades at least. On the other hand, the digital colonization has occurred incrementally and gradually rather than in an explosive way. As individuals, organisations and societies we have incorporated into our daily work, our daily experience, our material means of life and our experienced spaces different devices, quite peacefully and intuitively.

The story of the leapfrog  into the smart city is much less epic than how it is usually depicted, and has more to do with a succession of steady, progressive, incremental and intuitive changes on our habits, conveniences, etc. Frequently, they have physically modified our streets and have transformed our social relations. As such, they have colonized virtually every sphere of our life following a process that began decades ago. It is, therefore, a vibrantly contemporary change. The presence of software in everyday life burst long ago in various fields (air navigation, business organization, financial flows and domestic equipment). This presence is now normal in our pockets, in the public space or public service management. The main jump has derived from the invasive nature of the functions of smart devices, which have individualized capacity intermediating through the network in the most common and even intimate activities of the connected  human life. Of course, this is a massive shift that has equipped us  with new capabilities (big data), through new devices (smartphones) or interfaces (internet of things) and new infrastructure (connectivity, data centers). However, essentially all occurred out of sight, in a diluted form in the sum of small daily acts that hold our existence.

La ciudad mecánica (y su código oculto)

Uno de los aspectos que más se destacan de los sistemas inteligentes es su capacidad de actuar de manera automática a partir de modelizaciones, simulaciones y algoritmos. La inteligencia ambiental nos propone automatismos en los dispositivos que intermedian nuestra experiencia en la ciudad. La ciudad será así capaz de personalizarse en tiempo real, de maximizar la eficiencia en el funcionamiento de los servicios públicos y desencadenar pequeñas adaptaciones en función de las circunstancias del entorno. Las infraestructuras y los servicios de la ciudad se abren a un horizonte en el que serán capaces de anticipar sus especificaciones, sus funcionalidades y sus estándares de prestación de servicio a situaciones modelizadas previamente. La ciudad te escucha.

How Might Streetlights become Smart Lights? 

Pensemos en un ejemplo relativamente inocuo: los sistemas de iluminación inteligente. La lógica funcional de estos sistemas reside en que son capaces de encender o apagar el alumbrado público punto a punto en función de si en la calle hay unas necesidades concretas de iluminación. Estas pasarían por la detección a través de sensores de presencia, bien de personas andando por la calle a la noche, bien de automóviles en el viario. Su racionalidad, por otro lado, estriba en la capacidad de dotar de eficiencia operativa a este sistema, al optimizar el consumo energético y al reducir en consecuencia las emisiones derivadas de la producción de la energía consumida. Hasta aquí, el escenario se presenta intuitivamente neutro.

Sin embargo, la lógica completa del sistema esconde una normatividad que escapa de lo puramente técnico: para operar, este sistema necesita definir una serie de escenarios reales con x resoluciones pre-fijadas paraque actúe y se adapte a ellos. Así, necesita establecer qué se considera presencia, qué actividades permite iluminar, bajo qué régimen horario actúa, etc. ¿Es suficiente una persona? ¿Qué tipos de personas? ¿Necesitará moverse esta persona? ¿Qué pasa si la persona se queda quieta durante un tiempo? ¿A qué velocidad? ¿Reconocerá a una persona andando despacio? ¿Y si la persona no quiere ser iluminada? ¿Reconocerá cualquier tipo de vehículo? ¿Y si pasa un gato? ¿Y si es un grupo de personas haciendo botellón? ¿Durante cuánto tiempo permanecerá iluminada? ¿Cuántas se iluminarán a la vez? Respondamos a estas preguntas con situaciones concretas y veremos que las respuestas no son tan sencillas o, mejor, las respuestas tendrán como consecuencia normalizar unos usos del espacio público frente a otros. Sumemos a estas escenas tecnologías complementarias como la detección facial, la integración con sistemas de alerta policial, su vinculación a la posesión de una tarjeta de identificación como ciudadano, etc., y las condiciones bajo las que opera un sencillo sensor instalado a tres metros del suelo en una farola abre importantes incógnitas sobre los límites de lo posible en la ciudad. Esas incógnitas forman parte del código de diseño de estos objetos, un código no técnico.

Instalación Too smart city para la exhibición Toward the sentient city  

En efecto, la simulación del comportamiento esperado de la implícitamente deriva en un juicio normativo sobre lo que es esperable, lo que el sistema de simulación considera como normal. En la medida en que los sistemas inteligentes se constituyen como sensibles, es decir, capaces de reaccionar de manera automática ante situaciones concretas, se convierten también en dispositivos de control y de normalización de la vida en la ciudad. A través de la simulación los sistemas aprenden a reproducir comportamientos automáticos que inscriben una separación entre lo normal y lo anormal. Definen con ello patrones de lo que la ciudad permite o lo que la ciudad determina como situaciones y comportamientos susceptibles de protección y aquellos sujetos a control, limitación o represión. Pasemos de la iluminación inteligente a otros equipos de funcionamiento automático (puertas que se abren según determinados parámetros, tarjetas que te dan acceso a determinados servicios, sistemas de videovigilancia, dispositivos que captan tus datos,...) y usos modelizados (drones para la seguridad pública, vehículos sin conductor, sensores de acceso, etc.) y las incertidumbres éticas se multiplican.

