Zandbergen, D., & Uitermark, J. (2019). In search of the Smart Citizen: Republican and cybernetic citizenship in the smart city. Urban Studies.
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Artikel
In search of the Smart Citizen
The smart city has been both celebrated for opening up decision-making processes through responsive digital infrastructures, and criticised for turning citizens into mere nodes of sociotechnical networks under corporate or overnment control. In line with these depictions, smart city politics is often analysed as a struggle between aspirations for bottom-up participatory democracy and authoritarian control. Drawing on ethnographic research on an Amsterdam project which encourages citizens to collect and share air quality data, we problematise this vertical reading of smart city politics. The project mobilises both republican citizenship and cybernetic citizenship, each assuming different logics regarding the ways in which citizens negotiate urban life by means of data and sensing technologies. While republican citizenship emphasises citizens’ sovereignty, cybernetic citizenship emphasises their immersion into informational environments. We demonstrate how, depending on specific situated interests and forms of engagement, both kinds of citizenship feed into appealing visions of urban life for different actors.
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Artikel
Documentary SmartCity. In search of the Smart Citizen
Smart City, looking for the Smart Citizen, a production by researcher Dorien Zandbergen and filmmaker Sara Blom discusses the ambition by several networks to turn Amsterdam into a Smart City: a city in which smart technologies will make it sustainable, safe and comfortable and that will enable citizens to have more control over their surroundings. Blom and Zandbergen explore the connection between this dream and the dilemma’s posed by the urban society of Amsterdam against it. The film contrasts the digital lifeworlds of different networks of people: from public-private organizations wanting to mark Amsterdam internationally as a Smart City, to citizens wanting to measure the air quality around their homes, to citizens who are not at all comfortable with digital machines. By zooming in on these contrasts, but foremost by emphasizing the shared experiences between these networks, the film calls for a broad discussion regarding power and disempowerment in the digital society.
Source and more information: https://gr1p.org/smart-city-op-zoek-naar-de-slimme-burger/