Throughout history, cities have faced many problems: War and violence, disease, disasters, housing, utilities, traffic, crime, inequality, poverty, and greed. Moreover, the pace of population growth in cities is frightening. Every day, urban population increases by almost 150,000 – mostly poor – people, due to migration or births. Between to date and 2050, the world’s urban population is projected to rise from 3.6 billion to 6.3 billion residents.
The litany of problems affects all cities in the world, but not in the same degree. To cope with these problems, each city must make a diagnose of its own challenges and define solutions.
City-life is complex and most afore-mentioned problems are related and often at odds, think about struggling poverty and reversing global heating. Therefore, these problems cannot be solved in separated silos. This is the reason reason that I reject reductionist approaches like ‘smart city’, ‘sharing city’, ‘circular city’ and the like.
Instead, framing the challenges that cities face must start from the complexity of the city as such and the interrelations of people causing these problems. In this respect, I found the concept of a doughnut economy particularly helpful. It is elaborated by the British economist Kate Raworth in a report entitled A Safe and Just Space for Humanity. The report takes the simultaneous application of social and environmental sustainability as the point of department for humane behavior.
In essence, Raworth says that people have a great deal of freedom in the choice of activities in their city, if they stay within two types of boundaries:
The first limit is set by ecosystems; which make life on earth possible. However, we can also frustrate their operation, which has a direct impact on our living conditions.
Something similar applies to society. Here you can also distinguish several aspects and each of them has a level that people should not fall below, the second limit. If this does happen, it will jeopardize the survival of society.
If you look at a donut, you will see a small circle in the center and a large circle on the outside. The small circle represents the social foundation, the lower limit of the quality of society. The large circle refers to the ecological ceiling. Between the two circles lies the space within which people can act as they please. Kate Raworth calls this space a safe and just space for humanity.
On the way to a city for humanity , what we need to do is, first of all, to define human actions that comply with or are threatening the ecological ceiling and social foundation of our own city. What follows is the formulation of targets to correct and subsequently enforce all actual violations of ecological and social boundaries. This applies to the city itself and the global effects of its activities.
As an exercise, I created a table of principles for 10 clusters of activities to address the challenges that many cities in developed countries share, combined with one target for each principle. You may want to download this table here.
I recommend this procedure to any city that intends to develop an integral vision starting from the complexity of city life and the interdependency of its activities. Amsterdam went through this process, together with Kate Raworth. The Amsterdam city donut is worth exploring closely.
This post based on by the new e-book Better cities, the contribution of digital technology. Interested? Download the book here for free (90 pages)
Content:
Hardcore: Technology-centered approaches
1. Ten years of smart city technology marketing
2. Scare off the monster behind the curtain: Big Tech’s monopoly
Towards a humancentric approach
3. A smart city, this is how you do it
4. Digital social innovation: For the social good
Misunderstanding the use of data
5. Digital twins
6. Artificial intelligence
Embedding digitization in urban policy
7. The steps to urban governance
8. Guidelines for a responsible digitization policy
9. A closer look at the digitization agenda of Amsterdam
10. Forging beneficial cooperation with technology companies
Applications
11. Government: How digital tools help residents regaining power?
12. Mobility: Will MaaS reduce the use of cars?
13. Energy: Smart grids – where social and digital innovation meet
14. Healthcare: Opportunities and risks of digitization
Artificial intelligence is the ‘independent construction of pattern in large datasets by computers’. Still, people hold an important role in this. This role consists in the first place in writing an instruction – an algorithm – and then in the composition of a training set, a selection of many examples, for example of animals that are labeled as dog or cat and if necessary, lion or tiger and more. In essence, the computer looks for statistically significant similarities in whatever data, provided by the operator, to predict the probability that some relation will exist or phenomenon will occur.
If computers are learned to make judgement about people, things can go terribly wrong. The St. George Hospital Medical School in London has employed disproportionately many white males for at least a decade because the ‘learning set’ reflected the incumbent staff. The learning set itself represented the bias of those who selected it.
The fight against crime in the United States, has been the scene of artificial intelligence’s abuse for years. The two most used techniques that resulted are predictive policing (PredPol) and facial recognition. In the case of predictive policing, patrols are given directions in which neighborhood or even street they should patrol at a given moment because computers have calculated that the risk of crimes (vandalism, burglary, violence) is highest then.
Predictive policing and facial recognition are based on a “learning set” of thousands of “suspicious” individuals. At one point, New York police had a database of 48,000 individuals. 66% of those were black, 31.7% were Latino and only 1% were white. The composition of this dataset was completely biases, and therefore the computerized ‘decisions’ ware biased too. Even worse is that the final ‘decisions’ made by the computer cannot be explained, and the underlying process is a blackbox. This is a serious ethical issue and the reason why many demand to forbit the application of artificial intelligence.