Tesis. Imaginarios tecnológicos en la ciudad conectada

Como ya he ido comentado alguna vez en el blog, desde hace unos meses estoy trabajando en la tesis doctoral. Viejo proyecto aparcado allá por 2002 tras realizar los cursos de doctorado, con esta nueva fase profesional y personal se abría una oportunidad para tener un aliciente para escribir la tesis. Cosas de los diferentes planes de estudios que ha habido mientras estaba fuera del mundo universitario, ¡qué mejor aliciente que tener el plazo de febrero de 2016 para completarla!

No es una ambición académica. No me interesa nada la carrera académica, entre otras cosas porque estar fuera de ella durante tanto tiempo te convierte en un completo outsider y, esta es mi experiencia e impresión, una vez que estás fuera (y he estado fuera durante doce años), las barreras de entrada son absolutas. Al menos, tal como hemos montado el sistema aquí.

Es más una ambición por tener una excusa para investigar, leer y escribir de manera más organizada. Echo la vista atrás y este blog ha sido una magnífica herramienta para mis investigaciones, siempre de manera intuitiva, desorganizada y poco sistemática. Pero el paso de los años ha ido dejando un poso que quería aprovechar para estructurar mejor algunas cosas. Porque, a pesar de estar fuera de la academia y haberme dedicado a esa cosa genérica llamada consultoría en cualquiera de sus formas, me siento principalmente investigador. Investigador simplemente como resumen de un impulso personal primario: leer y escribir antes de tener una opinión formada (y ni siquiera por tenerla). Investigador artesanal quizá.

Pero también hay una razón más práctica. De la misma forma que no veo razón alguna para aspirar a entrar en la universidad en España, la tesis doctoral es un salvoconducto, un título habilitante, un identificador, un pasaporte. Es así. Te reconocen como doctor o nada. Y en estos meses, en dos momentos la oportunidad de salir a trabajar fuera se ha presentado muy cercana y, entre otras razones, no tener la tesis ha supuesto un obstáculo para algo que tarde o temprano se dará tal como andan las cosas por aquí. De mientras, la tesis es un incentivo, una excusa para construir una rutina de investigación y desarrollar un algo con sentido. Así de anti-académico siento que es el inicio, pero suficientemente estimulante.

Al mismo tiempo, también apostaría ahora a que no la termino, al menos en el plazo previsto. Estoy convencido, pero tengo que auto-engañarme. No importa si no llego. Sólo por el esfuerzo que está suponiendo en forma de producción de textos y de solidificar ideas, ya está valiendo la pena. Pero es cierto que en el día a día, la rutina es difícil de conseguir. Y el tiempo también es escaso entre viajes, proyectos y cuidados. De la misma forma, cambiar el registro a un formato y a un tono académico es casi una tortura, acostumbrado como estoy a formatos más ligeros y menos encorsetados. Por eso también creo que estoy aún en modo muy poco académico y creo que en el fondo, el problema no será el plazo sino simplemente llegar a la conclusión de que “esto no es una tesis doctoral”. Y tampoco importará mucho.

Otra cuestión ha sido elegir el tema de la tesis. Inicialmente aposté por el tema del urbanismo adaptativo y, en concreto, las formas institucionales y normativas de flexibilizar el urbanismo para admitir usos transitorios y otra serie de apropiaciones del espacio y el equipamiento público en desuso. Pero durante el proceso para matricular la tesis –durante el cual, por cierto, descubrí que hasta algo tan simple se puede convertir en una gran aventura en la universidad española si pretendes cambiar de facultad, de estudios de procedencia, etc., hasta el punto de perder un buen tiempo en el intento- he estado centrado en otros temas. En especial, la preparación de dos artículos (Smart cities of the future? It is already happening, but not in the way we are being told y La desilusión de las smart cities) me llevo a cambiar de idea, sobre todo cuando el último fue tomando unas dimensiones mayores de las esperadas.

Así que definitivamente, desde hace unos meses y posiblemente durante los próximos diez, una buena parte del tiempo irá dedicada a trabajar sobre Imaginarios tecnológicos en la ciudad conectada. Un título aún provisional, pero suficiente para centrar el tema.

El planteamiento de la tesis se basa en la revisión del discurso subyacente en la visión predominante de las smart cities como imaginario tecnológico dominante en la ciudad contemporánea. El objetivo principal es ofrecer un marco de análisis para comprender las preconcepciones que están detrás de esta determinada visión del papel de las tecnologías digitales en las ciudades. Este imaginario discursivo y práctico remite a la eficiencia en el consumo de recursos, la eficiencia en la gestión de los servicios públicos, la automatización y predicción de comportamientos y necesidades o la reducción de la complejidad urbana a una serie de variables críticas, aspectos centrales en la configuración de las políticas urbanas.

