Smart cities are proposed as a solution for problems of urbanization. Technologies associated with smart cities involve the monitoring of human activities and resulting data streams. These technologies affect certain public values, which may be subject to change depending on their sociotechnical development. This paper presents a method that enables decision-makers to anticipate on this pattern of value change. This method uses two axes that allow a technology to be plotted in terms of different value-laden functions: a first axis in which projects are classified that collect either personal information or impersonal information; a second axis that classifies projects as to whether they collect data for the purpose of service or surveillance. For 37 sensor-based projects in the city of Rotterdam, it has been studied how projects may shift from one quadrant to another. These shifts inform decision-makers so they are better capable of anticipating undesirable impacts of technological developments.@en

There is a sharp contrast between the public value discourse that typifies smart city-making on the one hand and its democratic deficit on the other. In this article we explore this contrast in more detail and assess that the paradigm and practices of networked government, which dominates smart city making, positions citizens as “audiences” of smart city makers and civil servants as “shepherds” of their public values. In these positions, both citizens and civil servants participate in a wide array of smart city experiments and engagements. However, an active, autonomous agenda setting role by citizens or democratically legitimated advocacy of civil servants is rare and does not easily fit within the paradigm of networked government. We draw on the work of Dewey and Marres to envision such different roles and make them concrete by highlighting experiences of Dutch citizens and civil servants with urban data and technology. These show, first, that the desires and goals of citizens may differ markedly from those of the smart city, and—second—that civil servants struggle with legitimate ways to advocate for socially and economically balanced smart city solutions. We conclude, in the final section, that the smart city can only be developed further through representative democratic means of engagement, among which local elections that express the collective desires of citizens and frame the mandate of civil servants.@en

Digitization and datafication of public space have a significant impact on how cities are developed, governed, perceived and used. As technological developments are based upon political decisions, which impact people’s everyday lives, and from which not everyone benefits or suffers equally, we argue that ‘the smart city’ should be part of continuous public debate; that it should be considered and treated as a social problem. Through nine focus groups, we invited respondents to explore and discuss instances and dilemmas of the smart city. We investigated which interpretative repertoires they used to frame the smart city as a social and actionable problem. Following Blumer's and Gamson's theories on the social construction of problems and on collective action frames, we assessed respondents’ discursive interpretations and their subjective construction of their senses of injustice, agency and identity regarding this subject. We find that – in the context of the city of Rotterdam in The Netherlands – citizens do not experience and consider the smart city as a social and actionable problem. Although they do associate the technological development of smart cities with potential threats, this does not change or constrain their sense of ‘actionability’, nor their behaviour, as they consider themselves to be powerless individuals regarding what, in their eyes, is a complex, elusive and inevitable situation they are confronted with. Strikingly, rather than specifically and contextually reflecting on smart city issues, respondents tended to express their concerns in the more general context of digital and data technologies invading everyday life.@en

Vanaf oktober 2018 onderzocht een team van het Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for BOLD Cities een jaar lang wat verschillende Nederlanders weten en vinden van de manieren waarop gegevens worden verzameld in de openbare ruimte. Het onderzoek werd opgezet in de vorm van een interactieve online game, ‘Jouw buurt, jouw data’, die mensen zowel thuis als op verschillende evenementen konden spelen. De uitkomsten van het onderzoeksproject zijn te lezen in deze uitgave.@en

Social web data increasingly complement studies of various social phenomena, especially when the availability of traditional data is limited. One such case is that of vulnerable young populations that are disengaged from employment, education, or training; usually referred to as NEETs. This paper explores the extent to which social media data and discussion websites could complement conventional sources in the study of NEETs. We focus on user-generated content posted to the dedicated r/NEET subreddit, which gathers subscribers who self-identify as NEETs. We develop and implement a data processing pipeline for the analysis of the behavioral patterns and main concerns of this social group. Our analysis of Reddit data reaches similar conclusions to official reports from governmental institutions in Europe. The paper also provides insights into health-related issues and latent interests of NEETs, not recorded in official reports and related literature. @en