Bias is not the only thing. In so-called fight against crime the computer calculates on request the chances that crime would happen at a certain time and in a certain place. But if the client exchanged the dominant paradigm of identifying, prosecuting and incarcerating criminals for that of finding potential offenders in a timely manner and giving them the help, they need? A large proportion of those arrested by the police in the US are addicted to drugs or alcohol and severely mentally disturbed. The University of Chicago Data Science for Social Good Program used artificial intelligence to analyze a database of 127,000 people. The aim was to find out, based on historical data, which of those involved was most likely to be arrested within a month. This is not with the intention of hastening an arrest with predictive techniques, but instead to offer them targeted medical assistance. This program was picked up in several cities and in Miami it resulted in a 40% reduction in arrests and the closing of an entire prison.
AI means computer power. Intelligence resides in those who are using this power. Less biased application of artificial intelligence depends on the through-out choice of the connections in the learning sets. These connections must be scientifically validated and approved by scholars with different backgrounds instead of police officers or computer scientists.
This post is based on the new e-book Better cities, the contribution of digital technology. Interested? Download the book here for free (90 pages)
Content:
Hardcore: Technology-centered approaches
1. Ten years of smart city technology marketing
2. Scare off the monster behind the curtain: Big Tech’s monopoly
Towards a humancentric approach
3. A smart city, this is how you do it
4. Digital social innovation: For the social good
Misunderstanding the use of data
5. Digital twins
6. Artificial intelligence
Embedding digitization in urban policy
7. The steps to urban governance
8. Guidelines for a responsible digitization policy
9. A closer look at the digitization agenda of Amsterdam
10. Forging beneficial cooperation with technology companies
Applications
11. Government: How digital tools help residents regaining power?
12. Mobility: Will MaaS reduce the use of cars?
13. Energy: Smart grids – where social and digital innovation meet
14. Healthcare: Opportunities and risks of digitization
Digitale sociale innovatie – also referred to as smart city 3.0 – is a modest counterweight to the growing dominance and yet lagging promises of ‘Big Tech’. It concerns “a type of social and collaborative innovation in which final users and communities collaborate through digital platforms to produce solutions for a wide range of social needs and at a scale that was unimaginable before the rise of Internet-enabled networking platforms.”
Digital innovation in Europe has been boosted by the EU project Growing a digital social Innovation ecosystem for Europa (2015 – 2020), in which De Waag Society in Amsterdam participated for the Netherlands. One of the achievements is a database of more than 3000 organizations and companies.
It is a pity that this database is no longer kept up to date after the project has expired and – as I have experienced – quickly loses its accuracy.
Many organizations and projects have interconnections, usually around a ‘hub’. In addition to the Waag Society, these are for Europe, Nesta, Fondazione Mondo Digitale and the Institute for Network Cultures. These four organizations are also advisors for new projects. Important websites are: digitalsocial.eu(no longer maintained) and the more business-oriented techforgood.
A diversity of perspectives
To get to know the field of digital innovation better, different angles can be used:
• Attention to a diversity of issues such as energy and climate, air and noise pollution, health care and welfare, economy and work, migration, political involvement, affordable housing, social cohesion, education and skills.
• The multitude of tools ranging from open hardware kits for measuring air pollution, devices for recycling plastic, 3D printers, open data, open hardware and open knowledge. Furthermore, social media, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, big data, machine learning et cetera.
• The variety of project types: Web services, networks, hardware, research, consultancy, campaigns and events, courses and training, education, and research.
• The diverse nature of the organizations involved: NGOs, not-for-profit organizations, citizens’ initiatives, educational and research institutions, municipalities and increasingly social enterprises.
Below, these four perspectives are only discussed indirectly via the selected examples. The emphasis is on a fifth angle, namely the diversity of objectives of the organizations and projects involved. At the end of this article, I will consider how municipalities can stimulate digital social innovation. But I start with the question of what the organizations involved have in common.
A common denominator
A number of organizations drew up the Manifesto for Digital Social Innovation in 2017 and identified central values for digital social innovation: Openness and transparency, democracy and decentralization, experimentation and adoption, digital skills, multidisciplinary and sustainability. These give meaning to the three components of the concept of digital social technology:
Social issues.
The multitude of themes of projects in the field of digital social innovation has already been mentioned. Within all these themes, the perspective of social inequality, diversity, human dignity, and gender are playing an important role. In urban planning applications, this partly shifts the focus from the physical environment to the social environment: We’re pivoting from a focus on technology and IoT and data to a much more human-centered process, in the words of Emily Yates, smart cities director of Philadelphia.
Innovation
Ben Green writes in his book ‘The smart enough city’: One of the smart city’s greatest and most pernicious tricks is that it …. puts innovation on a pedestal by devaluing traditional practices as emblematic of the undesirable dumb city.(p. 142). In digital social, innovation rather refers to implement, experiment, improve and reassemble.