El trabajo propone una lectura desde las políticas públicas sobre la inteligencia urbana y el reconocimiento de una utilización de las tecnologías digitales que ya está sucediendo y que no pasa necesariamente por la mediación de las instituciones -ni forma parte de los proyectos de inversión-marketing de las smart cities- pero que ofrece nuevas posibilidades de colaboración y organización colectiva aprovechando las tecnologías en red para construir un imaginario tecnológico cercano a la experiencia cotidiana de la vida en la ciudad.

Percibo que desarrollar un trabajo así fuera de la vida universitaria (con sus congresos, seminarios, publicación de artículos, docencia,…) dificulta mucho las cosas. Las opciones para contrastar con otras personas, para discutir o descubrir nuevas ideas, para encontrar plazos intermedios a través de los cuáles avanzar nuevos textos, disponer de contactos habituales con otros centros de investigación,…son opciones que, sin disponer de ellas, me parecen muy útiles o, al menos, un aliciente para no distraerse y mantener el pulso. Alone in the wilderness. A cambio, supongo que tengo que buscarme mis propios espacios. Las conferencias siempre han sido un buen aliciente, al igual que los artículos que me piden de vez en cuando. En este último caso, el compromiso de aportar un artículo para el próximo número de Arte y políticas de identidad: La ciudad como interfaz: arte, juego y tecnología en el espacio público, es la principal excusa a corto plazo, de manera que el verano, igual que el año pasado, y contra todo pronóstico, se convierte en un periodo productivo para avanzar. También la participación en algunos de los proyectos en los que estoy involucrado (UrbanIxD, Madrid Laboratorio Urbano,…) sirven igualmente no sólo para “quitarme tiempo” para la tesis, sino para poder tener pequeños espacios de relación con otras personas, colectivos, instituciones y profesionales que son inspiración y aliciente para seguir avanzando.

Como aspiración, sí me gustaría que durante los próximos meses encuentre la forma de organizar algún tipo de actividad alrededor de la investigación en forma de seminarios o encuentros de trabajo. De nuevo, algo que intuyo sería mucho más fácil dentro de la universidad, pero no es el caso. En un mundo ideal, sería genial poder contar con un espacio de trabajo y discusión con algunos autores que están influyendo mucho en el avance de la investigación, para poder discutir y avanzar conceptos que estoy trabajando. Pero, de mientras, algunos encuentros como el último para el booksprint del que salió Urban interaction design: towards city-making me van salvando la papeleta. Por supuesto, también está el director de tesis, Imanol Zubero, que me está poniendo todas las facilidades posibles.

En su momento, pensé en abrir un canal de difusión para abrir la investigación. Sin embargo, por economía de tiempo y salud mental, lo he descartado. Al fin y al cabo, para eso ya está este blog y los diferentes canales que lo alimentan (Tumblr, Delicious, Twitter,…). Seguramente por eso el blog últimamente respira mucho este tema y sería complicarme mucho la vida publicar notas de investigación, reseñas de lecturas y demás en un espacio específico. Pero no descarto que aparezcan de forma esporádica en el blog, sobre todo pensando en ir publicando borradores o avances de algunos capítulos, compartiendo bibliografía, etc.

Así que este es el plan.

Smart cities. Inteligencia al servicio de las personas

Falta un relato de la smart city que ponga sobre la mesa los desafíos sociales y políticos, capaz de hacerse preguntas de modo crítico. Hay que ampliar el concepto para que represente la experiencia de la vida diaria de la ciudadanía.

© Oriol Malet

Tras estos años protagonizando gran parte del debate institucional (en forma de congresos, planes, proyectos piloto, etcétera), la ciudad inteligente no es capaz de explicarse a sí misma de manera comprensible. Pocos conceptos relacionados con la agenda urbana han sido capaces de captar tanta atención en tan poco tiempo y generar tanta confusión para, hoy por hoy, contar casi con tantos descontentos, críticos y escépticos como entusiastas.

Sin duda, el principal éxito de la maquinaria discursiva que ha promovido las smart cities es haberse hecho un hueco en la agenda de las políticas urbanas en un periodo de tiempo muy breve. Sin embargo, aún falta un relato comprensible y cercano para la ciudadanía, que asiste entre la indiferencia y el cansancio a un nuevo lenguaje que los políticos han asumido con sorprendente facilidad como nuevo recurso de comunicación pública. Así lo reconoce Júlia López, responsable de proyectos de la dirección de smart cities del Ayuntamiento de Barcelona, al plantear lo siguiente: “Tiene mucho más sentido hablar de tecnologías de transformación de la ciudad. Se debe justificar muy bien por qué la ciudad dedica tiempo y recursos a las smart cities, enfatizando la voluntad de transformación urbana”.

