Smarter as the New Urban Agenda: A Comprehensive View of the 21st Century City

398 Pages·2016·7.2 MB·English

by  J. Ramon Gil-Garcia

Public Administration and Information
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Volume 11
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J. Ramon Gil-Garcia • Theresa A. Pardo
Taewoo Nam
Editors
Smarter as the New Urban
Agenda
A Comprehensive View of the 21st Century
City
1 3
Editors
J. Ramon Gil-Garcia Theresa A. Pardo
University at Albany Center for Technology in Government
State University of New York University at Albany
Albany State University of New York
New York Albany
USA New York
USA
Centro de Investigacion y Docencia
Economicas (CIDE) Taewoo Nam
Mexico Myongji University
Distrito Federal Seoul
Mexico Korea, Republic of (South Korea)
Public Administration and Information Technology
ISBN 978-3-319-17619-2 ISBN 978-3-319-17620-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-17620-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015946567
Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
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Printed on acid-free paper
Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland is part of Springer Science+Business Media
(www.springer.com)
To my Amores Nadia, Dante, and Julieta, with
all my love
J. Ramon Gil-Garcia
To my dear husband Manuel, with love and
gratitude
Theresa A. Pardo
To my lovely wife Dayoung and baby
Taewoo Nam
Foreword
The 20-chapter book before you is a highly important academic contribution to ad-
vancing the understanding of smartness as a distinctive and essential characteristic
of urban society in the twenty-first century. In this capacity the book is considered a
must read for academics in the field of smart city and smart government studies. It
is also of the highest value to practitioners in both urban public administration and
urban communities.
The agenda of urban “smartness” evolved for more than a decade; as a result, at
the midpoint of the second decade of the twenty-first century, a comprehensive and
well-grounded understanding of the term “smartness” in the context of cities and
municipalities emerged, which this book duly documents.
So, in a nutshell what does smartness as an urban agenda for the twenty-first
century mean and stand for, and why is it so important?
According to the United Nations’ WHO, by mid-2014, 54 % of the world popula-
tion lived in urban rather than rural spaces, which is a 20 % increase from the year
1960.1 By 2050, the urban share in the world population has been projected to sur-
pass the 70 % mark.2 So, in less than a century, the global ratio between urban and
rural populations will be more than reversed; and today, some urban centers already
host populations within their city limits (not even counting the population in the en-
tire metropolitan area around them) that are multiple in sizes compared with quite a
few sovereign nation states around the world. Urban centers and their metropolitan
areas have become the dominant hubs of economic, social, and cultural activities
in the early twenty-first century. Also, these hubs compete on a global scale against
each other for resources, talent, investments, influence, and wealth.
The rapid urbanization of the globe presents both great challenges and great op-
portunities for urban society as a whole as well as for urban government and urban
self-governance as two important organizing elements of the urban society. While
the concentration of human life in dense urban centers provides numerous econo-
mies of scale and efficiencies (centralized services, short-range service distribu-
1 See http://www.who.int/gho/urban_health/situation_trends/urban_population_growth_text/
en/—accessed 10/17/2014).
2 See http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669244/by-2050-70-of-the-worlds-population-will-be-ur-
ban-is-that-a-good-thing—accessed 10/17/2014).
vii
viii Foreword
tion, proximity of connected logistic entities, short-distance transport of goods and
people, low per-capita land use, and leverage of energy resources, to name a few), it
also comes with a price tag (for example, in terms of crowding and its various side
effects, pollution, higher crime rates, and infrastructural vulnerabilities).
A dense urban space is a highly dynamic and complex system, which at the least is
self-referential, if not self-organizing,3 that is, it cannot be steered like a car, and for its
governance it requires sophisticated interventions and precise triggering at certain le-
verage points to be effectively influenced in ways that help it evolve towards and main-
tain desirable directions as defined by its very stakeholders.4 A twenty-first-century
urban space is expected to offer its citizens and business stakeholders high standards
along the six dimensions of (1) quality of life (also referred to as livability or overall
attractiveness), (2) democratic governance and institutions, (3) safety, (4) security,
(5) rich economic opportunity and competitiveness supported by sophisticated and
effective infrastructures of all kinds (individual and public transports, education, com-
munication, information, health care, retail, research and innovation, public utilities,
recreation, entertainment, culinary services, the arts, and cultural institutions, among
others), and last, but not least, (6) a healthy and intact natural environment.5
Neighborhoods in twenty-first-century urban centers will increasingly play
semi-autonomous roles in their governance, since they cannot be effectively man-
aged from a single remote central point or in a stringent hierarchical fashion. At the
same time, these semi-autonomous neighborhoods need to stay connected and well
integrated in the greater urban whole. This interplay requires new ways of interac-
tion and procedures, which need to be developed.
Furthermore, urban centers and their metropolitan areas compete globally for
resources, talent, and investments, and the attractiveness of an urban space hinges
upon its capacities to provide a balanced and sustainable mix of the six dimensions
outlined above. Obviously, these dynamic, larger, denser, and multilayered urban
centers need new and smarter approaches to governance, public service provision,
and public administration than were available and practiced in the past.
This leads me to the concept of smartness as a twenty-first-century urban agenda. A
smart urban space (also referred to as a smart city) is one that is able to create and main-
tain a strong attractiveness, safety and security, abundant economic opportunity, so-
phisticated and effective infrastructures of all kinds, and a healthy natural environment
based on a model of smart democratic governance. Elements of smart governance
encompass balanced innovation-, competitiveness-, and sustainability-oriented norms
and policies that foster smart practices by using and sharing high-quality actionable