(Digital) technology
Technology is not a neutral toolbox that can be used or misused for all purposes. Again Ben Green: We must ask, what forms of technology are compatible with the kind of society we want to build (p. 99). Current technologies have been shaped by commercial or military objectives. Technologies that contribute to ‘the common good’ still need to be partly developed. Supporters of digital social innovation emphasize the importance of a robust European open, universal, distributed, privacy-aware and neutral peer-to-peer network as a platform for all forms of digital social innovation.
Objectives and focus
When it comes to the objective or focus, five types of projects can be distinguished: (1) New production techniques (2) participation (3) cooperation (4 raising awareness and (5) striving for open access.
1. New production techniques
A growing group of ‘makers’ is revolutionizing open design. 3D production tools CAD/CAM software is not expensive or available in fab labs and libraries. Waag Society in Amsterdam is one of the many institutions that host a fab lab. This is used, among other things, to develop several digital social innovations. One example was a $50 3D-printed prosthesis intended for use in developing countries.
2. Participation
Digital technology can allow citizens to participate in decision-making processes on a large scale. In Finland, citizens are allowed to submit proposals to parliament. Open Ministry supports citizens in making an admissible proposal and furthermore in obtaining the minimum required 50,000 votes. Open Ministry is now part of the European D-CENTproject a decentralized social networking platform that has developed tools for large-scale collaboration and decision making across Europe.
3. Collaboration
It is about enabling people to exchange skills, knowledge, food, clothing, housing, but also includes new forms of crowdfunding and financing based on reputation and trust. The sharing economy is becoming an important economic factor. Thousands of alternative payment methods are also in use worldwide. In East Africa, M-PESA (a mobile financial payment system) opens access to secure financial services for nine million people. Goteo is a social network for crowdfunding and collaborative collaboration that contribute to the common good.
4. Awareness
These are tools that seek to use information to change behavior and mobilize collective action. Tyze is a closed and online community for family, friends, neighbors, and care professionals to strengthen mutual involvement around a client and to make appointments, for example for a visit. Safecast is the name of a home-built Geiger counter with which a worldwide community performs radiation measurements and thus helps to increase awareness in radiation and (soon) the presence of particulate matter.
5. Open Access
The open access movement (including open content, standards, licenses, knowledge and digital rights) aims to empower citizens. The CityService Development Kit (CitySDK) is a system that collects open data from governments to make it available uniformly and in real time. CitySDK helps seven European cities to release their data and provides tools to develop digital services. It also helps cities to anticipate the ever-expanding technological possibilities, for example a map showing all 9,866,539 buildings in the Netherlands, shaded by year of construction. Github is a collaborative platform for millions of open software developers, helping to re-decentralize the way code is built, shared, and maintained.
Cities Support
Cities can support organizations pursuing digital social innovations in tackling problems in many ways.
Financing
Direct support through subsidies, buying shares, loans, social impact bonds, but also competitions and matching, whereby the municipality doubles the capital obtained by the organization, for example through crowdfunding. An example of a project financed by the municipality is Amsterdammers, maak je stad.
Cooperation
Involvement in a project, varying from joint responsibility and cost sharing, to material support by making available space and service s, such as in the case Maker Fairs or the Unusual Suspects Festival. Maker Fairs or the Unusual Suspects Festival. Municipalities can also set up and support a project together, such as Cities for Digital Rights. A good example is the hundreds of commons in Bologna, to which the municipality delegates part of its tasks.
Purchasing Policy
Digital social innovation projects have provided a very wide range of useful software in many areas, including improving communication with citizens and their involvement in policy. Consul was first used in Madrid but has made its way to 33 countries and more than 100 cities and businesses and is used by more than 90 million people. In many cases there is also local supply. An alternative is Citizenlab.
Infrastructure
Municipalities should seriously consider setting up or supporting a fab lab. Fab Foundation is helpful in this regard. Another example is the Things Network and the Smart citizen kit.. Both are open tools that enable citizens and entrepreneurs to build an IoT application at low cost. These facilities can also be used to measure noise nuisance, light pollution, or odors with citizens in a neighborhood, without having to install an expensive sensor network.
Skills Training
Municipalities can offer citizens and students targeted programs for training digital skills, or support organizations that can implement them, through a combination of physical and digital means. One of the options is the lie detector program, developed by a non-profit organization that teaches young children to recognize and resist manipulative information on (social) media.
Incubators and accelerators
We mainly find these types of organizations in the world of start-ups, some of which also have a social impact. Targeted guidance programs are also available for young DSI organizations. In the Netherlands this is the Waag Society in Amsterdam. A typical tech for good incubator in the UK is Bethnal Green Ventures. An organization that has also helped the Dutch company Fairphone to grow. In the Netherlands, various startup in residence programs also play a role in the development of DSI organisations.
Urban problems are always complicated, contradictory, and complex and rarely have simple solutions. Therefore, like all other projects, digital social projects need to be carefully embedded and their interfaces explored with the other aspects of policy.
I just started a new series on the site of Amsterdam Smart City. In more than 20 short articles I will deal with the contribution of digital technology to making cities better. Read the prologue here:
Science for Society 