Como balance provisional, sin desdeñar los proyectos e iniciativas que realmente han conseguido ponerse en marcha, tenemos un gran revuelo en torno al papel de la tecnología en la ciudad y, en paralelo, un gran desconcierto sobre qué significan las smart cities en la vida cotidiana. Al menos así puede ser percibido por quienes se han acercado a esta cuestión y no han sabido encontrar realidades materializables más allá de los grandes conceptos en los que se mueve la narrativa de lo smart. Su génesis es explicada por Paco González (arquitecto en Radarq, profesor de los programas de Gestión de la Ciudad y Urbanismo en la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya): “Es una oferta generada por empresas tecnológicas globales, a la que administraciones y gobiernos municipales responden con estrategias y programas que buscan atraer estas inversiones de capital tecnológico con la intención de desarrollar el sector de la nueva economía de las TIC”.

El desencanto

La principal incógnita es qué papel puede tener la ciudadanía en estas transformaciones, más allá del desencanto ante un relato basado en promesas espectacularizadas a través de renderizados futurísticos, complejos diagramas de servicios urbanos interconectados y un lenguaje técnico muy alejado de la cotidianeidad de la ciudadanía. El discurso subyacente ha situado el foco en las soluciones tecnológicas para automatizar servicios públicos como el transporte, la recogida de residuos, la iluminación, etcétera, y el esfuerzo de explicación ha estado dirigido a convencer a las instituciones de la necesidad de implantar estas soluciones. Pero falta construir un relato de la ciudad inteligente pensada desde el día a día de la ciudadanía, que ponga sobre la mesa los desafíos sociales y políticos y que sea capaz de plantearse preguntas. Paco González se muestra crítico en este sentido: “El modelo es similar al de las grandes infraestructuras de transporte: agentes que generan costes y cambios estructurales que repercuten en la ciudad de la que extraen beneficios, sin involucrar a la ciudadanía en el proceso”.

La vida en las ciudades está cada vez más determinada por las tecnologías digitales. Vivimos en una creciente interacción con objetos, plataformas y dispositivos conectados, muchas veces de manera inconsciente (el rastro digital que dejamos en el Bicing, nuestra imagen captada por una cámara de videovigilancia o el paso de un autobús urbano identificado por un sensor, por ejemplo) y otras de manera más consciente (buscando un lugar a través de la navegación GPS, conectándonos a una red de conexión inalámbrica en una plaza, pagando el estacionamiento, etcétera). Sin embargo, falta abordar críticamente el significado de este rastro digital. En una reciente conferencia en el marco del ciclo Ciudad Abierta, organizado por el Centro de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona (CCCB), Evgeny Morozov planteó algunas claves para afrontar una relectura crítica del significado y las consecuencias subyacentes del discurso dominante en torno a las smart cities, apelando a la necesidad de no abandonar la responsabilidad cívica y el espíritu crítico. Aportaciones recientes en forma de libros como los publicados por Adam Greenfield (Against the smart city) o Anthony Townsend (Smart cities. Big data, civic hackers and the quest for a new utopia) suponen asideros a los que agarrarse para construir un modelo democratizador de relación con las tecnologías inteligentes.

Centralización o ciudadano inteligente

Este escenario de una sociedad conectada es el que la smart city parece querer dominar para transformarlo al máximo en un sistema centralizado, automatizado, adaptable y controlado en tiempo real. Por eso el centro de operaciones inteligente de Río de Janeiro se ha convertido en la representación canónica de esta pretensión. ¿No deberíamos esperar algo más que simple eficacia? Al fin y al cabo, hoy disponemos de tecnologías accesibles, baratas y sencillas para crear soluciones de manera autónoma. ¿No deberían formar parte también del relato de la ciudad inteligente? Sobre esta cuestión, el impulso de modelos de desarrollo abiertos es una de las cuestiones críticas para Júlia López, quien reivindica el papel de los ayuntamientos para que los proyectos se diseñen desde “el uso de estándares abiertos no invasivos, que garanticen la privacidad de los ciudadanos al mismo tiempo que homogeneicen soluciones en todas las ciudades del mundo. No tiene sentido que cada ciudad disponga de sus propias soluciones y que estas no sirvan en otros lugares. Las ciudades tienen un rol muy importante en ese sentido frente a las empresas y a los ciudadanos”.

Disponer de estas tecnologías abiertas está impulsando el redescubrimiento de los bienes comunes, el espacio de responsabilidad compartida. La esfera digital se ha instalado de forma sigilosa, pero transformando radicalmente la capacidad social de intervenir en ámbitos como la generación y la distribución de información, la organización de formas de gestión colaborativa, la creación de soluciones tecnológicas para problemas locales o la intermediación en el debate público. Acción colectiva, autoorganización y cocreación son las bases de una mirada social al rol transformador de las tecnologías de la smart city, plasmada a través de proyectos relacionados con la ciencia ciudadana, los laboratorios digitales –en sus diferentes formas de medialabs, hacker spaces, etcétera– o las intervenciones digitales en fachadas y otros elementos de interacción.