3 P. M. Hejl, “Towards a theory of social systems: self-organization and self-reference, self-refer-
ence and syn-reference,” in Self-organization and management of social systems: insights, prom-
ises, doubts, and questions, H. Ulrich and G. Probst, Eds. Berlin; New York: Springer-Verlag,
1984, pp. 60–78.
4 J. W. Forrester, Urban dynamics. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969.
5 S. AlAwadhi, A. Aldama, H. Chourabi, J. R. Gil-Garcia, S. Leung, S. Mellouli, T. Nam, T. Pardo,
H. J. Scholl, and S. Walker, “Building Understanding of Smart City Initiatives.,” in Electronic
Government. vol. 7443, H. J. Scholl, M. Janssen, M. A. Wimmer, C. E. Moe, and L. S. Flak, Eds.
Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2012, pp. 40–53.
Foreword ix
information facilitated by state-of-the-art information and communication and other
technologies along with top-notch human capital and skills as well as other resources.6
Smart government, hence, can be defined as the skilled and effective orchestra-
tion of the elements of smart governance and their interplay towards areas of admin-
istrative focus such as smart budgeting, continuous administrative modernization,
security and safety, continuous infrastructure overhaul and upgrading, carbonless
and clean individual mobility, participation, transparency, and collaboration, and
data science-based information generation and dissemination. Over time, the areas
of focus of smart government may change in the twenty-first century; however, the
basic elements of smart governance will remain relatively constant.
The reader may have noticed that unlike most discourses on smart cities, smart
governance, and smart government, I have so far not mentioned information and
communication technologies (ICTs) or other breakthrough technologies in any
prominent way. This is, of course, neither negligence nor coincidence. Modern ICTs
and other technologies have facilitated the evolution of a truly global and densely
connected economy in the course of only a few decades. They have facilitated the
rapid creation of new markets and industries as well as the complete demolition of
traditional markets and industries. Generally, they have helped obliterate many, if
not most, traditional ways of doing business of whatever kind.
While ICTs and other breakthrough technologies do not “drive” change by them-
selves, by employing, deploying, and using novel ICTs in new ways towards new
ends and new purposes, knowledgeable, purposeful, and intentioned human actors
indeed do drive change. For decades ICTs have been touted as “enablers” of change,
organizational, behavioral, and other; however, if not used and deployed properly,
they have proven to be ineffective and were found capable of even powerfully stall-
ing progress and change. So, whether or not novel ICTs can help bring about change
towards desired new ends and new purposes critically depends upon the thorough
understanding of a given new technology’s potential, a vision for its novel uses,
and a resolve and capacity to make this vision a reality on part of purposeful and
intentioned human actors. In other words, novel ICTs and other breakthrough tech-
nologies need to be in the hands and under the purview of smart and savvy human
actors to be deployed in the ways that they can enact their full potential and make
a real difference. Then, these technologies can, in fact, act as grandiose facilitators
and as massive levers for change of all sorts.
Smartness, hence, is an inherent human capacity. When referring to smart cities,
smart governance, and smart government, we implicitly understand that novel tech-
nologies (ICTs and others) are necessary, albeit not sufficient engines for making an
urban space smarter. It requires smart people who share the vision about and then
create the future of the urban space they live in.
The ongoing process of urbanization of the globe requires extraordinary human
savviness and smartness in decision-making in order to cope with the looming chal-
6 H. J. Scholl and M. C. Scholl, “Smart Governance: A Roadmap for Research and Practice,” in
Proceedings of the 9th iConference, M. Kindling and E. Greifeneder, Eds. Berlin, Germany: Il-
linois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (IDEALS), 2014, pp. 163–176.
x Foreword
lenges and to seize the emerging opportunities. In other words, smartness is not a
nice-to-have attribute, but rather a necessity.
Ideally, smart (democratic) governance paves the path for smart government,
which helps instigate the evolution of a smart urban space. But the smart urban
agenda of the twenty-first century also has to engage, mobilize, and contribute the
various urban communities and stakeholders toward cocreating the smart urban
space they want to share and live in. In this vein, smart governance, smart govern-
ment, and smart city are literary vehicles for promoting the discourse about our
future directions of human life on this planet, which will predominantly provide an
urban experience. How this experience will shape up is for us to find and smartly
decide.
This book makes an important academic contribution to the discourse on smart-
ness in the context of urban environments, governance, and government. It has three
parts, which are dedicated to theories, concepts, and methodologies of smartness in
the urban context (part I), case studies from around the world (part II), and citizen
participation in building smart cities (part III). It represents a wide range and great
diversity in terms of regions covered as well as themes in the various chapters. For
example, smart-government or smart-participation initiatives in Barcelona/Spain, Is-
tanbul/Turkey, Mexico, Milan/Italy, Moscow/Russia, New Taipei City/Taiwan, Nor-
wegian cities, Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, Curitiba and Campinas (all Brazil), and
Stockholm, Göteborg, Malmö, Jönköping, and Umeå (all Sweden) were analyzed
and presented among others. Themes ranged from studying and developing concep-
tual models for smart city-related research over detailed single and multiple case
studies to recommendations and lessons learned from the cases and the literature.
The book provides global coverage and a balanced approach in representing the
various scholarly approaches to smart city, smart governance, and smart govern-
ment research. The list of renowned contributors to this volume is impressive, and
the contributions are authoritative. Therefore, with great pleasure, I recommend to
you the reading of this volume on “Smarter as the New Urban Agenda: A Compre-
hensive View of the 21st Century City,” which in my view represents a milestone in
current research on the subject.
Seattle, November 2014 Hans J (Jochen) Scholl PhD
Chair of IFIP WG 8.5 (Information Systems
and Public Administration)
Chair of the HICSS EGOV Track
Former President of the Digital Government Society
Associate Editor of Government Information Quarterly