As the digitization of society has bestowed cities with an immense amount of data, cities are using data to inform, monitor, evaluate and measure their performance towards policy objectives. However, it was found that monitoring frameworks are biased by the perspectives of monitor developers, making their viewpoints and opinions dominant in shaping policies and public perception. Next to this, the aggregated metrics of monitoring frameworks overlook the experience of outliers thereby masking and excluding local differences and issues. These limitations lead to a gap between monitoring systems and the reality of lived experiences of citizens. With data-driven decision making being increasingly adopted by policymakers, it is imperative to investigate how these disparities can be minimized.
Literature suggests including citizens in the development of urban monitoring systems can positively contribute to aligning monitoring frameworks with the lived reality of citizens. The goal of this thesis was therefore to explore how citizen engagement with monitoring frameworks can be effectively achieved. In doing so this thesis explored two main components, being 1) how citizens can be effectively engaged with monitoring frameworks and 2) how their local knowledge can be incorporated in monitoring frameworks. This was done through a case study for the Ideal(s) City monitoring framework, developed by the AMS Institute and the City of Amsterdam.
The project took a participatory research-through-design approach where through the testing and evaluation of design interventions practical learnings about citizens’ local knowledge and participative capabilities were combined with theory. Besides, expert interviews and interviews with municipal stakeholders, such as a policymaker and a monitor developer, were conducted to gain a better understanding of the context of urban monitoring and policymaking. By combining the insights of these design interventions, interviews and literature, a process for citizen engagement with accompanying guidelines were developed and the potential role of local knowledge was identified.
It was found that local knowledge of citizens can play three roles in monitoring frameworks: 1) Identifying missing indicators in the current monitoring frameworks to minimize disparities between citizen perspectives and urban monitors, 2) providing new connections among (existing) indicators and 3) assigning weight of importance to indicators to reflect the diverse concerns and experiences of citizens. including this local knowledge can support policymakers in making more informed policy decisions and trade-offs, considering the diverse needs of the local context.
The thesis concludes with presenting a guidebook depicting a process for citizen engagement with monitoring frameworks targeted at monitor developers. Through actionable steps and guidelines, this guidebook aims to support AMS and other monitor developers to set the first steps in aligning urban monitors with the lived experiences of citizens. To ultimately monitor what matters to the city and her citizens.