La ciudad inteligente no necesita ser convertida en un espectáculo de soluciones mágicas inaccesibles a la ciudadanía, ni en una epopeya hacia el sometimiento a las reglas del control automático. Lo que necesitamos es construir una posición crítica como sociedad, un esfuerzo que, por ejemplo, plantea con ambición la exposición del CCCB “Big Bang Data”, una evidencia de la necesidad de escarbar en la superficie para confrontar el potencial del big data con sus desafíos, peligros y alternativas.

Artículo publicado originalmente en el número 91 de la revista Barcelona Metrópolis

Intelligence at the service of people - New essay (Barcelona Metropolis)

Some months ago I was asked to write a contribution to the new edition of Barcelona Metropolis magazine. This monograph is devoted to smart cities and includes a number of articles with different perspectives exploring the benefits and perils for urban living. Smart cities, technology with people in mind comprises several contributions with a particular focus on Barcelona, but they can be also illustrative of the generic discussions on smart cities:
• The whole city on your mobile, by Anna Carrió
• Protocols for developing new cities, by Joaquin Elcacho
• Not only smart, but a creative talent, by Karma Peiró
• Technologies for improving logistics and travels, by Mònica L. Ferrado
• Doctor Smart on the phone, by Mònica L. Ferrado
• The challenges of Smart Barcelona, by Albert Cuesta
• Smart cities with no future?, by Gemma Galdón Clavell
• Intelligence at the service of people, by Manu Fernández

As it is introduced:

In a short space of time, the concept of the smart city has ceased to be technological fantasy and has gained a social dimension. Smart has become the inescapable prefix for labelling areas of our lives ranging from transport to health, logistics, phones and waste management. Today a smart city is synonymous with a connected city, conceived for sustainability and energy efficiency, but also oriented towards effective knowledge transmission. Barcelona, Mobile World Capital and promoter of the City Protocol, already occupies fourth position in the 2013 Smart City ranking and stands out as an example of good practice in the field of urban intelligence.
The future of our cities will inevitably be smart, but we cannot ignore the uncertainty hanging over this new world. Smart cities feed on personal data that make each one of our actions valuable information. The crossover of these data opens up new possibilities for synchronising people and improving public services, but it could also become a means of control. At the same time that cross-cutting smart policies are emerging, we hear critics calling for a democratic model for smart technologies.

My article, which is finally entitled Intelligence at the service of people (Spanish version here), tries to set the case for a new understanding and a new narrative on the intersection of digital technologies and urban life in the networked society.

There is a need for a story about the smart city that puts the social and political challenges on the table, and can ask critical questions about our cities. We have to widen the concept so that it can represent the experience of citizens’ daily lives.

After taking centre stage in the institutional debate in recent years (in the form of conferences, plans, pilot projects, etc.), the smart city is still unable to explain itself in a comprehensible way. Few concepts relating to the urban agenda have been able to attract as much attention in such a short time and generate as much confusion, and today there are nearly as many dissidents, critics and sceptics as there are enthusiasts.

Undoubtedly, the main success of the discursive machinery promoting smart cities is having found its way so quickly onto the agenda of urban policies. However, there is still a need for an understandable, user-friendly narrative for the public, who have reacted with a weary indifference to this new language, which politicians have adopted surprisingly easily as a new resource for public communications. This is acknowledged by Júlia López, the head of the Barcelona City Council’s smart cities department, when she suggests that “it makes much more sense to talk about technologies for transforming the city. If the city is going to dedicate time and resources to smart cities, this must be justified very well, with an emphasis on the desire to transform the urban setting.”
A rough assessment of the current situation, without dismissing the projects and initiatives it has really been possible to start up, shows a great deal of fuss about the role of technology in the city, and at the same time a great deal of confusion about what smart cities actually mean for everyday life. At least, this is how it might be perceived by anyone approaching the subject who has not found anything tangible beyond the big-picture concepts driving the narrative of the smart city. Its origins are explained by Paco González (architect at Radarq, lecturer on the Town Management and Urban Planning programmes at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya): “It is an offer created by global technology companies, and municipal administrations and governments respond to it with strategies and programmes which seek to attract these investments of technological capital, with the intention of developing the new ICT economy.”

Disenchantment
The main unknown quantity is what will be the role of the public in these transformations, beyond their disenchantment with a story based on dazzling promises illustrated with futuristic computer renderings, complex diagrams of interconnected urban services, and a technical language far removed from the everyday experience of the citizen. The underlying discourse has placed the spotlight on technological solutions to automate public services such as transport, rubbish collection, lighting, etc., and explanations have been focused on persuading institutions of the need to implement these solutions. But it is necessary to construct a story of the smart city from the point of view of the everyday lives of the public, which puts social and political challenges on the table, and which can ask questions about itself. Paco González is critical on this question: “The model is similar to that of major infrastructure for transport: players who generate costs and structural changes affecting the city, which they profit from, without involving the citizens in the process.”

Life in cities is increasingly determined by digital technologies. We live in an accelerating state of interaction with connected objects, platforms and devices, sometimes without being aware of it (the digital traces we leave in Bicing, our image captured by a surveillance camera, or a city bus going by which is identified by a sensor, for example) and sometimes more consciously (looking for a place using GPS, connecting to a Wi-Fi network in a square, paying for parking, etc.). However, we lack a critical approach to the meaning of these digital traces. In a recent conference as part of the Open City cycle organised by the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB), Evgeny Morozov suggested some keys for approaching a critical re-reading of the meaning and consequences underlying the dominant discourse about smart cities, appealing to the need not to abandon civic responsibility and the critical spirit. Recent contributions in the form of books such as Adam Greenfield’s Against the Smart City or Anthony Townsend’s Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia provide tools we can use for building a democratising model of the relationship with smart technology.

Centralisation or smart citizen
This scenario of a connected society is what the smart city seems to want to master in order to transform it into a totally centralised, automated, adaptable system which can be controlled in real time. That is why the smart Operations Centre of Rio de Janeiro has become the canonical image of this aspiration. Shouldn’t we expect something more than just efficiency? After all, today we all have access to cheap, simple technology enabling us to create our own solutions. Shouldn’t they also form part of the smart city story? On this question, the driving of open development models is one of the critical questions for Júlia López, who defends the role of city councils so that projects can be designed based on “the use of non-invasive open standards, guaranteeing the privacy of citizens while standardising solutions in all the cities in the world. It makes no sense for each city to have its own solutions, which cannot be used in other places. Cities have a very important role in this sense, in relation to companies and to the citizens.”

Having these open technologies is driving the rediscovery of common goods, the space of shared responsibility. The digital sphere has arrived quietly, but radically transforming society’s capacity to intervene in areas such as generating and distributing information, organising forms of collaborative management, creating technological solutions for local problems, or mediating in public debate. Collective action, self-organisation and co-creation are the foundations of a socially-aware approach to the transformational role of smart city technologies, in the form of projects relating to the science of cities, digital laboratories in their different forms of medialabs, hacker spaces, etc., digital interventions on facades and other interactive elements.

The smart city does not need to be made into a spectacle of magical solutions out of reach of the public, or an odyssey towards submission to the rules of automatic control. What we need is to construct a critical position as a society, for example, the ambitious proposals of the CCCB exhibition “Big Bang Data”, evidence of the need to look beyond the surface to confront the potential of big data, with its challenges, dangers and alternatives.

Barcelona Metropolis N. 91 - English edition
Barcelona Metropolis N. 91 - Spanish edition

Images by © Oriol Malet

Against the smart city, by Adam Greenfield (review)

While we wait for the final version of The city is here for you to use, the new book by Adam Greenfield, we can enjoy Against the smart city as the first part on what is coming next, and serves as a fantastic sneak peek. Adam´s writing style is direct, precise and brave and it´s no secret he is one of those guys I really rely on when thinking about the intersection of public life and networked technologies.

Against the smart city is a sort of The Emperor's New Clothes outlook on smart cities: it is brave enough to put into words the feelings of the discontents of the smart cities rhetoric and dares to be incisive in a way that could be understood as provocative. Some may accuse this pamphlet is anti-technologist, but this would be a false and unfair impression. On the contrary, just because Greenfield wants to explore the role of technology in cities, understanding the narrative in this sharp way is the way to be realistic about that role.

The pamphlet is apparently based on language dissection, as it´s been composed analyzing literal claims, commercial brochures, presentations and reports by the main companies protagonist of one of the best examples of agenda-setting in public policies. But it is not a semantic scrutiny, but a profound discursive scanning, which is not the same. So what?, can you think. Is there any use in taking the time to read between the lines of the channels that are serving to widespread a particular, concrete, partial and specific notion of what role can play technology in our cities (the hegemonic smart city narrative)?  Yes, sure, definitely, more than ever. We need to take the time for this. Precisely because we have the option to make the best use of technology for better cities, a wiser discourse is needed to shape the way we design, create and deploy technology in our cities in a way that serves people to enjoy the benefits of them. Accordingly, this work is a great contribution to deconstruct the fundamentals of smart cities assumptions in order to find a more meaningful vision (and I guess the complete The city is here for you to use will be the answer for that).

In case you are one of those discontents not buying into the banalized vision of smart cities, the text will give you a complete map of why you get nervous when you hear the "S" word. This is my case. For years, the smart city discourse has been to me a permanent confusing set of terminology and concepts linked to premises I do not really find their place in my idea of urban living. During the last few months I have been working on six underlying assumptions of the smart city discourse, but Adam´s work frames this critique into a complete set of premises that make up the canonical smart city, from the generic use of the idea of cities to the subjacent political ideas smart cities comprise, but he also explores the pretended neutrality or the flawed pursuit of efficiency. And, as an overarching conclusion, propositions 12 and 13 really hit the nail on the head: smart cities have little enough to do with cities and are associated with the modernist urban planning features of the twentieth century.

In fact, I find techno-enthusiasm vs. techno-scepticism is a wrong dichotomy, in case you approach Against the smart city in such a way (and, obviously, anything related to the implications of technology in our daily life). It is the kind of surface accusation if you raise concerns, warning or just new questions when dealing with the widespread notion of smart cities. Then you feel like a killjoy in the celebration of the smart city. To me, the option –if there is really a dichotomy-  is about adding or not a sense of conflict, critique, dubious mindset to have a full picture of it, instead of assuming the spectacularization of cities through a superficial understanding of the consequences of smart technologies in terms of political priorities, privacy and security concerns, inequality, citizens´ freedom rights, public spaces, democratic accountability, etc. This is what cities are all about, constantly, permanently throughout time. Hiding these questions behind the curtain of an apparatus of de-ideologised language, bird’s eye view renderings from Songdo, Masdar and PlanIT Valley (the three cases that epitomize the ideals of smart city proponents), and the way this narrative reproduces itself seem to be functional to add obscurity to an always open public debate on the kind of cities we want and the implications of technologies in our society.

“Every technology and every ensemble of technologies encodes a hypothesis about human behaviour, and the smart city is no different”, Greenfield claims. And this almost obvious cautious statement should be enough to read the pamphlet and explore it as a way to understand “what kind of place the smart city is” and what options do we have for our collective life in cities. And to do so, we need to dedicate more efforts to critically examine what kind of society we want to build and what contribution from networked technologies can we expect. You don´t need, of course, to agree on Adam Greenfield´s whole proposition to read this work. It clearly serves as an open invitation to step back for a while in the overblown and speedy machinery of smart cities.

BTW, with this one, after Anthony Townsend´s book, my plan reaches two out of three. Now it´s time for Martijn.

Smart cities. Big data, civic hackers and the quest for new utopia (book review)

It has been a long wait since Anthony Townsend announced he was working on a book on smart cities, but Smart cities. Big data, civic hackers and the quest for new utopia is here now. Some weeks ago it was made public and I spent the last few days reading it and jotting down almost every page. It is definitely a must-read book if you do not easily buy into the most established narrative of smart cities and feel the need to go beyond to explore what they really mean.

One of the most remarkable things about the book is that it comprises most of the names, authors, cities, companies, projects and research efforts that have played a role in influencing and shaping this trend in the last years from different perspectives. Thus, the book serves as a great overview for those approaching this field for the first time, but also for those who want to step back and put some perspective and what has been going on in this messy debate. In such a way, the book stands for a sort of archaeology work, from the first corporation that moved into smart cities as their new business strategy to the research groups, activists and grassroots movement tinkering digitally-driven local solutions.

More profoundly, Townsend makes the case for understanding the implications of the panoply of technologies involved in the smart city movement in an alternative way to the more mainstream one. Anecdotes and data illustrate a well-balanced set of reasonable doubts and forceful assertions, drawing a solid claim for move forward understanding of the role of citizens in this scenario of situated technologies. This potential is addressed considering the current maturity and promising emergent technologies, but particularly through a broad perspective of the different dimensions involved: the context for flagship projects like Songdo and also its lack of accomplishment, the rising market of smart cities and the role big companies are playing in defining a supply-based market where the demand is dubious in the terms these companies are profiling it (with a special mention here to the history of IBM, how they reached to smart cities, the underlying concepts behind their strategy, and, again, their most celebrated project, the Intelligent Operations Center in Rio de Janeiro, a precise dissection of its flaws and its pretended non-ideological model of city management), the limits of system models based on urban computing (and a clear explanation that the myth of quantitative urbanism is only enjoying a new comeback after previous failures in urban studies decades before), insightful comments on the role urban planning should take as a discipline able to connect the dots of the diverse implications of urban living and how cities work in a debate excessively dominated by engineers, a careful examination of widely spread approaches to a new science of cities (yes, Geoffrey West and his famous TED talk deserve  a revision),...

The book also navigates into more propositive arguments picking up trends, projects and concepts around that quest for a new utopia in which civic hacking can make a difference with detailed descriptions of the origin and impact of some significant projects working from a more civic-oriented perspective. Here again, you will enjoy some great stories (basically placed in U.S.) of civic hacking that exemplify the impact of the mix of open technologies, the will to solve local needs and certain collaborative contexts. Some familiar names of people and organisations that illustrate the planet of civic laboratories Townsend has been suggesting in the last few year. For example, the chapter on “Reinventing city hall” is a brilliant summary of the kind of problems forward thinking cities are facing: from market barriers from big companies to the risks of experimenting with smart technologies (I am glad to see how his analysis of the weaknesses of smart city apps contest model perfectly matches the kind of assumptions and critiques that were behind the UrbApps project and my assessment of hackathons), from the benefits and perils of open data strategies to the inefficiencies of urban innovation.

The book turns out to be a warning notice on undesired scenarios (Chapter 9, “Buggy, brittle and bugged” is dedicated to dysfunctional smart technologies –errors, unintended social consequences and, what is worse, deliberate anti-democratic uses of these technologies such as mass urban surveillance- but the whole book is full of cautionary assertions) and demonstrates clearly how these consequences are being intentionally hidden from public debate in the banalized version of smart cities. And naturally, the book concludes with a sum-up of crucial positions towards “a new civics for a smart century”, an invitation for all those involved in designing and delivering today´s cities (yes, there is no need to wait for the future), this is, all of us in the end, not only city leaders, geeks or urban planners, to take the best of mobile and networked technologies and make them work for freedom, quality of life, equality and creativity.

Anthony Townsend, among others, has been an inspiration all these years and some parts of the book perfectly recapitulate some of his previous articles and talks maybe you are familiar with. But here is a detailed, comprehensive and rounded proposition from a positive view of existing cities and a contextualized use of technologies in cities. Top-down visions are spreading a feeling of disappointment or fatigue of smart cities because they are proving to be so far from local councils´s needs and from how people use their cities and this book suggest a different approach in which more diversity of disciplines, broader sense of ownership, better-balanced expectations of what technologies can provide and a mix of engaged citizens should be the core.

I made one out of three so far. Adam Greenfield´s book is the next one.


You can also check some excerpts from the book, but surely won´t be enough:

• Is a city a tree? Foursquare and urban pattern languages 
• Your city is spying on you: From iPhones to cameras, you are being watched right now 
• The Automatic City: The Quest To Create Buildings That Think For Us 
• A Computer for the Rest of Us 
• Smart Cities. What if the smart cities of the future are chock full of bugs? 

Smart cities of the future? It is already happening, but not in the way we are being told

Back in 2008, when the smart city movement was taking its first steps, Robert G. Hollands asked for ‘the real smart city to stand up’ . Since then, there has been an intense and ongoing debate around this subject, as well as a number of projects selfproclaiming their ‘smartness’. Great steps have been taken in some leading cities to explore how we turn digital innovation into public service improvements. But we still face the same question: how do we get citizens involved as active agents of this digital urban revolution?

Let us first consider how cities are described in presentations and commercial brochures. Often, the same common perspective is used— the view from above. When an urban system is viewed in this way, only infrastructures and urban form are visible — these renders do not depict people (and the complexity of social interactions) — smart cities, therefore, become a matter of managing infrastructures, designing cities from scratch and building an illusory feeling that everything can be under control. A city seems to be just a layout of streets, whilst what happens there remains hidden. This focus is sensible, useful and feasible, but only for certain urban issues concerning infrastructure and utility. In a networked society, citizens demand to play a more active and meaningful role.

Scale and perspective determine what you see and how you see it. From the street level, the intersection of urban life and technology raises issues, fields of knowledge, possibilities and consequences. All of this seems to be irrelevant in the smart city visions dominating the current landscape. They are unable to address meaning in terms of citizenship, politics, conflict, public space, etc, — permanent elements of collective life that remain beyond technological sophistication. Pursuing a future of cities based on the aspiration to predict a whole city will, at some point, need to confront the unexpected — the thing that makes life amazing and is part of the real cities we are living in today.

The best thing about digital technologies and their intersection with urban life is that great movements are already happening and there is no need to wait for others (companies or governments) to build new solutions. It is hard to see them from those top-down visions, as they evolve on a distributed basis. It is hard to see them because they are emerging thanks largely to the gathering of activists, technologists and people concerned with the problems of daily life; sometimes out of the spotlight of the current spectacularisation of smart cities. It is happening in places like Medialab Prado in Madrid, a collective innovation laboratory. It takes the form of people coding for social good in platforms such as Code for America, hackathons and other kind of collective action processes that are boosted by digital technologies. It emerges in collaborative processes between local government departments and citizens to improve public services to deliver beta version innovation.

The smart city becomes real when people can deal with open technologies to build their own public infrastructure for environmental monitoring or share a community network of wireless connections. The smart city promises make sense only when citizens become makers and crowdsource manufacturing for the needs of their neighbourhood. Hundreds of cities are making public data open; making it possible for developers, civic hackers and activists to reuse it and thus, broaden public information with new transparency tools. The smart city becomes an arena for smart citizens when we understand the ways people are engaging using available, locally provided, digital tools. Smart cities are what happens in the intersection of urbanism and art exploration through digital media facades and other kind of critical thinking interventions in public space in which citizens engage, build, organise, create and share a common platform— our cities.

All these examples illustrate what the renders can not: a growing number of people working in real places, with real problems, to build real solutions, with the technologies we have in our hands. The transformative power of this opportunity is still in its infancy. The way we engage citizens in the development of smart cities starts by acknowledging what is already going on. There is too much focus on yet-to-come promises based on infrastructures and solutions, oriented to solve only government efficiency needs.

However, the rules have changed in the digital era: thanks to open technologies, people can make real things together. But to do so in our cities, community engagement and strong physical connections are still relevant and the mix of digital knowledge and activism is needed more than ever, as is evidenced in the aforementioned examples. The good thing is that this is already happening, just not in the way mainstream visions predict.

This essay is part of Smart citizens, a book published by Future Everything and edited by Drew Hemment and Anthony Townsend.